You orginally suggested cheating was "life affirming" because it had some evolutionary value.
Yes. On a different thread. I still believe that as an explanation for why we have the desires that we do.
You have since wisely abandoned that claim.
Nope, just haven't needed to advance it on this thread.
We now seem to agree that just because something is ordinary does not make it life affirming.
Yes, but be careful. There are TWO related claims here:
1. It's wrong to prescribe against cheating because that would be life denying
2. Cheating is good because it is life affirming
The argument about ordinary is with respect to point #1. Its ordinariness is put forward as some evidence that cheating is a very normal/healthy human activity, and that therefore prescribing against it is
life denying.
There are of course assumptions there: It's ordinariness doesn't prove that it's inherently normal/healthy behavior, but it's just some strong evidence that it is. You could counter-claim that our society, that makes it ordinary, is a horribly corrupt and immoral society. I think Al Qaeda makes that claim, if you want to put yourself into their company. There are also people who do precisely claim that a life denying morality is a good morality, these people say things like "we love death more than you love life", and view post Garden of Eden life to be undesirable, horrible, and morally deniable. If you want to choose to put yourself into the Al Qaeda western-society-is-evil camp, or into the theological the-whole-world-is-inherently-evil camp then we will just agree to disagree. I choose a practical, pragmatic, real-world approach: I choose life.
(If you choose the Al Qaeda claim we can continue the debate by looking at whether non-Western societies also have similar prevalence of adultery, though.)
If point #1 carries then
there is nothing wrong with cheating, which is only half-way there. It's in point #2 that I move even further and argue that it's a good, life affirming thing.
You have failed to offer any reason why cheating is "life affirming"
We haven't discussed point #2 much, because everyone has been focussed on point #1.
Cheating is life affirming because it connects a healthy human desire with action. Thus it is life affirming in the sense that eating when you are hungry is life affirming. Maybe we'll get into the evolutionary argument here--people, at least man (and probably women) desire as many sexual partners as they can have, cheating actualizes that, affirming a core value. In the context of there being nothing wrong with it (from point #1) that would make it a good thing.