Could it be that for many people the debate about homosexuality has less to do with homosexual than heterosexual behavior?
Consider the popular line, “They can’t help how they feel.” This proposition is the minor premise of an implied syllogism, the major premise of which may be put, “To act upon a desire which one cannot help feeling is always blameless.”
What are we to think of seemingly irrational government regulations, such as the proposed rule which would treat a mud puddle on a farmer’s land the same as a navigable river? I suppose there might somewhere exist a few addle-pated regulators who really believe that the future of the planet depends on such edicts, but there couldn’t be many of them. I think there is more to it.
“Men seek stranger sins or more startling obscenities as stimulants to their jaded sense. They seek after mad oriental religions for the same reason. They try to stab their nerves to life, if it were with the knives of the priests of Baal. They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.”
To the argument that the universe was caused by God, the village atheist retort is “Oh yeah? Then what caused God?”
But the argument isn’t that every being requires a cause. The village atheist is quite correct that if B causes A, C causes B, D causes C, and so on without end, we have a problem. Nothing has ultimately been explained.
Well, your little digression about Christianity has been interesting, but it only strengthens my feeling that natural law theory is too religious.
What do you mean by "too religious"?
You only say there is a God because of the Bible.
Monday again – student letter day. To answer the writer’s question, I’ve borrowed from my chapter “The Strange Second Life of Confessional States,” in Paul R. Dehart and Carson Holloway, Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (2014).
Still, it bothers me that natural law theory is so religious. You talk about God "ordaining" the natural law.
Funny that you should say that. All too often natural law thinkers are accused of not being religious enough.
Why?
Maybe natural law doesn't spell the end of democracy, but surely it spells the end of tolerance.
What do you mean?
Just what I said. If there really is a natural moral law, then tolerance goes out the window.
You think everyone ought to be tolerant, is that it?
Passed on by a friend, and used by permission of the writer, with my thanks. Here's the book.
