It is easy to say that there must be some standards that apply to all human cultures, and difficult to say exactly what those standards are. When people confuse their own experience with human experience in general, an appeal to natural law may make it easier for them to vilify those who are different from themselves, branding their actions or their culture s “unnatural,” and justifying persecution of those who fail to comply with the requirements of nature as the dominant group understands them. In the hands of an authority that claims exclusive knowledge of what is and is not”natural,” natural law easily becomes an instrument of abuse of oppression. (p48)
I am not opposed to saying that one culture’s morals and ethics are superior to another, but I think that the the urge to be oppressive is a very human one, and even if their is no urge, there is the passive stance to make it so. What do you think?
And, do you get what the author is saying about declaring one person ‘natural’ and the other not?
Related articles
- Work in progress – natural law morality (choiceindying.com)
- From ‘Ought’ to ‘Is’ (thephilosophyofscience.wordpress.com)
- Catholic Natural Law Theory (choiceindying.com)
- The End of Governments? (thecontraryopinion.wordpress.com)
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
Connect
Who defines natural law? I would have thought: the Natural Lawyer.