"Refuting" Aquinas by citing his motivation

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In a discussion thread, someone claimed all disapproval of any sort of volutary sexual activity is based on "superstition." I asked if he had ever read Aquinas's analysis of sexual ethics.

"No," he replied, "but Aquinas was trying to prove that the Catholic Church was right, so who cares?"

And Kepler was trying to prove Copernicus was right about heliocentrism, so who cares about his arguments? And that Darwin fellow, who was trying to prove evolution by natural selection: best ignore him as well.

Comments

  1. Unknown4:56 PM

    This is actually kind of funny. The people who wax about having the best arguments (and how argumentation is the best way to find truth) are often completely dismissive of many people who claim to have the best arguments, without even arguing with them!

    Conversely, folks who don't see argumentation as the end-all of finding the truth can have very good reasons (and arguments for those reasons) why a certain view or position is true. Sexual ethics seems to be interesting because it shines a light on these two different types of thinking in philosophy, and how the 'all arguments, all the time' folks can be very disingenuous.

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