Incest - Acceptable or not?

[otseng]

Another thing is, incestrous marriage seems to be approved by God in Abram's and Sarai's case. However, in other parts of the Bible, it was condemned. Now you tell me, shall we have incest or not?

That's a good question. What does the Bible have to say about incest?

[bry]

I find it extremely hard to trust a God who murders His own children.

Would you trust someone who drowns his son in the river?

depends. if it's like, his HOBBY or something, i probably would be wary of trusting him. it also depends what i would trust him with -- too bad you weren't more precise. but personally, i rarely make an appraisal of someone by their past actions or mistakes, but rather, by their current character and values. even if they did drown their son in the river once.

the very notion of trust implies that some caution must be thrown to the wind at some point. why do we even bother with this thing called trust at all? everyone's done something wrong, they've messed up in one way or another. nobody deserves complete trust if you think about it.

actions can be a sign of what's going on in our hearts, but they should not immediately be judged as if those actions spell out how someone's going to be for all time.

Also, if we just live our lives accepting that God is in charge and that we should not question Him.

quite right. is that not why we bother to take part in these debates? to examine these things that Christians do for God and why? to make sure that we believe (or don't believe) for the right reasons?

If we don't question things, we'll still be thinking that the rainbow is God's promise, instead of tiny droplets of water refracting light. Science as we know it will not be as advanced as today, simply because we kept our mouths shut without questions.

did it ever occur to you that rainbows could be God's promise AND tiny droplets of water refracting light? the scientific principles might just happen to be the way that God orchestrates rainbows.

remember that science often answers different fundamental questions than religion (yes, i dislike using the word 'religion' too)...

anyway, i agree with the notion that in the beginning, "incest" was necessary in order to kickstart humanity, but other genetic factors were introduced and a cutoff-point had to be made to ensure that humanity wouldn't implode on itself.

perhaps even the definition of "incest" is flawed for the purposes of this discussion? i've always seen it as more of a sociological taboo rather than a genetic one, since incest doesn't always guarantee significant genetic defects. does incest even mean the same today in mostly-western society as it did in a time where nobody even knew what it was?

[RavEMasteR]

I find it extremely hard to trust a God who murders His own children.

Would you trust someone who drowns his son in the river?

depends. if it's like, his HOBBY or something, i probably would be wary of trusting him. it also depends what i would trust him with -- too bad you weren't more precise. but personally, i rarely make an appraisal of someone by their past actions or mistakes, but rather, by their current character and values. even if they did drown their son in the river once.

the very notion of trust implies that some caution must be thrown to the wind at some point. why do we even bother with this thing called trust at all? everyone's done something wrong, they've messed up in one way or another. nobody deserves complete trust if you think about it.

actions can be a sign of what's going on in our hearts, but they should not immediately be judged as if those actions spell out how someone's going to be for all time.

Also, if we just live our lives accepting that God is in charge and that we should not question Him.

quite right. is that not why we bother to take part in these debates? to examine these things that Christians do for God and why? to make sure that we believe (or don't believe) for the right reasons?

If we don't question things, we'll still be thinking that the rainbow is God's promise, instead of tiny droplets of water refracting light. Science as we know it will not be as advanced as today, simply because we kept our mouths shut without questions.

did it ever occur to you that rainbows could be God's promise AND tiny droplets of water refracting light? the scientific principles might just happen to be the way that God orchestrates rainbows.

remember that science often answers different fundamental questions than religion (yes, i dislike using the word 'religion' too)...

anyway, i agree with the notion that in the beginning, "incest" was necessary in order to kickstart humanity, but other genetic factors were introduced and a cutoff-point had to be made to ensure that humanity wouldn't implode on itself.

perhaps even the definition of "incest" is flawed for the purposes of this discussion? i've always seen it as more of a sociological taboo rather than a genetic one, since incest doesn't always guarantee significant genetic defects. does incest even mean the same today in mostly-western society as it did in a time where nobody even knew what it was?

Quite right, no one really deserves complete trust. However, there are people that you can PLACE complete trust with, even if are not deserving of it since they have done something wrong before.

What I was implying with the phrase "drowning his son in the river" was to compare it to the Flood that God sent to drown thousands of His children. I find it hard to trust a mass murderer, and thank God, none of my trusted friends are mass murderers.

The rainbows may have been God's promise too. But if we actually kept our mouths shut, we'll never know that it is refracted light that we see. We'll still be saying it's a miracle that no one can perform.

[clue]

Some of you keep stating that science proves this and that and that's why there isn't a God/there is an unsupernatural explanation for everything.

That's why this debate can't pick up in the middle like this (i.e. you can't discuss how good/bad/contradictory God is) when you haven't established that it is reasonable to believe in God in the first place.

The Christian arguments will make no sense unless this is established first.

Likewise, the ahteistic arguments will make no sense until they demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that there is no God.

Am I making any sense?

[otseng]

That's why this debate can't pick up in the middle like this (i.e. you can't discuss how good/bad/contradictory God is) when you haven't established that it is reasonable to believe in God in the first place.

The Christian arguments will make no sense unless this is established first.

Likewise, the ahteistic arguments will make no sense until they demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that there is no God.

Am I making any sense?

Go ahead and start a new thread on debating the existence of God. That is one of the foundational tenets.

[k-nug]

the way I've always seen it was a specific group of a species living in a certain habitat will slowly over time evolve. the whole group on the specific geographic area would evolve because of the conditions make the species evolve. Its not like all of a sudden people appear and mate with other people. The species in the certain habitat just keeps evolving seperate of other species, and thus pass on the traits in that specific group. It became necessary and advantageous at one time for monkeys to try standing on 2 legs to reach food, etc. Then from what i understand efter a certain period of evolution, simple tools began being used, (some species of ape or monkeys are capable of this today, using sticks to poke at anthills for food.) The tools and upright walking, made it advantageous for those with big brains,and the ape-man (for lack of the scientific term) that could grow bigger brains became more succesful, passing his big brain traits on to the next generation and so on. im not very knowledgeable on this subject, im sure theres somene here who knows more about this than me, im just a dropout this is just a layman's understanding of it. So, incest in my opinion was not involved in the theory of evolution, there werw always plenty of new mates to find and keep the gene pool clean.

[DeoxyriboNucleicAcid]

I despair that in this day and age there are people who still don't understand Evolution and yet claim it is wrong. Frankly I think this ignorance is a great reason for banning religious studies in schools. We should close down all religious schools and force people to mix with others of different opinions. This ridiculous 'Liberal' government is funding superstition and medieval concepts by spending money on private education which seems to be all run by religious cults like Catholicism or CofE. Bah! There is no room for Gods in a modern society hopefully this century will see Their final demise.
Break free of the shackles of superstition.

[otseng]

I despair that in this day and age there are people who still don't understand Evolution and yet claim it is wrong.

Then perhaps you can enlighten me on why evolutionism is right. We have a thread going on Creationism vs Evolutionism.

[adherent]

Haha, nice way to stump the christians with: Well we are all descendants of Adam and Eve so we are all incestrous...
Evolutionist view: Incest is bad because it has higher chance of disorders in young, otherwise who cares whether incest is wrong? all that matters is the well being of the race...
Creationist view: Incest!?!?! Incest is CLEARLY not acceptable as is written in the Leviticus 18:6 "No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the Lord."

[Corvus]

Haha, nice way to stump the christians with: Well we are all descendants of Adam and Eve so we are all incestrous...
Evolutionist view: Incest is bad because it has higher chance of disorders in young, otherwise who cares whether incest is wrong? all that matters is the well being of the race...

You seem to have a disapproving tone to your post here. Why is that worse than thinking it's wrong because God says, "Grah, I'm God and I say it's wrong!" Since plenty of people in the bible indulged in incest with God's blessing before He said it was wrong, it follows that it was forbidden for some sort of purpose.

[adherent]

I think I might be able to simplify it.

Christians should not be incestrous as I have already posted the verse that clearly states God's detest for incest.

Everyone else can believe however they want to. This is America and we all have free speech and all taht.

Sorry for the disapproving tone. I should revise my posts alot