The Problem with Darwinian Sexual Ethics
An article from James N. Anderson in response to Yuval Harari and the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia
James N. Anderson—one of my fellow authors in the recent book Understanding Christian Apologetics—has written a superb response to a video from Yuval Harari promoting the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Anderson writes:
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian, bestselling author, public intellectual, and secular prophet (or ‘futurist’ as they prefer to be called). Speaking out of his Darwinian naturalist worldview, Harari recently offered this message on ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia’:…
“Darwin is the kind of prophet of sexual liberation. If I think about the liberation of gay people, of LGBTQ people, then if you dig underneath, you eventually find Darwin. For centuries upon centuries, gay people were persecuted and oppressed because of this mythological idea about sex: that sex was created by God for the purpose of procreation, and if you use sex for anything else, you’re sinning against the purpose of the thing, so you must be punished. And then Darwin came, and Darwin said: in biology there are no purposes. Nothing has any purpose in biology. In biology there are only causes.”
Where does this go wrong?…
For the consistent naturalist, nothing is ‘unnatural’ in a metaphysical sense, of course, but neither is anything ‘unnatural’ in a normative sense, because nature just is what it is. If nothing in nature has any purpose, then there’s nothing ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about any configuration of natural objects, including human sexual organs. If Harari believes that nothing that exists is unnatural, he ought to be consistent and honest in spelling out the full implications: there’s nothing unnatural about pedophilia, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, or any other way that organisms of the species homo sapiens satisfy their sexual urges.
Read the rest of the article here: “Darwin, Sex, and Rationality: Yuval Noah Harari’s Self-Defeating Worldview”
The problem for Harari is that given his worldview there is actually nothing unnatural or “wrong” with Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. He concedes this point in his book and assures his readers that all advanced societies have some form of hierarchy and these are necessary for their survival. In the end, all Harari can tell us is which hierarchies he prefers and which ones he doesn’t but he can’t tell us any of them are wrong.
For Harari and his worldview there is nothing intrinsically unnatural with anything-murder,rape, violence,hatred,etc. either