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Mostrando las entradas de mayo, 2014

Jesse Bering: The Naturalistic & the Procreation Fallacies.

When religious or social conservatives commit the naturalistic fallacy, [...], the issue of procreation usually takes center stage and the philosophical error is embarrassingly salient. The trouble with confusing morality with reproduction applies equally to any sex act that can't reproduce offspring, but it's most commonly seen, unsurprisingly, in arguments against homosexuality. Many social conservatives enjoy pointing out to those of us who just can't seem to grasp these more challenging aspects of biology that whereas having intercourse with the opposite sex can produce offspring, having intercourse with the same sex cannot. This is usually extrapolated to mean that gay sex is obviously unnatural, and so it's obviously just plain wrong (translation: arrogantly ignores God's intentional design.) Given that nature is mechanistic and amoral, and not the product of intelligent forethought, this entire position is a nonstarter. To draw from assembly-line princip