To be more specific: What is wrong about a romantic and/or sexual relationship between siblings?
Arguments I've found on my own and my responses:
1) If offspring results, it'll probably have some severe genetic problems. Big deal, don't have kids.
2) It's illegal in most places/Many people will shun you if they know about it. While these are valid practical considerations, I'm more thinking "wrong" as in morally/ethically. These are symptoms of wrongness, not the reasons.
3) It's unnatural. That's what they said about gays too. And not true. Get a male and a female rabbit and watch their offspring.
4) It's weird. What isn't?
5) My Holy Book says it's a no-no. I don't believe in it. Also, see 2). This is another symptom.
6) It will adversely affect the siblings' psychology, due to already established standard sibling relationships. Now this one, if true, could be a good explanation. Anyone here who did some research into this?
And before the jokes start: No, I'm not an inbred hick. I'm just wondering about it. Had an odd dream. No, not of the wet variety.
if both want it.. it's ok i guess. who can stop you.. have your god damn sex.. look at apes.. they fuck their kids for fuck sake.
but making it illegal is just fucking racist.
(not that i want to, or ever have had it)
This is funny because just last night I searched for "近親相姦" on 2channel. Threads were almost 50/50 seperated on the porn boards and the humanities boards.
I believe it has mostly to do with carrying on rules and taboos, most of them unconciously, that made a whole lot of sense centures, if not milennia ago and secured the survival of the species/race/group whatever.
More specifically, I believe that the origin of the taboo lies within the neccessity of expanding one's family in ancient times. Family back then was all you could remotely rely on. More family members usually meant more people who could protect you or do you favours - and who would actually act mostly decent towards you (as opposed to all others not in your group).
On a bigger scale, families mixing with each other and their members expanding their relationships to other families, tribes, etc. also guaranteed a general kind of social peace. I believe this was one of the foundations of the first tribes/communites making the leap to actual societies and somehow they knew about that and with that introduced the incest taboo.
So yeah, it seems to me it was a major improvement over previous forms of making peace with rivalring tribes (i.e. genocide or assimilation through enslavement) and it was to regarded as such an absolute neccessity that this creeped into the heads of people without them now, thousands of years later, really know all too much about the real pragmatic reasons anymore.
Which isn't all too surprising. Most people cannot give plausible explanations for many moral stigmatas - simply because their inventors never really passed on the explanation for them.
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest#Incest_versus_exogamy
1) Incorrect. Incestuous children do not have a significant increase in rates of retardation or anything else.
2) Your evaluation is correct.
3) Incest is not only present in nature, but incredibly common.
4) Refer to #3
5) Yeah, again, good evaluation. That's called a 'post hoc' fallacy, btw.
6) I would say that the sibling relationship would have decayed by the time they are having sex. I mean, I feel no attraction to my cousins not because of some moral outlook, but because I see them as my biological cousins.
>> 1) If offspring results, it'll probably have some severe genetic problems. Big deal, don't have kids.
> 1) Incorrect. Incestuous children do not have a significant increase in rates of retardation or anything else.
Inbreeding always increases the odds of recessive genetic diseases exhibiting themselves. Now, in a single case of inbreeding the odds may not be as high, but it is well known that heavily inbred groups of organisms suffer many more genetic defects - refer to old royal families, for instance.
Now, this part is purely speculation on my part, but it seems to me that this would create an evolutionary pressure away from incest, giving animals an instinct to avoid incest. The societal taboos and moral rules against it could very well just be the result of those instincts.
Leading me to the conclusion: Dumb animals shouldn't practice incest, but intelligent human who know what they're getting into and make sure they don't have children could very well do it, if they can ignore the evolutionary pressure not to. And we're good at doing that.
The psychological side may or may not be significant though, I couldn't tell.
While not universally taboo, there is at least some associated with even non genetically related people. Cousins through marriage or step-siblings for instance. Also it occurs with friends--"I couldn't date him, he's like a brother to me."
On another note, why would someone producing offspring with higher risk of retardation because of incest be different than a lot of other things. People that know that their offspring might have down syndrome are generally not ostracized for producing such offspring, for example.
I cannot help but to have a negative emotion towards insest in my gut however; I do not know if it is because of society's influence or some intrinsic value.
>>6
The increase in the rate of expression of recessive genes doesn't neccessarily result in retardation. If a population continuously inbreeds with little blood from an outside source, then yes, diseases are likely to show up. A single instance of incest will result in an anomalous trait only in a few cases.
>>8
The reason that two Alabamian family members mating does not instantly produce a retard is because the genes that cause major disorders, as well as most genetic traits in general, are dependent on more than one gene for a trait.
Did anyone of you even study genetics or biology?
By the way, do you know 1/3 of all couples in the world are incestuous? Mostly first or second cousins, especially in non-Western countries.
> If offspring results, it'll probably have some severe genetic problems.
Not rly, not so fast. A couple generations won't do anything. This is mostly a myth created by the church. For example, it's much worse and more dangerous to make babies after drinking alcohol, than incest.
> My Holy Book says it's a no-no.
Those are written for the lambs. Since you created this thread, you're a thinking being, so don't worry about what "holy" books say.
>>6
Taboo is not the result of instinct. If incest were so bad, measures against it would have been taken long before apes, just like everything else related to reproduction, the main feature of life.
> Also it occurs with friends--"I couldn't date him, he's like a brother to me."
Only girls think like this, and this is because, for some reasons, they have two completely independent mindsets of "friends" and "love interests", and for some retarded reason, their loved one is not considered their best friend. I think the way these girls think is majorly fucked up and idiotic, but not really related to incest.
>>11
not to mention that this taboo is relatively young (too young to be an "instinct", if you ask me). Incestuous marriage, especially between siblings, was common in many western cultures up to the middle ages (and in certain social strata even beyond).
> Taboo is not the result of instinct. If incest were so bad, measures against it would have been taken long before apes, just like everything else related to reproduction, the main feature of life.
Before we continue this argument, maybe somebody should find some hard data on how common incest is among animals in general.
>>13
Happens continuously. Animals cannot distinguish between their family and those of other families.
>>14
I think he was asking for hard data not unfounded assertions...
> Animals cannot distinguish between their family and those of other families.
I don't think this is true. I suspect dolphins can.
You are pretty obviously grossly underestimating animals here. And yes, I was asking for hard data.
>>17
How much intelligence DO you attribute to sea anenomae, moles, and rats? Moreover, I'm not sure how much 'hard data' you could find, but there is no reason to expect animals with intelligences significantly lower than apes or other primates to be able to distinguish their family from those of others. I mean, instincts are programmed biologically; there is no way a gene could code for 'Oh look, that came out of the same hole as me, I'd better not have sex with it.'
>>18
Lol, because animals are just like humans, only dumber, amirite? Because it's not like "simple" animals such as bats or rats have developed complex brain structures to solve specific problems relevant to their lifestyle, like interpreting echolocation or chemical data, right?
Most animals do recognize members of their own litter, if nothing else. The more socially-inclined an animal is, the more likely it is to keep a reference of information on familial relationships. (The more social primates and other mammals, i particular, have lives that sound like soap operas.)
And you think it's hard to program an animal to differentiate members of its species? How easily do you recognize faces? Compared to the problems of mechanics, optics, etc, coding a few brain cells to remember faces, smells, or other data on individuals is a walk in the park.
Incidentally, >7 was correct- there is some part of the human brain that suppresses sexual desire towards those it codes as "family members." This has very little to do with what your mind 'knows' to be family and a lot to do with who you spent most of your time with when you were a small child (up to ~8 seems to be the breaking point, or so I'm told). Incestuous desires within the immediate family are most common- hello, Dr Freud!- among those who saw very little of their siblings/parent/child during that initial period. There is even some interesting examples of failed attempts to raise children together from birth when they are betrothed in an effort to strengthen family bonds- such marriages are inevitably failures to the Nth degree.
Oh? You were talking about incest between cousins and other, more distantly-related members of family? The genetic math is complex and boring, but it comes down to "some cousins are okay and others aren't," at least as far as inbreeding, etc go. And yes, first-generation inbreeding does significantly increase the chances of genetic defects- but the change from 1-in-50,000 to 1-in-25,000, say, is not terribly noticable with one couple. You need a few hundred years of that kind of nonsense (re: the Royal family, Alabama) to see a noticable trend.
>there is some part of the human brain that suppresses sexual desire towards those it codes as "family members."
The other condition of this idea might be because many of us are inherently disgusted by the things our family does.
For example, if you have that friend with the really hot sister: "Dude, your sister is really hot!" Now, his initial reaction to you is going to be, "No way, man!" partly out of embarassment, partly because of social taboo.
But if you were that guy with the hot sister, chances are that you might find her attractive if she weren't in your family. This is because the family sees all the more intimidate sides of their personalities. She could have a ton of disgusting habits/traits/characteristics that she doesn't reveal to anyone but her family. Or it could be like "cabin fever"; being around her so much causes you to hate said traits even if you didn't hate them immediately.
It is for this reason that your quotation may not only be a brain mechanism but rather conditioning toward your society(?) I'm not sure if I worded the last part correctly.
>>20
I doubt it. Married couples stay together a lot more than say 15 years.
This thread lacks a lot of research data.
>>22
We're not researchers, we're bored intarweb nerds
>>23
I'm sorry...
>>19
""simple" animals such as bats or rats have developed complex brain structures... interpreting echolocation or chemical data"
I don't see the connection. The concept of a 'family' is nonexistent in many if not most animal species. Interpreting data is not the same as grasping an abstract concept.
Everything else you have said I agree with.