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Incest Is Best?

plusk said:
The fact that the Church used to forbid lay people to read the Bible is very well established.

What I meant is that it certainly has not been forbidden within my own lifetime. And the number of 19th Catholic family Bibles I handled during my four-plus decades as an antiquarian bookdealer demonstrates that such Bibles were widely owned in North America and Europe (especially Germany) more than 150 years ago.

And as Catholics have often pointed out to me, during the period when laypeople were forbidden to read the Bible, the vast majority of the laity quite simply COULDN'T READ.

That's supposed to be one of the main reasons that stained-glass windows were devised - to teach Bible stories to the illiterate.
 
Hi OTR,

I don't know how old the "Old" in OTR is, but my Mum is 98.

Certainly in my time at Catholic school we were encouraged to read the Bible, but only bits of it and that the bits we did read should be understood in the light of the Church's teaching. (When I once decided to do an appreciation of the "Song of Solomon" for homework I got a right rollicking -and was told that the said text was simply an allegory of Christ's love for his Church - yeah, right).

As regards the illiteracy, what would be the point of forbidding people who cannot read from reading?

The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).
 
And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden and from amongst the people living there he took himself a wife".(Genesis 4:16,17.

Let me drag this a little more back on topic by pointing out that there apparently was no "land of Nod," as such.

The word "Nod" is simply the ancient Hebrew word for "flight" or "fleeing."

So a more literal translation would apparently read "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and fled into another land, on the east of Eden, where he dwelt, and where he took himself a wife from the people living there."

By the way, the Bible doesn't say how much time passed between Cain's murder of his brother and the date when he took himself a wife. Even if we take all this literally, several generations may have passed.
 
Hi OTR,

As a professional interpreter/translator I know full well how just a slight change in nuance can alter the meaning of a translation. I don't know ancient Hebrew but in any language going from "went to the land of Flight" to meaning "fled" is stretching it a bit.

I prefer the interpretation David Rohl gives in his "Legend, the Genesis of Civilisation". First he identifies where the original Garden of Eden was by identifying the one valley in the world whose surrounding mountains give rise to the four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10 to 2:14. This is the Adji Chay valley in North Iran. If we then go east of this valley we arrive:

to the local districts of Upper and Lower Noqdi. A small town ... to the East is called Noadi. The terminal "i" in all these names is the Arabic word for "of"...For example an Iraqi is a person of Iraq... So the place names ... can be read as "belonging to Noqd" or "Noad".

In other words, when the Bible says that Cain went to the land of Nod it means that Cain went to the land of Nod.

No matter how many generations passed between killing Abel and going to Nod (and the Bible reads as if the events were temporally connected) there is no indication that the people of Nod were relatives of Cain.
 
plusk said:
No matter how many generations passed between killing Abel and going to Nod (and the Bible reads as if the events were temporally connected) there is no indication that the people of Nod were relatives of Cain.

So, who where they anyway? Is there a position about it? What does the church has to say about this?
 
Hi Om,

My point is that the Church has kept very quiet about this for the last 2,000 years. It would also appear that Jewish rabbis down the ages have not really gotten into this issue.
 
If anything can be factually asserted about the interpretation of the Bible, it is that it is complex and, despite the efforts of various sects to deny or disguise this, has no single unarguable interpretation even within sects.. Fundamentalists, who claim to take the Bible literally, differ widely in the ways they read the Bible, and if you don't believe me, sit between a Church of Christ proponent and a Christian Church proponent in home room in West Texas for half a year of high school. You will believe!

When I first heard the story of Cain and Abel, in a Sunday school class for six and seven year olds at the Church of the Brethren (a conservative denomination with a fundamentalist faction), IIRC the Sunday school teacher himself brought up the question of who was around for Cain to marry, and said that it wasn't clear but that God "must have" created Adam and Eve first and then created other people on the same model after the expulsion from the garden when it became clear that He would need more people. That seemed good enough to me at that time. Was it the official Church of the Brethren interpretation? Beats me. No doubt if I had grown up in that church and reached the point at which I could grasp the mechanical problems this created in the doctrine of Original Sin, the same or a similar person could have explained to me how they thought it worked, or I would have gotten a different interpretation from a different member.

As it was, my dad came home from Nam, we moved, found a liberal congregation of my mother's preferred United Methodist church (she later became a minister), and I and everyone around me accepted the stories of Adam and Eve and the rest of Genesis as symbolic. Neither my mother nor my husband the Southern Baptist (in which Every Man is His Own Priest - don't argue scripture with one unless you're coming loaded for bear; you will get blindsided by interpretations you never could have prepared for) have any problem with doing that, either, or in accepting evolution by natural selection - or a subtly-guided process that looks like natural selection to our finite human brains - as God's way of creating the universe.

I was way too sleep-deprived to follow HatethatMonkee's argument at the time it was posted, and it still looks pretty incoherent (and I'm still a little sleep deprived). For one thing, morality and legality are not the same; cf patently immoral laws (oppression of subgroups within a society, for example) that have existed throughout history. The core point I wish to make is that things are wrong for reasons. We lose sight of that at our peril.

Nor is a felt need to keep a secret an accurate guide to the morality of a condition. Same-sex or mixed-ethnicity couples in hostile environments may feel a need to keep their secret without feeling that what they do is wrong, because of the persecution they would undergo if their prejudiced neighbors or interfering government found out. In such cases, societal pressures may lead to people committing immoral actions - such as the cruel fraud of a homosexual marrying a heterosexual as a "beard" - in an attempt to meet impossible requirements.

In the hypothetical (and, I assure you, impossible) case of my husband and I discovering that our union was incestuous, for instance, we have no children and no prospect of them; I am dependent on him financially since I have no steady source of income; he is dependent on me physically since he has an incurable disease; we have a successful life partnership that has weathered crises much more severe than those that have broken up other marriages; and to take steps to interfere with our decisions about our lives would be both inhumane and difficult to enforce.

The government could annul our marriage, but the practical effect of that would be to change our income tax structure, complicate our estates after death, and possibly (depending on how the policy is written) deprive me of health insurance through his work. That's it. There's nothing, and should be nothing, in American or Texas law to prevent us from owning a home together as brother and sister, being beneficiaries of each other's wills and financial plans, or doing anything together except have sexual intercourse - and determining whether we are or not doing so would involve gross violations of our privacy. In a case which involves no coercion, no genetic danger, and no exploitation, on what basis could anyone besides ourselves declare any decision we make either moral or immoral?

Yet I have no doubt that if word got out among our neighbors, many of them would enjoy the exquisite sadistic pleasure of making our lives a living hell while feeling the glow of righteousness. People exist who would pursue that pleasure until they had destroyed us - in fire, by murder, by driving us to suicide or to jail or to bankruptcy - and go to sleep with a sense of their own power and goodness.

Moral decisions are not simple. Evil lurks in the tendency to treat them that way.
 
The Biblical stuff is all very interesting, but perhaps it would be better split off into one of the Bible threads, as it is hardly a News story (Fortean or otherwise)..?
 
plusk said:
I don't know how old the "Old" in OTR is, but my Mum is 98.

66, currently. It goes up every year, rats. Although the doctor tells me that "66 is the new 46." By the way, my age appears over at the left side of the screen on my postings.

But a growing number of Old Time Radio collectors are in their TWENTIES (and even younger).

As regards the illiteracy, what would be the point of forbidding people who cannot read from reading?

That was the point I was trying to make.

The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).

But Leviticus covers a period much later than the opening chapters of Genesis.

And if we take the first sections of Genesis literally, the survivors of the Noachic Deluge must have practiced incest again, since the population had once more been reduced to a single family.
 
PeniG said:
Fundamentalists, who claim to take the Bible literally, differ widely in the ways they read the Bible, and if you don't believe me, sit between a Church of Christ proponent and a Christian Church proponent in home room in West Texas for half a year of high school.

And if I correctly remember my American church history both religions (and the Disciples of Christ along with them) consider themselves Campellites - that is they were founded by, or at least were organized in the tradition of, the great early 19th Century evangelist Alexander Campbell.
 
plusk said:
As a professional interpreter/translator I know full well how just a slight change in nuance can alter the meaning of a translation. I don't know ancient Hebrew but in any language going from "went to the land of Flight" to meaning "fled" is stretching it a bit.

You are the language authority here and I certainly am not, but are you saying that the name of the region probably pre-dated Cain? I was working from the assumption that it became identified by later generations as "the land of [Cain's] Flight" (that is, "the land of Nod') because Cain had fled there.
 
HI OTR,

Place names can be very long-lived indeed. Here in the UK it seems almost every village can trace its name back to at least Saxon, Roman, Celtic, Norse times etc. and in other parts of the world, (India, Egypt) there are place names which have been documented going back millenia. (The record must go to Stan Gooch, who in his "Cities of Dreams" makes a fair stab at showing that the word "Als" is a Neanderthal word for a place name. If true this would take us back as much as 60,000 years).

Regarding Nod, all I am saying is that, following David Rohl, it is pretty clear that the original Garden of Eden was in an identifiable valley which exists to this day and to the east of this valley are several place names which incorporate the word "Nod". Clearly the author of Genesis placed the Adam/Eve/Cain story in this region. Now, it is a well-known characteristic of story tellers that they will transfer "standard" stories to familiar locations. (Many years ago I was stuck in a mountain hut in Poland in a blizzard with a number of other tourists for several days. Luckily, the manager of the hut was an old-time story teller and entertained us with local tales of long-dead local heros, demons, air and water spirits, all set in the surrounding mountains. I was amused that at least one of these "local" tales was a direct pinch of a story from the "1001 nights").

So as to where the Genesis story originated and what its original form was I do not know (some reference books reckon it was an adapted Babylonian myth), but I think it more likely that the story was put into the Eden/Nod region rather than the region taking its place names from the story.
 
Okay, point taken, but the fact that Cain ran off to "the land of Flight" still strikes me as remarkably co-incidental.
 
Funnily enough, I am off today to do an interpreting job in a town called Byfleet. I wonder if in a few thousand years' time the archeologist who recovers my diary will conclude that actually I sailed there in a fleet of ships? :D
 
OldTimeRadio said:
And if I correctly remember my American church history both religions (and the Disciples of Christ along with them) consider themselves Campellites

I believe you are correct. I knew there was a third one sprung from the same root, but either they had no presence in San Angelo or their congregation didn't have anybody vocal in my high school at the same time as me. None should be confused with the Church of Christ Scientist. (Or the Christian Front of Judea - splitters! :lol: )


They're all against incest, btw.

Rynner's right. Why isn't there an existing "Endless Biblical Interpretation" thread?
 
PeniG said:
Rynner's right. Why isn't there an existing "Endless Biblical Interpretation" thread?

Because it would be endless. Whole religions and wars have been started over the interpretation of the Bible. If "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" then "Biblical truth is in the eye of the worshipper".
 
That sounds like an argument for having such a thread to me. What fun is a finite thread that gets used up in a page or two? Also, you'd have a place to send people who insisted on interpreting the Bible instead of staying on topic, and people who think that the Bible has to be interpreted a certain way or that they've discovered the Great Contradiction that is Bound to Confound Fundamentalists can be sent there to be humbled.
 
Those would be the ever popular:
Interpreting Scripture for Glacial Respiration references
and
Geologist Unearths an End-of-Days Plan Built into Religion
threads on Earth Mysteries.

but:

the Great Contradiction that is Bound to Confound Fundamentalists can be sent there to be humbled.

Would probably belong in cryptozoology next to unicorns. (and humble fundamentalists)
 
PeniG said:
What fun is a finite thread that gets used up in a page or two?

Hmm. Good point. But what "fun" is there in a thread where people constantly bicker over something that cannot be proved one way or another, so-called evidence can be cut 'n' pasted from endless Google sources - without context or critical analysis - and a thread which has the potential to be a fertile ground for Trolls and Flamers?

Anyhoooo ... this is distinctly off-topic. Let's get back to people sleeping with their own parents / siblings. This is a less nebulous and more real situation than the interpretation of a religious publication. Also there's something rather titillating about it.
 
i agree that we have gone very off topic, however there are a few things i would like to add to the bible interpretation before someone replies to this and the biblical thread of the incest arguement ends.

OldTimeRadio said:
Nevertheless, the Church has never taught that we are the progeny of an incestuous relationship betwen Cain and un-mentioned sisters.

But that's pretty much what I was taught in Roman Catholic education:

"Since there was only one family on Earth, incest was obviously permitted at that time."

this was the big point i was trying to get across. that in the bible we are only told about adam and eve, so it is therefore logical to assume that there was only adam and eve. if other people were also created - be it after the expulsion from the garden upto when cain killed able - are we not told because it is not known till cain flees, or because it cannot be put into a context without saying that God f***ed-up?

plusk said:
Hi OTR,

I don't know how old the "Old" in OTR is, but my Mum is 98.

Certainly in my time at Catholic school we were encouraged to read the Bible, but only bits of it and that the bits we did read should be understood in the light of the Church's teaching. (When I once decided to do an appreciation of the "Song of Solomon" for homework I got a right rollicking -and was told that the said text was simply an allegory of Christ's love for his Church - yeah, right).

As regards the illiteracy, what would be the point of forbidding people who cannot read from reading?

The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).

i believe there was no actual ban on people reading the bible, it is just something that has come about as the text is now so readily available - hence the drop in church attendances even amongst the most devout - and it has taken root in the same way as the notion that people used to think the earth flat.

i have already stated that the church does indeed condem incest, however can the bible really condem it when it's opening chapters clearly - to me at least - give the impression that the human line is in fact one big pile of incestuous offload.

PeniG said:
When I first heard the story of Cain and Abel, in a Sunday school class for six and seven year olds at the Church of the Brethren (a conservative denomination with a fundamentalist faction), IIRC the Sunday school teacher himself brought up the question of who was around for Cain to marry, and said that it wasn't clear but that God "must have" created Adam and Eve first and then created other people on the same model after the expulsion from the garden when it became clear that He would need more people. That seemed good enough to me at that time. Was it the official Church of the Brethren interpretation? Beats me. No doubt if I had grown up in that church and reached the point at which I could grasp the mechanical problems this created in the doctrine of Original Sin, the same or a similar person could have explained to me how they thought it worked, or I would have gotten a different interpretation from a different member.

that is typical easy escapism from a very difficult question. so god expells adam and eve, waits for cain to murder his brother then creates more men and women. i don't know about you, but you make a first draft in pencil so when you make a mistake you can use the eraser.

PeniG said:
I was way too sleep-deprived to follow HatethatMonkee's argument at the time it was posted, and it still looks pretty incoherent (and I'm still a little sleep deprived). For one thing, morality and legality are not the same; cf patently immoral laws (oppression of subgroups within a society, for example) that have existed throughout history. The core point I wish to make is that things are wrong for reasons. We lose sight of that at our peril.

as i have taken the time to actually read your postings, i would expect that you do the same for mine. i believe i alluded to the fact that moral and legal implications are different, maybe you missed that through your sleep deprivation.

PeniG said:
Nor is a felt need to keep a secret an accurate guide to the morality of a condition. Same-sex or mixed-ethnicity couples in hostile environments may feel a need to keep their secret without feeling that what they do is wrong, because of the persecution they would undergo if their prejudiced neighbors or interfering government found out. In such cases, societal pressures may lead to people committing immoral actions - such as the cruel fraud of a homosexual marrying a heterosexual as a "beard" - in an attempt to meet impossible requirements.

so you're comparing a incestuous relationship to the hardships suffered by mixed-race couples and gays? that just sounds so wrong that i do not know where to start. yes i understand the need for those relationships to be secret, as there are still those prejudices today. but to say that a incestuous relationship would be kept undercover for the same reason, isn't that just confirming the point you're trying to argue? in those situations, while a gay or mixed-race couple will not be doing anything wrong, are they not keeping the relationship secret because their family and neighbours will treat them as if they have done wrong? the only difference with that comparison is that incest is - no matter how you try and defend it or those who do it - wrong.

PeniG said:
In the hypothetical (and, I assure you, impossible) case of my husband and I discovering that our union was incestuous, for instance, we have no children and no prospect of them; I am dependent on him financially since I have no steady source of income; he is dependent on me physically since he has an incurable disease; we have a successful life partnership that has weathered crises much more severe than those that have broken up other marriages; and to take steps to interfere with our decisions about our lives would be both inhumane and difficult to enforce.

so the fact that you have no children or an interest in having anywould make an incestuous relationship ok?

PeniG said:
The government could annul our marriage, but the practical effect of that would be to change our income tax structure, complicate our estates after death, and possibly (depending on how the policy is written) deprive me of health insurance through his work. That's it. There's nothing, and should be nothing, in American or Texas law to prevent us from owning a home together as brother and sister, being beneficiaries of each other's wills and financial plans, or doing anything together except have sexual intercourse - and determining whether we are or not doing so would involve gross violations of our privacy. In a case which involves no coercion, no genetic danger, and no exploitation, on what basis could anyone besides ourselves declare any decision we make either moral or immoral?

you think any government is gonna care about changes to your income tax structures and health insurance if it were found out he was your biological brother? yes i admit that determining if you were to carry on a sexual relationship with him after the revelation came out would be an invasion of your privacy, but honestly, is it gonna be such a problem when you are not allowed to live in the same town? perhaps if you and he went through treatment - psychological - you would be allowed to carrying on living together, which would in turn not affect your health care or the matters of your estates.

PeniG said:
Yet I have no doubt that if word got out among our neighbors, many of them would enjoy the exquisite sadistic pleasure of making our lives a living hell while feeling the glow of righteousness. People exist who would pursue that pleasure until they had destroyed us - in fire, by murder, by driving us to suicide or to jail or to bankruptcy - and go to sleep with a sense of their own power and goodness.

Moral decisions are not simple. Evil lurks in the tendency to treat them that way.

while there are some people out there who would undoubtedly make your life hell for the sake of it, i don't think most neighbours would unless you carried on such an affair. to blame other people for their reactions for you breaking societies norms simply smacks of egotism.

i hope that was coherent enough for you.

OldTimeRadio said:
The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).

But Leviticus covers a period much later than the opening chapters of Genesis.

And if we take the first sections of Genesis literally, the survivors of the Noachic Deluge must have practiced incest again, since the population had once more been reduced to a single family.

one last point on the bible; if a new sect were to come out and gain acceptance and only follow the laws laid down in genesis and the lessons learnt from the noah deluge, would they then legally be able to practice incest as it forms a basis in their religion as the mormoms can with multiple wives?
 
i agree that we have gone very off topic, however there are a few things i would like to add to the bible interpretation before someone replies to this and the biblical thread of the incest arguement ends.

OldTimeRadio said:
Nevertheless, the Church has never taught that we are the progeny of an incestuous relationship betwen Cain and un-mentioned sisters.

But that's pretty much what I was taught in Roman Catholic education:

"Since there was only one family on Earth, incest was obviously permitted at that time."

this was the big point i was trying to get across. that in the bible we are only told about adam and eve, so it is therefore logical to assume that there was only adam and eve. if other people were also created - be it after the expulsion from the garden upto when cain killed able - are we not told because it is not known till cain flees, or because it cannot be put into a context without saying that God f***ed-up?

plusk said:
Hi OTR,

I don't know how old the "Old" in OTR is, but my Mum is 98.

Certainly in my time at Catholic school we were encouraged to read the Bible, but only bits of it and that the bits we did read should be understood in the light of the Church's teaching. (When I once decided to do an appreciation of the "Song of Solomon" for homework I got a right rollicking -and was told that the said text was simply an allegory of Christ's love for his Church - yeah, right).

As regards the illiteracy, what would be the point of forbidding people who cannot read from reading?

The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).

i believe there was no actual ban on people reading the bible, it is just something that has come about as the text is now so readily available - hence the drop in church attendances even amongst the most devout - and it has taken root in the same way as the notion that people used to think the earth flat.

i have already stated that the church does indeed condem incest, however can the bible really condem it when it's opening chapters clearly - to me at least - give the impression that the human line is in fact one big pile of incestuous offload.

PeniG said:
When I first heard the story of Cain and Abel, in a Sunday school class for six and seven year olds at the Church of the Brethren (a conservative denomination with a fundamentalist faction), IIRC the Sunday school teacher himself brought up the question of who was around for Cain to marry, and said that it wasn't clear but that God "must have" created Adam and Eve first and then created other people on the same model after the expulsion from the garden when it became clear that He would need more people. That seemed good enough to me at that time. Was it the official Church of the Brethren interpretation? Beats me. No doubt if I had grown up in that church and reached the point at which I could grasp the mechanical problems this created in the doctrine of Original Sin, the same or a similar person could have explained to me how they thought it worked, or I would have gotten a different interpretation from a different member.

that is typical easy escapism from a very difficult question. so god expells adam and eve, waits for cain to murder his brother then creates more men and women. i don't know about you, but you make a first draft in pencil so when you make a mistake you can use the eraser.

PeniG said:
I was way too sleep-deprived to follow HatethatMonkee's argument at the time it was posted, and it still looks pretty incoherent (and I'm still a little sleep deprived). For one thing, morality and legality are not the same; cf patently immoral laws (oppression of subgroups within a society, for example) that have existed throughout history. The core point I wish to make is that things are wrong for reasons. We lose sight of that at our peril.

as i have taken the time to actually read your postings, i would expect that you do the same for mine. i believe i alluded to the fact that moral and legal implications are different, maybe you missed that through your sleep deprivation.

PeniG said:
Nor is a felt need to keep a secret an accurate guide to the morality of a condition. Same-sex or mixed-ethnicity couples in hostile environments may feel a need to keep their secret without feeling that what they do is wrong, because of the persecution they would undergo if their prejudiced neighbors or interfering government found out. In such cases, societal pressures may lead to people committing immoral actions - such as the cruel fraud of a homosexual marrying a heterosexual as a "beard" - in an attempt to meet impossible requirements.

so you're comparing a incestuous relationship to the hardships suffered by mixed-race couples and gays? that just sounds so wrong that i do not know where to start. yes i understand the need for those relationships to be secret, as there are still those prejudices today. but to say that a incestuous relationship would be kept undercover for the same reason, isn't that just confirming the point you're trying to argue? in those situations, while a gay or mixed-race couple will not be doing anything wrong, are they not keeping the relationship secret because their family and neighbours will treat them as if they have done wrong? the only difference with that comparison is that incest is - no matter how you try and defend it or those who do it - wrong.

PeniG said:
In the hypothetical (and, I assure you, impossible) case of my husband and I discovering that our union was incestuous, for instance, we have no children and no prospect of them; I am dependent on him financially since I have no steady source of income; he is dependent on me physically since he has an incurable disease; we have a successful life partnership that has weathered crises much more severe than those that have broken up other marriages; and to take steps to interfere with our decisions about our lives would be both inhumane and difficult to enforce.

so the fact that you have no children or an interest in having anywould make an incestuous relationship ok?

PeniG said:
The government could annul our marriage, but the practical effect of that would be to change our income tax structure, complicate our estates after death, and possibly (depending on how the policy is written) deprive me of health insurance through his work. That's it. There's nothing, and should be nothing, in American or Texas law to prevent us from owning a home together as brother and sister, being beneficiaries of each other's wills and financial plans, or doing anything together except have sexual intercourse - and determining whether we are or not doing so would involve gross violations of our privacy. In a case which involves no coercion, no genetic danger, and no exploitation, on what basis could anyone besides ourselves declare any decision we make either moral or immoral?

you think any government is gonna care about changes to your income tax structures and health insurance if it were found out he was your biological brother? yes i admit that determining if you were to carry on a sexual relationship with him after the revelation came out would be an invasion of your privacy, but honestly, is it gonna be such a problem when you are not allowed to live in the same town? perhaps if you and he went through treatment - psychological - you would be allowed to carrying on living together, which would in turn not affect your health care or the matters of your estates.

PeniG said:
Yet I have no doubt that if word got out among our neighbors, many of them would enjoy the exquisite sadistic pleasure of making our lives a living hell while feeling the glow of righteousness. People exist who would pursue that pleasure until they had destroyed us - in fire, by murder, by driving us to suicide or to jail or to bankruptcy - and go to sleep with a sense of their own power and goodness.

Moral decisions are not simple. Evil lurks in the tendency to treat them that way.

while there are some people out there who would undoubtedly make your life hell for the sake of it, i don't think most neighbours would unless you carried on such an affair. to blame other people for their reactions for you breaking societies norms simply smacks of egotism.

i hope that was coherent enough for you.

OldTimeRadio said:
The Bible firmly condemns incest (Leviticus) and so does the Church (See the Catechism).

But Leviticus covers a period much later than the opening chapters of Genesis.

And if we take the first sections of Genesis literally, the survivors of the Noachic Deluge must have practiced incest again, since the population had once more been reduced to a single family.

one last point on the bible; if a new sect were to come out and gain acceptance and only follow the laws laid down in genesis and the lessons learnt from the noah deluge, would they then legally be able to practice incest as it forms a basis in their religion as the mormoms can with multiple wives?
 
I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty
A woman slept with her sibling for years and has good memories. Not many people understand their relationship, she says

Strangely enough, Daniel's wedding day didn't upset me at all. It was his 30th birthday six months later which really got to me, as he stood there with his wife Alison while they greeted the guests. I can honestly say that that was the only time when I felt real envy and wished desperately that it was me standing beside him, arms round each other as we showed the world how much we loved each other.

It's not as if I'm not allowed to love Daniel, but the way we feel about each other isn't something that we can share easily with anyone else. Daniel is my brother, but since I was 14 we've had a sexual relationship - and that's not something that many people would feel comfortable with.

I've only ever spoken about this once before, and even then it was very much in the abstract. While I was still at university a friend had a major misunderstanding with a relatively new boyfriend when one of his friends had reported back to him that he'd seen her hugging and kissing another man in the union bar. She was firstly annoyed at being questioned and became even more exasperated when she explained that the man in question was her brother, as her boyfriend refused to believe her. Their loud discussion took place in the union with an interested audience, until he finally stamped out in fury, still refusing to believe her. As she flounced back to join us she made a remark about preferring her brother to any other man, whereupon one of the crowd said “Yuck, how pervy!” As she sat down beside me she muttered something like “It's not that strange,” and three or four drinks later I quietly asked her what she'd meant.

Fuelled by drink or maybe just rage, she started talking in a very intense but hushed way about how close siblings could be, going on to say that she was sure that many people experimented sexually with them as they grew up and then simply grew out of it. She said it was like practising your social skills on your family and so long as it was mutual, she couldn't see the harm. I didn't say much - partly because I couldn't believe that I'd met someone who seemed to be like me - and she very quickly clammed up and moved over to talk to someone else and never brought up the subject again.

I think the only reason that I'm talking about it now is to emphasise that I truly believe that she was right - it doesn't happen to everyone but it happens to some, and I don't want to be made to feel guilty about it. Incest is so often spoken about in the same breath as abuse, but if you're close in age and equal in relationship terms then it's entirely different. Of course abuse happens, but it can happen in any sexual relationship and there's an expectation that a family member would never hurt you in the way that someone else could. There's no comparison between siblings close in age having sexual feelings and contact and an adult forcing a younger member of the family to do something they neither understand nor want to be involved in. I think incest is traditionally seen as bad, but in some cultures that isn't the case. When I was small I asked a Sunday school teacher if Adam and Eve's children married each other since they were the first people on earth. She just laughed and didn't reply. Having children with Daniel was never an issue and we were always careful about contraception.

All my memories of my relationship with Daniel are good. He's only a year older than me and we've always been close, especially since we always seemed to be full of nonsense compared with our older sister Jane. She's four years older than Daniel and very studious and focused, while he's bursting with fun and light-hearted enthusiasm. I've adored him for as long as I can remember and my parents were always delighted by our closeness when we were small. We shared friends and moved happily in the same social circles, so I could never understand girls who didn't get on with their brothers.

Things changed when I was 14. I had spent hours getting ready for my first Christmas dance when I knocked on Daniel's bedroom door. It's a dodgy age as you're trying to come to terms with your developing body and worry endlessly about how you look, so his wolf whistle was very welcome as he swept me into his arms and we pirouetted, laughing, around the room, before going downstairs to show off our finery to our parents and Jane.

Daniel's appreciation really helped my confidence and I was aware of him smiling approvingly as boy after boy asked me up to dance, though my greatest pleasure was when he claimed me for the last dance. We giggled home to gossip and hot chocolate with our parents and by the next day all the finery was discarded and life was back to normal.

On New Year's Eve Daniel went to a party and by the time he got home I was already asleep. I was extremely sleepy when he crept into my room and curled up on my bed, which was something we'd both done for years, especially if we wanted to share some snippet of gossip. When he started stroking my hair and face it was a surprise, but I could feel myself drifting pleasurably back to sleep as he caressed me gently. Then I became aware of his hand drifting lower and suddenly I was wide awake as he stroked my neck and started sliding his hand down my vest top. I wasn't scared but I was surprised as he started stroking me, though my overriding sensation was one of sheer pleasure. I instinctively lifted my mouth to his as he kissed me and then he hugged me very tightly and left.

I lay in complete confusion with my mind racing and my body totally turned on. All the sex education I'd had said that this was wrong, that it was abuse and incest. But it hadn't felt wrong and I certainly hadn't felt forced. Rather, I felt that Daniel had stopped long before I'd wanted him to. It was hours before I finally fell asleep but I was sure of two things - that I'd really enjoyed it and I still adored my brother.

The next morning it was clear that Daniel had a hangover but as he grinned up at me from his prone position on the couch there was no awkwardness or regret between us. We didn't discuss what had happened, but went for a long walk that afternoon with Jane and the dog and everything felt the same, down to Jane chiding us about being irresponsible about leaving our parents to do all the tidying up after new year's dinner.

Over the next few years we had sexual encounters every six months or so, each time going farther and farther until I was 17, when we had full sex for the first time. We both went out with other people and there was never any jealousy, although I found it hard to be physically intimate with anyone else. Part of that was because sex with Daniel was so amazing that I had no patience for all the fumbling that seemed to happen with other boys. The sex was never pre-planned, but just always seemed to happen when there was no chance of being discovered.

Every so often I would wonder what people would think if they found out, especially our parents, but it always felt so right and was so exciting that these concerns were never enough to stop me. Sometimes he initiated sex and sometimes I did, but in between times our relationship was as easy, relaxed and affectionate as ever, with the incredible passion of each encounter quietly banked away until the next time.

I missed Daniel when he went to university, but went to stay with him every three months or so. Sometimes we would have sex and at other times neither of us seemed interested. By the time he met Alison he was working and I was a student, and I knew that this relationship was different, but it still came as a shock when he told me he wanted to marry her. However, I was more shocked when he said: “You only have to say and I won't marry her, but then I want us to stay together and not see anyone else. We could be the old boring brother and sister who never got married, but ended up sharing a house because no one else would have them! I know this is meant to be wrong but I've never felt anything so right.” This echoed everything that I've thought about our incestuous relationship over the years. After hours of discussion we agreed that it was time to stop the sexual side of our relationship and also decided that telling anyone else was a bad idea, parting in tears afterwards.

I know Daniel loves Alison, but she's very wary of me. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't see me as a sexual threat, but she thinks of me as an emotional rival and I suppose she's right. It's not unusual - there are countless people dealing with all the emotions that result from partners becoming officially family.

I have wondered if there will ever come a time when I'll look back on my relationship with Daniel in disgust, but I don't think so. Everyone has relationships where the sexual element has ended but a great friendship remains, and that's as good a way as any of summing up what's happened with us. Daniel has a unique place in my affections, as I do with him, and that will never change.

As an academic I have a tendency to draw logical conclusions. I like to see a pattern and resolution, so it does pain me that what appears so lovely and natural to me would be regarded as abhorrent by most people. It's not my subject, but I would be really interested to see a study on incest done on these terms, moving it away entirely from the concept of abuse. However, I simply cannot imagine that many people are happy to talk about it and I certainly wouldn't put my family through hell by being the first to go public.

Three months ago I met Derek and I think this is going to be a lasting relationship. The sex is certainly amazing and he's a warm and lovely man, so I have high hopes for this. The trouble with having someone like Daniel in your life is that it leaves you with very high expectations, but it's hard knowing that the one person you love above everything is out of bounds. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that you can't tell anyone, as his or her disgust would ruin everything.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life ... 332635.ece
 
the problem isn't the lack of understanding or people's disgust - though with how we are raised to believe such a notion is wrong, disgust is an obvious reaction - the problem remains that it is illegal in the majority of the world.

no ammount of studies into incestuous practises will change that. however, we are in a more open society that seems more accepting of people's beliefs and actions. of course, until a group comes forward publically and states that they believe they've done nothing wrong and that you cannot help who you are sexually attracted to, this will always be a seedy little family secret.

while i can understand a brother saying his sister looks beautiful, i cannot condone that to mean more than a complement. same as when a father says his daughter is the most gorgeous girl in the world, it's just to boost a siblings confidence, not a sign of sexual interest, nor should it ever be taken as such.

while it is regretable she felt so isolated, what is more regretable is that, despite knowing what they were doing was wrong, they continued.
 
ihatethatmonkee3 said:
while it is regretable she felt so isolated, what is more regretable is that, despite knowing what they were doing was wrong, they continued.
She seems to make it pretty clear that they didn't think that what they were doing was wrong. The only reason they stopped having a sexual relationship was because the brother got married and wanted to be faithful to his wife alone.
 
rynner said:
I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty
I lay in complete confusion with my mind racing and my body totally turned on. All the sex education I'd had said that this was wrong, that it was abuse and incest. But it hadn't felt wrong and I certainly hadn't felt forced. Rather, I felt that Daniel had stopped long before I'd wanted him to. It was hours before I finally fell asleep but I was sure of two things - that I'd really enjoyed it and I still adored my brother.

I missed Daniel when he went to university, but went to stay with him every three months or so. Sometimes we would have sex and at other times neither of us seemed interested. By the time he met Alison he was working and I was a student, and I knew that this relationship was different, but it still came as a shock when he told me he wanted to marry her. However, I was more shocked when he said: “You only have to say and I won't marry her, but then I want us to stay together and not see anyone else. We could be the old boring brother and sister who never got married, but ended up sharing a house because no one else would have them! I know this is meant to be wrong but I've never felt anything so right.” This echoed everything that I've thought about our incestuous relationship over the years. After hours of discussion we agreed that it was time to stop the sexual side of our relationship and also decided that telling anyone else was a bad idea, parting in tears afterwards.

as you can see, they both knew full well that it was wrong, as in illegal, no matter how right it felt to them.
 
ihatethatmonkee3 said:
as you can see, they both knew full well that it was wrong, as in illegal, no matter how right it felt to them.
"Rules are for the guidance of the wise, and the domination of fools" (anon?)

There are good reasons for rules against incest (and I've no doubt mentioned them myself before now), but in this case the couple concerned took care to use contraceptive precautions, thus avoiding the obvious biological and practical problems.

So the only cause for criticism is on the basis of morality, but since this morality is based on the practical results they took care to avoid, where is the problem?

The case is sad, but only on the grounds that a supposedly intelligent species still finds it hard to talk about it openly.
 
ihatethatmonkee3 said:
as you can see, they both knew full well that it was wrong, as in illegal, no matter how right it felt to them.
Illegal doesn't necessarily equal wrong, does it?
 
rynner said:
ihatethatmonkee3 said:
as you can see, they both knew full well that it was wrong, as in illegal, no matter how right it felt to them.
"Rules are for the guidance of the wise, and the domination of fools" (anon?)

There are good reasons for rules against incest (and I've no doubt mentioned them myself before now), but in this case the couple concerned took care to use contraceptive precautions, thus avoiding the obvious biological and practical problems.

So the only cause for criticism is on the basis of morality, but since this morality is based on the practical results they took care to avoid, where is the problem?

The case is sad, but only on the grounds that a supposedly intelligent species still finds it hard to talk about it openly.

are you saying that as long as there is no risk of a brother/sister, father/daughter, son/mother creating life that it is then justifiable?

[quote="H_james"illegal doesn't necessarily equal wrong, does it?[/quote]

let's be straight, this isn't the same as mixed raced couples back in the 60s and before, where after awhile the majority of people will become more tolerant.

regardless of the precautions taken, the fact remains that it is against the law, and therefore people who are ingaging, or contemplating engaging, in such relationships much remember this.

the risk is getting caught, and as with all illegal activites, this then pushes something underground and the precautions against getting caught override any sense that this could be right. after all, if it was, people wouldn't go to such lengths to keep it hidden from others.

however, i do conceed that, with the recent cases that were shown on various documentaries, all the authorities can do is say that one sibling cannot see the other, but witout a 24/7 enforcement, they are still free to meet and partake in whatever they want.

i'll admit that the law is an ass, and that arguing this point is pretty fruitless as there are far more extreme, violent and evil crimes occuring out there. but while illegal may not equal wrong, surely your own moral compass should tell you lusting after your father/son/daughter/mother is a bit off the map.
 
Anyone who thinks incest is best should read this vile story:

PM 'outrage at unspeakable abuse'

The prime minister has said any necessary changes will be made to the system in the wake of the abuse by a father who raped his two daughters.

Gordon Brown said people were "outraged" by the "unspeakable" abuse perpetrated against the women.

His comments follow demands by MPs in Sheffield to know how the father's actions went undetected by agencies.

The 56-year-old Sheffield man was jailed for life after fathering nine children by his daughters.

An independent review is investigating the contact health professionals, police and social services had with the victims.

During Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons, Gordon Brown said: "People will want to know how such abuse could go on for so long without the authorities and the wider public services discovering it and taking action.

"If there is a change to be made in the system and the system has failed, we will change the system."

Meanwhile, Sheffield MPs Nick Clegg and David Blunkett have called for the inquiry to uncover any failings in the system.

The father, who admitted 25 rapes, was sentenced to a minimum term of 19-and-a-half years by judge Alan Goldsack QC, who said the case was the worst he had seen in 40 years.

The attacks led to 19 pregnancies. Nine of the children were born, two of whom died on the day of their birth.

The other 10 pregnancies were miscarried or aborted...

Full text:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sout ... 750000.stm

How on earth was this situation allowed to get so bad? What a monster that man is.
 
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