Talk:The Ten Commandments as natural law

This is great, but is there any way to work the title into the lead so it can be bolded? </pedantic mode> ħuman 22:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, shall we be funny and use these images:

?? ħuman 22:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I would have used the images, except that I thought the entire text of the commandment should be given, instead of the abridgements. I could not think of any way to get the title into the text for bolding, but if you know of a way, try it. ListenerX^TalkerX 22:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I tried but am not happy with the result. -- Mei (talk) 22:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Does all of this make sense?

I'm not at all sure I understand the Third Commandment comment. And even if it would be written so that it made sense what would it have to do with the natural law thing?--Bob^{"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that."} 10:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

On the Seventh

The argumentation here could definitely use polish. Mostly that just means sourcing and clearer language, but for the section on the Seventh Commandment I have stronger words. This might be a gut reaction here, but it sounds like a pamphlet I read in Catholic School so I'm suspicious. Specifically:

• "People's natural jealousy": Biblical adultery, at least the modern Christian interpretation of it, isn't just "cheating." It's any extramarital sex (or sexual acts, including thoughts) of any kind. To say that adultery is probably "naturally" wrong because it can cause families to dissolve is to conflate the act of deceiving a spouse (wrong, but also covered by another commandment) and the act of extramarital sex, which doesn't inherently cause the dissolution of families as it can be done with the awareness (and even participation of) one's spouse.

• "Before the invention of modern birth control": This mostly just needs sourcing, although a few of its claims seem grandiose. Particularly the notion that children were produced "in volume" by adultery.

• "Adultery was in the past the main conduit for STDs to spread" (emphasis added): This is where things go really bad. I see no reason to believe that extramarital sex was the primary cause of STI transference in any population at any point in time. It is certainly possible (since successful monogamy certainly reduces the connectivity of disease-spreading networks) but I see no reason to blame adultery above and beyond the inherently network expanding sex of single people.

This paragraph also contains an unsourced assertion AID's disproportionately affected the gay community due to infidelity. I cannot speak for certain that this is incorrect, but I am unwilling to believe it without sourcing. It does appear to be true that the average gay woman or man is less likely to be strictly monogamous, so there is plausibility here assuming that matters (see previous). However, it's been my understanding that the two biggest factors that contributed to this were:

• The fact that birth control wasn't needed among homosexual couples, only STI control, and actual no one was worried about STI's at the time.

• That HIV is spread more consistently through anal sex due to the increased likelihood of blood to skin contact.

Furthermore, the sentence "This function of adultery has only partially been addressed now with the "safe sex" initiatives." clearly demonstrates the conflation between adultery, cheating, extramarital sex, Pauline "adultery of the heart", consensual non-monogamy and serial monogamy, which are not equivalent things but are all equally wrong according to Christianity today.

• A final note, I can't tell if this is meant to be a list of Aquinus' arguments, a list of arguments employed by Aquinus' followers today or an actual philosophical defense of the idea of the Ten Commandments as natural law. It seems like it's the third thing, but Natural Law is such a silly idea that I'm resistant to interpret an RW article as endorsing it.^{— Unsigned, by: UsagiYojimbo / talk / contribs}

I agree that the claims in that paragraph are suspicious, and added some "citation needed" templates. As for the purpose of the article, that is stated at the top: "In this article, we examine the plausibility of such a deduction..." That is, we look at whether or not it is reasonable to interpret these as "natural laws". Some of them (no murders) do seem to be natural laws; others clearly aren't (have no other gods before me – how is that even possible in a state of nature?). The article analyses them law-by-law. The author appears to have issues with adultery and has concluded that a ban on adultery falls within natural law, but I agree that that's not so clear-cut. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 08:25, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

It does seem kind of odd.--Bob^{"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that."} 11:23, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Clarification, by my "final note" I mean that the body of the article feels like it diverges from its stated purpose. It is possible I glossed over the stated purpose and that colored my reading of the text though.UsagiYojimbo (talk) 20:16, 12 December 2013 (UTC)