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Incest is OK: Singer

8:26am Friday, 11th February 2011

By Joshua Maule

As long as there were no untoward results - such as inbred children - incestuous sex would not be a problem says atheist philosopher Peter Singer.

With the availability of contraception, Singer said there was no "rational" reason humans shouldn't sleep with members of their immediate family.

A poll was taken of the audience at Sydney University's Great Hall on Wednesday night and according to Michael Cook, the editor of the BioEdge online journal, half the crowd supported Singer.

Writing for The Punch, Cook summarised Singer's argument: "...our instinctive revulsion at incest is merely an evolved response which protected human communities against inbreeding. But such intuitions are not authentically moral reaction because they lack a rational justification.

"They are evidence of our bondage to obsolete emotions. These conferred a survival advantage when we lived as hunter-gatherers, but not necessarily in the 21st Century."

In the past Singer has publicly supported infanticide, euthanasia, abortion and bestiality.

Considered "the most influential living philosopher" by some, Cook concluded "the novelty of transgressiveness is wearing off" and it is time to "draw the curtain" on Singer.