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.”

Is the major premise persuasive?  Hardly.  Many an adulterer might say in perfect sincerity that he can’t help wanting to sleep with his neighbor’s wife; many a thief, that he can’t help wanting his victim to be few dollars poorer.  It doesn’t follow that these persons are blameless for acting on their desires.

We accept such absurd postulates not because they persuade us, but because they provide excuses for our own bad behavior.  “I can’t help wanting to sleep with everyone who wears a skirt, therefore ….”

Tomorrow:  Maybe Not the ONLY One

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.

The regulator’s frame of mind is suspicious in principle of all private power.  To his busybody way of thinking, it is almost beside the point whether the mud puddle diktat is needed or would do any good.  He views the rule as good just because it is a rule, for the farmer must be broken to discipline, like any young horse with too much spirit.

Tomorrow:  The Other Thing the Sexuality Debate Is About

“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.”

-- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Tomorrow:  What Makes the Regulator Regulate?

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.

Rather the argument is that every contingent being requires a cause – every being that doesn’t have to be.  In reality the impossibility of endless regress makes the case for God, not against Him, because the regress continues only until it reaches a necessary being.

Tomorrow:  The Wrong Way to Wake Up

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.

I say there is a God because His reality is by far the best explanation of a great many features of our existence.  Including the fact that we exist.  The Bible agrees, but it would be true even if there were no Bible.

Be that as it may, morality stems from human need and interest.

Is this what you mean?  We are so made that we need to love God; we are so made that we need to love our neighbors; we are so made that we need to develop the virtues.  Also, we are so made as to be interested in truth; we are so made as to be receptive to the demands of friendship; we are so made as to be attracted, despite ourselves, to moral goodness.  These are what I call human need and interest -- the needs and interests which arise from the design of human nature.

No, that's not what I mean.

Then what do you mean?

I'm not sure, but not that.

Could it be that you want man to be to himself what God has been to man hitherto?

What if I do?  What would be wrong with that?

I see three problems with it, all very practical.  The first problem is that if man is to assume the office of God to himself, he will have to square it with the present occupant.  I think he may find that difficult.

Not if there is no God.

That's a mighty big counterfactual.  But the second problem is that you're too late.  Man has already been created.  He has already been provided with being.  It is too late for him to give himself a different being than he has.

But it's not too late to change it.

To monkey with it, you mean.  The third problem is that when you say "man," you mean some men.

Why?

You say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man.  But what God has been to man is man's absolute superior, and man cannot be his own superior.  A thing can be equal to itself, but it cannot be greater than itself.  So when you say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man hitherto, you mean you want some men to be to other men what God has been to man.  You want some men to be the absolute superiors of others.  I assume --

That's not what I --

Let me finish.  I assume that you want to be in the former group and not in the latter.  And so when you say morality stems from human need and interest, you mean you want it to stem from your needs and interests, over against the needs and interests of the others.

That's not what I mean at all.

Forgive me, but it is exactly what you mean.  You say you want to change the human design.  But in that case there must be two groups:  Those who cause the change, and those who result from it.  And the former hold all the cards.

The future men will thank us for it.

If you have changed them, will they be men?

Back to the Beginning:  A Dialogue on Natural Law, Part 1