Why is incest wrong?

Question

The Bible says that it is. Fortunately, we are simply intelligent human beings who don't believe in a book written by dead, ancient, nomadic men. So why is it wrong? If we have just been socially conditioned to think it's wrong, should we try to change the way things are?

I have to admit that some of the responses made me smile.

Answer 1

Incest is sexual activity between close family members. Incest is considered taboo, and forbidden (fully or slightly) in the majority of current and historical cultures. However, the precise meaning of the word varies widely, because different cultures have differing notions of "sexual activity" and "close family member."
Incest between close blood-relations is a crime in most Western nations, as well as in those nations that were colonised by the West, although again the extent of the definition of "close" varies.
Recessive genes which can contain various genetic problems have a tendency of showing up more often if joined by someone who has the same gene. If a son who has hemophilia becomes intimate with his sister who may have the same gene for hemophilia, and they have a child, the odds are in favor that the child will have hemophilia as well. In short, when those that are related have children together, all of the recessive genes come out in their children.
The Bible, contains prohibitions, primarily in Leviticus, against sexual relations between various pairs of family members. Father and daughter, mother and son, and other pairs are forbidden on pain of death to engage in sexual relations
Incest by parents against their children, including adolescents, is considered the most severe form of sexual offense by psychologists and is a felony criminal offense in many nations. Parental incest includes opposite-sex and same-sex forms committed by both fathers and mothers. Child-therapist Susan Forward calls parental incest "perhaps the cruelest, most baffling of human experiences" as it "betrays the very heart of childhood--its innocence".

Answer 2

I thought everybody on the planet knew the answer to this one.

Incest

*** The crime of sexual relations or marriage taking place between a male and female who are so closely linked by blood or affinity that such activity is prohibited by law. ***

*** Incest is a statutory crime, often classified as a felony. The purpose of incest statutes is to prevent sexual intercourse between individuals related within the degrees set forth, for the furtherance of the public policy in favor of domestic peace. ***

*** The prohibition of intermarriage is also based upon genetic considerations, since when excessive inbreeding takes place, undesirable recessive genes become expressed and genetic defects and disease are more readily perpetuated. In addition, the incest taboo is universal in human culture. ***

read the rest at http://www.answers.com/topic/incest

While we are on the subject of the Bible. Let's assume you believe the Bible. Adam and Eve are supposed to be the first two humans. I mean who in their right mind would believe that? For the sake of the argument, let us assume that is correct. Who were Adam and Eve's children? Cain and Abel right? Somebody got killed right? Who was it Abel? Okay, so Cain runs off somewhere in the wilderness. Where did he go? Adam and Eve are alone now with no children. Where did everybody come from? This is really crazy.

Also. While we are talking about televangelist and the Jerry Springer Show. I'm sorry, my mistake. We were talking about incest. I remember now.

Answer 3

Check out family portraits of British royals centuries ago. In-breeding made for some scary looking folk. Who cares if you're royalty when no one can look at you with a straight face (and you'd probably smell pretty rank back then too!)


....incest only serves to fill the agressor's needs...the victim never really has an honest say in it. They are usually too young or too vulnerable to do anything but put up with it, cry, behave and shut up. Try working for a 24 hour suicide prevention/education agency for a few years and you will not have to wonder if we should change things. So many victims try to kill themselves (or at least toy with the idea) even ones as young as five and six years old.

Answer 4

There are physical reasons, and there are social reasons, why incest is taboo. The physical reason is the bringing together of otherwise unknown or unsuspected recessive traits, often ones that are not survival-oriented. This is because they went recessive as a result of being bad for survival; people who manifested the traits rarely survived long enough to reproduce. Inbreeding, which is a sort of partial incest, shows this up. There are many diseases which are a result of inbreeding, even where they get no closer than second cousins.

The social reasons have to do with children being able to grow up trusting the adults around them (and the older siblings), and to be naked in their presence during baths and the like, without having sexuality forced upon them or coerced from them when they are too young to know any better. This argument applies to all child molesting, of course; not just family. Children cannot know how many problems they will have later, and surrender to what a grown-up wants because they are taught obedience, and because big people obviously can force them to do what they want. Having this be a father (or, more rarely, a mother), someone you pretty literally cannot get away from, is a horror which can go on for years.

As to brother/sister incest, the biggest problem is the interference with the development of normal sexual appetites. If her brother has always been there, she's always looked up to him and considered him her protector and so on, a girl will often accept his advances when she is too young to realize that it will make finding a more normal relationship (one that she can talk about with others, for example; someone she can marry) far more difficult. It is brother taking advantage of the situation when she is too young to know any better. We make jokes about brother/sister incest, but if you discovered that your fiance had been involved in such a relationship, wouldn't that make you very leery of involving yourself with that family? Would you want to trust your brother-in-law to visit?

It just complicates things too much, both physically and psychically, and because it is taboo, also socially.

Answer 5

What you do not want are recessive traits to be passed down through the family. Most of the harmful traits are of a recessive nature. If we all practiced incest, the human race would be in danger of becoming extinct.
One generation probably will not do any harm.

Look at Iceland, where Schizophrenia runs rampant.
This population is somewhat isolated, so we are closer to finding the genes associated with this disease by simply looking at this population. The Iceland genealogy is also excellent for the past several hundred years and is hugely important to this work in finding these genes.

Answer 6

Incest sex is HOT!!! No question about it!... I guess that's the prime reason why all these horrible "religions"(in whose names countless millions of innocents have been murdered!!)condemn it so strongly and irrationally!... Many people do not realise that INBREEDING is USED ALL THE TIME by Animal breeders! In fact, when done intelligently and SELECTIVELY, Inbreeding is A VERY POWERFUL TOOL for Genetical improvement!... But try to explain this to all the Puritan fascists who are intellectually terrorizing our Western Societies nowadays!

Answer 7

Because it seems only the royalty of Europe was allowed to do it. They inbredded to make sure that no lower class citizens would ever gain the thrown. Though the Bible did say that incest is bad it also said that the world started with Adam and Eve. When they had kids it wasn't like they could choose someone to have kids with so they had their sisters and brothers.

Answer 8

The bible has nothing to do with it!

Genetics would prove that a pregnancy brought about by an incestual relationship would produce offspring that were not physically or mentally considered normal were more common. Is that not proof enough that incest is wrong? From a biological point of view?

Answer 9

Even if you don't believe the "book written by dead, ancient, nomadic men," which I do believe in, it is not natural. Anyone with a conscience would understand that. You should probably seek counseling.??? Just a thought.

Answer 10

According to the bible, Adam and eve had kids, their kids had kids, and thier kids had kids and so on. Wouldnt that be incest? A Brother and a sister having sex and producing kids? If the bible is true, We have all come from a long chain on incest. Pretty raunchy right? I think so To.... That doesnt make It right though. Something about family members being that close and personal with each other is fu*cked-up.