Bonobos and Sexuality

edited December 2010 in Youth Corner
Okay so I recently learned that bonobos are extremely sexual animals. No problem. What I found weird is that they engage in _____ sex. I'm not sure of the implications of this. What I found EXTREMELY DISTURBING is that they also engage in homosexual behavior-- females with females, males with males, incest, members of a family together, the young and the old, the sterile and the fertile. The only exception is SOMETIMES a mother with her adult son.

What is the meaning of this? I was always so sure homosexuality was unnatural. And incest? And ____ sex? I mean, we as humans have free will, but these animals follow instinct and do what God created them to do.

Why would God create these animals with these behaviors? I don't have an answer, but if anyone has a real valid reason, it would put my mind at peace.

Thanks.

Comments

  • They are animals, we are humans.....enough said!!!
  • [quote author=minagir link=topic=10149.msg124153#msg124153 date=1291868143]
    They are animals, we are humans.....enough said!!!



    Mina you're not getting what I said. I know it's a hard question and that no one on here is God to answer it for me. I'm saying I thought homosexual behavior was unacceptable and UNNATURAL-- a.k.a. against nature, and the Bible says AN ABOMINATION TO THE LORD.... if so, why would God create these animals to behave this way????????
  • i understand the first part of what you said on the last post ^. However, why then would God create humans to behave this way as well ? The same goes for both i guess .
    Although i cannot for the life of me understand that these creatures are homosexuals . I thought that was just a human thing  :o


    + sister in Christ +
  • [quote author=user00 link=topic=10149.msg124155#msg124155 date=1291868368]
    [quote author=minagir link=topic=10149.msg124153#msg124153 date=1291868143]
    They are animals, we are humans.....enough said!!!



    Mina you're not getting what I said. I know it's a hard question and that no one on here is God to answer it for me. I'm saying I thought homosexual behavior was unacceptable and UNNATURAL-- a.k.a. against nature, and the Bible says AN ABOMINATION TO THE LORD.... if so, why would God create these animals to behave this way????????

    well i do admit i am not a person of enough knowledge to give you a full scientific.......but i do know that our nature is differnt than animals, the plants and other creations.
  • mahraeel, God didn't create humans to be homosexuals-- that is a human invention.

    but, as minagir (i think?) pointed out, animals are not like humans (which I was never asking or disputing to begin with but okay), and so animals cannot invent new deviant behaviors like this-- I take that back, sometimes it'll happen as deviant behavior or some kind of mutation-- but this is the "norm" throughout the ENTIRE species-- it's in their genetics!

    I really hope someone out there can explain this?? ?
  • yes but i didn't think God would create animals to behave this way either. sorry if i am confusing you

    + sister in Christ +
  • lol it's okay, actually mahraeel, that is exactly my question!
  • I don't have a full answer for you right now but you must remember that every animal has it's own sexual systems of reproduction and the like. I haven't looked into it, but maybe these animals do this for reasons other than pleasure? Perhaps it's a self-defence mechanism or self-preservation mechanism? Some plants are asexual and some have male-female reproduction and some have other types of reproduction. It really is comparing apples to oranges in this case.
  • Please forgive me but I'm not quite sure how would this topic be of any spiritual benefit to anyone.
    Again, I'm not trying to offend anyone but there some words that need to be censored especially because there are a lot of children that visit this forum.
  • I guess Michael Boutros, but if you could please look into it and give me a fuller answer, I'd greatly appreciate it. You know, people who advocate homosexuality use examples like these so I think it's important for us as Coptic Christians to have a better answer for them then silence or "I guess you're right."

    Pistavros, I apologize. I attempted to censor my post a little more, but pm me with anything else you think I should censor while still getting the point across. And in addition to my reason above, this issue bothers me spiritually, and thus I think it IS of spiritual benefit. Thanks for your concern though.

    I would just like to add that I'm am not one to start random, frivolous, and pointless threads just because I'm bored, have nothing to do, or want to increase my posts. In fact, I get annoyed by those. Please take my question seriously-- if I wasn't serious, I wouldn't have taken the time to post it.
  • It is not suprising to find a variety of behaviours in the animal kingdom. None of these should be used to propose human behaviours, because only humans are created in God's image, and only humans are personal beings.

    My own dog will often tytry to engage in inappropiate behaviours with inanimate objects, but this illustrates only that as an animal he is driven essentially by physical needs and drives. The fact that humans also have physical needs and drives does not elevate them to being what is 'natural' for humans. The proper condition for a human is in relationship with God, and in a state of grace where the illumined spirit dominates and controls all animal instincts, tendencies and passions.

    It is also the case that in the Fall all of creation was caused to lose the indwelling of grace by the sinful action of the one who was the Head of the created order. This does not mean that we should call certain behaviours of animals deviant or not - since it is rather inappropriate to anthropomorphise animals as if they were humans, and equally to use animal behaviour to prescribe what is 'normal' for humans. We know that the Black Widow spider consumes her mate. Does this mean that we should take this as an example of 'normal' human behaviour just because it is found in the animal kingdom?

    Humans are not animals. There is certainly an animal stratum in our being, but we are far more than a clever ape. We are engaged in the fast at the moment, and this is a witness to the fact that as Christians we are called to experience a life which transcends the animal and enters into the experience of the divine.

    My dog is a dog. He does whatever comes into his head. If we want to live as animals, hastening the process of our personal dissolution and returning to the dust from which we were made, then we can also just do whatever comes into our head. But the divine life we were made for demands much more from us. It requires that we commit ourselves to seeking God and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit so that we are re-ordered in our being. So that our spirit controls our mind which controls our flesh.

    We cannot say that because animals exhibit certain behaviours they have been created in such a way by God, much less can we take the examples of animal behaviour and apply it to humans. We are surrounded by humans living like animals and it is not a paradise on earth, quite the contrary. The created order has been disturbed by our sin and has fallen away from the state in which it was created. It's brokenness is not an example to us. Although even in a fallen state we may learn lessons from the animal kingdom.

    My dog does what he does because an urge drives him. Humans are not to be driven by urges. We are to control them and be the master of them. To live like an animal is to experience death. To seek a union with the divine life of the Holy Spirit is to pass beyond death, and beyond the domination of the flesh, this body of death.

    Father Peter
  • [quote author=user00 link=topic=10149.msg124166#msg124166 date=1291869558]
    Pistavros, I apologize. I attempted to censor my post a little more, but pm me with anything else you think I should censor while still getting the point across. And in addition to my reason above, this issue bothers me spiritually, and thus I think it IS of spiritual benefit. Thanks for your concern though.

    I would just like to add that I'm am not one to start random, frivolous, and pointless threads just because I'm bored, have nothing to do, or want to increase my posts. In fact, I get annoyed by those. Please take my question seriously-- if I wasn't serious, I wouldn't have taken the time to post it.


    That's ok, and I also apologize for misunderstanding the point of your topic. Forgive me.
  • Fr. Peter, I'm not sure if I interpreted your post correctly, but I believe you're saying that we, as humans, in the image of God, should not act on any of these instincts. This brings up a question that has actually been bothering me for a long time:

    If God does not want us to engage in these behaviors and created us in His image, why would we even have any instinct to do so? To me it's like handing a little child a loaded gun and saying, "Here- you can play with this all you want, but whatever you do, don't pull the trigger, or else you will be severely punished." It just doesn't make sense to me.
  • [quote author=George_Mina_Awad link=topic=10149.msg124203#msg124203 date=1291931619]
    Fr. Peter, I'm not sure if I interpreted your post correctly, but I believe you're saying that we, as humans, in the image of God, should not act on any of these instincts. This brings up a question that has actually been bothering me for a long time:

    If God does not want us to engage in these behaviors and created us in His image, why would we even have any instinct to do so? To me it's like handing a little child a loaded gun and saying, "Here- you can play with this all you want, but whatever you do, don't pull the trigger, or else you will be severely punished." It just doesn't make sense to me.

    I think the strongest concept we need to understand is that it's all based on lust. What would make a man sleep with another (or even sleep with a women) other than his lost to do so.
    That's why it is soooo hard to convince anyone outside a faith in God this because they simply don't care about lust. To them, sex is fine. It's an action that some people do and also define themselves with....which is actually something i hate; as a human being, a refuse to be identified by "how do i have sex"...because that is a way to define a human being, then what do you call monks and people who haven't had sex; inhuman?! 
  • [quote author=minagir link=topic=10149.msg124208#msg124208 date=1291932962]
    [quote author=George_Mina_Awad link=topic=10149.msg124203#msg124203 date=1291931619]
    Fr. Peter, I'm not sure if I interpreted your post correctly, but I believe you're saying that we, as humans, in the image of God, should not act on any of these instincts. This brings up a question that has actually been bothering me for a long time:

    If God does not want us to engage in these behaviors and created us in His image, why would we even have any instinct to do so? To me it's like handing a little child a loaded gun and saying, "Here- you can play with this all you want, but whatever you do, don't pull the trigger, or else you will be severely punished." It just doesn't make sense to me.

    I think the strongest concept we need to understand is that it's all based on lust. What would make a man sleep with another (or even sleep with a women) other than his lost to do so.
    That's why it is soooo hard to convince anyone outside a faith in God this because they simply don't care about lust. To them, sex is fine. It's an action that some people do and also define themselves with....which is actually something i hate; as a human being, a refuse to be identified by "how do i have sex"...because that is a way to define a human being, then what do you call monks and people who haven't had sex; inhuman?!   


    I agree with you 100% on that. But isn't it God who gave us that capacity to lust, just as he gave us a capacity to love? Even Adam's fall happened because he had the free will to decide whether or not to eat the fruit, but this goes way beyond that. SO many of the world's sins come down to lust. What makes atheists believe that it is simply a natural human feeling? Is it not because we have such a broad capacity to experience it?
  • [quote author=George_Mina_Awad link=topic=10149.msg124209#msg124209 date=1291933296]
    I agree with you 100% on that. But isn't it God who gave us that capacity to lust, just as he gave us a capacity to love?
    I personally would think that it's part of our free-will......which cannot be limited by God....not that He can't, but He just created us that way; with free will. But i would want Fr. Peter to confirm what i am saying. My thoughts are not always what the Church believes.

    Even Adam's fall happened because he had the free will to decide whether or not to eat the fruit, but this goes way beyond that.

    Why would you think lust goes beyond "that"?! choices are made through what we see and what we feel. if choices were just made based on what is apparent than wat differentiates us, being human from a robot (or a computer program) that acts based on things that happen?!

    What makes atheists believe that it is simply a natural human feeling?

    i think because "it is"....i think lust is a natural human feeling but the differnce is, to us, it is not right and to them, they simply don't care because it doesn't effect anyone else.
  • I guess what you are asking is 'Why did God create us with the possibility of choosing our own desires?'.

    Well the answer that comes easiest is that if it is not possible for us to choose not-God then it is not possible for us to choose God. (At least in this provisional and temporary phase of our existence.)

    Life is a challenge. If it were not a challenge it would not have moral worth. An Olympic athlete who does no training, eats whatever he wants, spends his time at parties, and still runs 100% faster than everyone else, would not be commended because his victories were not the fruit of any effort.

    There was a Desert Father who prayed that a certain disability be taken from him, when it was he became distraught because the lack of any tension or conflict in his life meant that he could not progress in the Christian life.

    A fruit tree needs the winter frosts to challenge it if it is to produce the best crop.

    The issue is not 'why do I have these animal urges to contend with', (that is the pot criticising the potter for making it as he saw fit). The issue is 'what are you going to do in the face of the urges?'

    God provides you with everything you need to live a godly life. You must choose, whom will you serve? Yourself or God? You cannot blame God if you choose to serve yourself.

    Where has God said 'play with this all you want?'. On the contrary he said, 'The day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die'. The trouble is that we want to ignore God.

    We are like the stereotypical US litigant who takes a lawnmower manufacturer to court because the instructions for his lawnmower did not say, 'Not for internal use', and he used it to mow his best carpet. Just because a lawnmower COULD be used indoors does not mean that the manufacturer ever intended it to be used indoors, nor even that the instructions encouraged indoor use.

    You have the words of God in your hand in the Bible. This is (in one sense) our human instruction manual. If you choose to ignore the manufacturers instructions how can you blame him when life turns out ill?

    God does not want you to act on these animal impulses because you are not an animal. We cannot say, I have this impulse so it must be OK to indulge it. Why can we not say this, because we know what God teaches us. We know that the proper use of these impulses only occurs when they do not dominate us. God does not tell us to play with our humanity. On the contrary he tells us to be very careful. Let us not put words into God's mouth.

    We feel a natural and blameless hunger, but to indulge it intemperately is gluttony, which separates us from our true human life in Christ.

    We feel a natural and blameless desire for intimacy, but this is only fulfilled in a relationship with God, and to seek to use other people both psychologically and sexually to meet that need is to separate ourselves from our true human life in Christ.

    These needs are a means to grow closer to God, but they are also a means of falling away from God. When we focus on the need, and not on God, then the need is misused and we sin. This is the essence of sin, to turn away from God to serve our own passions and desires. To conquer ourselves, by the grace of God, and to offer ourselves to God entirely and completely, is the fulfilment of our true humanity.

    Human sexuality has a purpose. It is to allow the human race to be preserved in existence in the state of death into which Adam and Eve plunged us. It is to allow an Adam and an Eve to enter into a close union with each other and experience something of the life of God, and to become a creative nexus in which God works. There is an element of joy in the sexual encounter, just as there is joy in God's Trinitarian life. But to focus on the pleasure, as if it were the end in itself, is to diminish the sexual relationship and make it a matter of physiology and mechanics.

    You have an urge? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to be a man or an animal? Are you going to enter more fully into the experience of true human existence in God, or fall away into a deeper darkness and a deeper experience of death?

    I am angry and feel the urge to hurt someone. Is this a truly human urge, created in the image of God, or an animal urge, stirring me because I am subject to corruption and the dissolution of my humanity?

    We must not allow the worst of ourselves to be the standard by which we measure our humanity. It would be like an alien race visiting a leper colony on earth and taking medical samples, and then finding non-leprous humans and deciding that THEY were defective and needed their DNA correcting. Take as your example the life of our Saviour himself, or any of the great saints. They are the proper examples of what it means to be becoming truly human. Do not take the example of the worst of humanity. When people say some sinful and corrupt action is 'normal' or according to 'human nature' they could not be more wrong. The man dying of the plague is not a 'normal' human. It is not a good thing to aspire to be like him.

    We would not say, 'Surely God desires us to have scabs and boils, to cough up blood, to have our hair fall out, to be incontinent and stink as our body slowly rots'. Yet this is how some desperately ill folk live. This is 'normal'. But it is, of course, not normal at all. Because normality is not measured by our experience but by God's creative and salvific desires for us.

    The Blessed Virgin Mary is the example for us all of a human life truly lived. Those natural animal urges she experienced were brought under the control of a heart and soul given over to God - behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be unto me according to your word. This is the place for each one of us to begin to experience true human life. Leaving behind the fulfillment of animal passions that lead to death. The issue is not that the blameless passions exist within us, but that allowing them to dominate us they become sinful passions leading to death. The very nature of virtue is bound up in the challenge of putting our animal nature in a right relationship with our spiritual nature. The man driven by animal passions is dead according to the spirit. The man who lives by the spirit is like the angels even while remaining entirely human.

    Lust is not a created aspect of our humanity. It is the essence of sin. To lust is to sin. To lust after food, after sex, after power, after wealth. All lust is sin. But lust is the deformation of the natural and blameless incensive or desiring aspect of our humanity. This incensive power was created to find satisfaction in the desire for knowledge and experience of God. The lust that we allow to dominate us is not as we were created but as we have allowed ourselves to become. Part of the Christian life is to seek the cleansing of this incensive power so that it is directed once more towards God, its proper end, and not transient pleasures and desires. We should not blame God because what God created good, and to be used for good, has been deformed by each of us so that it is corrupt and used for corruption.

    It is like saying, people swear and use so much bad language that God must have wanted us to do this. Yet our voice was created to praise God and bless others. We cannot take the fact that we sin and say that this is how God wants or created us to act. It is not so. All that God created in us is good. If we turn it to sin then WE ALONE are to blame.

    Father Peter
  • Thanks, Fr. Peter, I could not have asked for a more thorough answer. And thank you for correcting my thinking. The reason I took issue with this is because I've experienced some serious mental and emotional strain associated with this sin and anything else that may be considered the "lust of the flesh." I've wondered why I would be faced with something like this, but maybe it's God's way of teaching me to distance myself from these things. Thanks again. I cannot begin to tell you how useful that was.
  • Thank you Father Peter for both of your explanations. I suppose we cannot equate or think of animal behavior in human terms-- perhaps they have behaviors that were ordained specifically for them by God and perhaps they too have "fallen" behaviors as the result of the Fall (if I understood your post correctly). This makes sense, as I have recently read Milton's Paradise Lost, which I know all of which is not to be taken as true, but it is noticeable that after humans fall, all of nature seems to fall after it.

    Thank you again Father for taking the time to clear this up for me :)
Sign In or Register to comment.