Friday, November 27, 2009

A modest response to critics of Christian sexual morality

This is a response to C. S. Lewis's defense of traditional sexual ethics by Keith Parsons.

It looks as if we certainly can, (pun intended) screw ourselves up with our sex behavior. It looks to me as if permanent happiness in relationships is found primarily in relationships in which fidelity is promised and that promise is kept. That won’t take you all the way to the traditional religious position, but it does make it incumbent on critics of traditional sexual morality to replace it with some kind of behavioral code that keeps our sexual conduct from causing harm.


You can cause harm with every other part of your life, and there are rules governing conduct in those other areas. Why should there be no rules in the sexual area?

It is one thing to criticize Christian sexual morality. It looks like a soft target. But even if you disagree with the traditional code, you have to show some understanding of the considerations that might have led religious believers to accept these kinds of restrictions on sex behavior in the first place.

2 comments:

Steven Carr said...

So one point of morality is to avoid doing harm?

We can evaluate behaviour to see what minimises harm, and this will guide us in seeing what is moral and what is not?

If we have rules and guidelines to calculate what is moral behaviour and what is not, what need is there for a god to say what is moral and what is not?

The Uncredible Hallq said...

"It looks to me as if permanent happiness in relationships is found primarily in relationships in which fidelity is promised and that promise is kept."

This has very minimal consequences for sexual morality. It says nothing about the merits of relationships vs. singlehood, or having sex when single, or whether people should only have one relationship over the course of their lives as opposed to being ready to end a relationship and start a new one when the first relationship doesn't work out. Finally, knowing that happiness is found *primarily* in one kind of relationship doesn't mean that a few people wouldn't be happier in some other kind of relationship.

Spend time listening to non-Christians, and you'll find that they discuss sexual ethics all the time. The sexual ethics of Lewis or the Catholic Church can't be elevated to a default position for lack of alternatives.