why is incest wrong?

[Alcon]

1. How do you really determine consent when there is usually a strong superiority relationship (i.e, parent-to-child, older sibling-to-younger)?

2. It's pretty psychologically well-established that confusing familial and sexual love can mess you up big time.

[Alcon]

First, I'm going to disagree.  The could be an incestuous relationship between adults, even in separate households.  There could be legitimate consent.

I actually see no great harm in adult incest.  If it's not directly harming anyone, I don't much care.  I assumed this question was about family incest, which was probably perfunctory.

But when it comes to adult/child incest, or child/child incest, or any incest with disproportionate levels of consent, it's rape of the worst kind.

My big one is birth defects and genetic abnormalities.

I'm getting déjà vu.  Wasn't it established in an old topic that it isn't a concern unless it's multi-generational incest?  And that only relates to procreation, not all incestuous sexual relationships.  That seems like one of the most trivial arguments against it.

Edit: That may have been among cousins, actually.  Siblings probably have a much higher rate.  But, again, I doubt many siblings are interested in procreation.  Or sex, for that matter.  Yuck.  Glad I'm an only child.

[Alcon]

Looking at it with a purely scientific perspective, societies developing moral codes which included the prohibition of incest had an advantage over societies devloping moral codes which did not prohibit incest.

That's true, but societies then tended to either be religion-centric or amoral.  That doesn't necessarily say anything about incest itself.

[Alcon]

That's a false dichotomy; to the best of my knowledge of early peoples, their culture and moral codes varied significantly, and religion wasn't merely an outpouring of emotion and "spirituality."  And many early religions probably instilled many traits that are useful to a primitive society, such as a stronger work ethic, sense of cooperation, and goodwill towards others (and abstinence from incest).  Societies that developed a moral code that encouraged members to excell in these traits would have had a strong advantage over others.

Fair point - although you do see where I was going with that, probably, beyond a false dichotomy.

What cultures allowed incest, anyway?  (Honest question; I don't know.)  Did any of them not fall into the amoral warrior society mold?  You haven't done much to prove it's not a matter of correlation more than anything.  That's what I was getting at.

That is to say, can you find a reason why frowning on incest would be responsible for these culture's excelling?  Otherwise it's a correlation/causation problem, which isn't much better than a false dichotomy.