Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Your reasoning is flawed Keeper.

Electronics have little to do with religion, therefore electronics were invented by atheists.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

So?

Source?

Did I say so (that marriage was invented by atheists "because it has little to do with religion")?

My source did not. According to anthropological evidence, marriage was created by atheists.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Not according to your own quote.

Quote:

Back then, marriage had little to do with love or with religion.

It doesn't even have the word atheist, or anything related to it. You're just making stuff up.


Now let's say you do find a source that says that - its total fiction. How would the internet guy know? Did he take a poll? All Sumerian atheists in the audience please raise their hands...

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Since there was no clear indoctrinzation of marriage into religion then one cannont assume that it was disconnected from it always since the earliest evidence is sure not to be the first.

This line of thinking is problematic.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Two halves don't make a whole without a hole.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

So?

Unless you find an earlier source (not that it'll be "all fiction" according to our buddy above, but still) that disagrees with mine, my point stands.

And I thought that when it said that marriage had little to do with religion, that meant it had little to do with religion. Silly me. OK, so the people who founded it were not neccessarily atheists, but the tradition certainly was.

Seriously, though, the quote makes it quite clear to me that marriage was not a religious estabilishment originally. Religious traditions don't have "little to do with religion". Current evidence suggests that marriage was originally not a religious estabilishment.

Please. "The Internet guy"? "The Internet Guy" could be an archeologist for all you know. Poisoning the well is an immature method of debate.

:Puzzled:

Yeah, and we all know that if you can't have sex the "straight" way, there's no reason whatsoever to get married, so--

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I love it when people try to contradict humor using entire sentences in a serious manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rBg-wXLFfg

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Eating isn't a religious ceremony, therefore it is an atheist ceremony?:Puzzled:

Seriously, though, the quote makes it quite clear to me that marriage was not a religious estabilishment originally. Religious traditions don't have "little to do with religion". Current evidence suggests that marriage was originally not a religious estabilishment.

If he throws around unprovable statements as fact, I have very little confidence in his credentials (Though this is a hypothetical source that you have yet to provide - your last source didn't even mention atheists)

Unless he has a time machine he doesn't have the faintest idea if marriages were done by atheists. All we know (i.e., guess) is that marriage wasn't originally tied to religion.

Throwing around silly accusations is an immature form of debate.:rolleyes:


Most effective counterargument I've seen today.;)

So tell me, how would anybody, "archeologist" or not - have the faintest idea whether or not marriage was originally only done by atheists? The guys are dead, so its not like we can ask them.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I do not accept homosexual 'acts' or 'lifestyle' but I do accept homo's

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Yup. Well, not exactly - it's not an "atheist ceremony", but still unrelated to religion. Species around the world ate long before humans and its mythology came about.

I addressed the "atheist" part in my last post. And "unprovable"? Do you consider everything else in archeology "unprovable", too?

You don't need to have been there to know what things were like.

We know, for instance, that in ancient Rome, women were banned from watching athletics as the competitors were in the nude. We know that in Old Scandinavia, the great captains were buried with their ships. We know that in 1914, a horrific war was started by an assassination. How do we know this? Did we take a poll - "all Vikings, come forth and raise you hands if this is true"? Did we interview Romans who lived at the time? Did we ask the witnesses of the assassination who are still alive today for essays? Of course not. Archeology relies on historical records and excavations, not on interviewing people miraculously still alive today.

In fact, couldn't I turn the whole thing around and, by the same reasoning, claim it's "unprovable" that marriage was originally religious? Or do you have any interviews with marriage inventors to link to?

You were guilty of poisoning the well by attacking the source instead of what it stated.

I don't watch Family Guy, so I had no way of knowing if it was a joke or more nonsense a la "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve":o.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

So you admit that your claim that it was "invented by atheists" is fantasy?

Nope. For example, we know certain religions were practiced at certain times, as we see the leftover artwork and literature. We know certain wars were fought at certain times, because of left-over bones and weapons. We know certain civilizations existed at certain times and places, because of leftover graves, tools, and ruins.

However, atheism is the ABSENCE of organized religion (Unless you count the ACLU :p ). You can't prove a negative. You can't prove that they DIDN'T HAVE a religion.

Wrong. You can GUESS at what things were like.

Only one problem - the inventors of the first marriages didn't have a written language. So we can only speculate.

I'm not arrogant enough to think I know the unknowable. So no, I can't say if it was linked to religion or not originally.

I don't care if that fact can be "turned around" - that argument was YOURS in the first place, not mine - so you can only hurt your own position by saying that.

Stop throwing around accusations like an immature child for two seconds and LISTEN:

questioning the authority of a source is a basic form of arguing with it. Since it wasn't from a source I am familiar with, and it isn't a large, well known one - I am skeptical of its reliability. And its not poisoning the well.

However, calling it "poisoning the well" is childish namecalling.

Heh, who's "poisoning the well" now?:rolleyes:

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Yes, I do believe he made that up.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

My claim, once and for all, is that the earliest record of marriage details it as "having little to do with religion". In effect, a non-religious tradtion. Like eating.

In fact, my source also details when, exactly, marriage became a mythological celebration:

When did religion become involved?
As the Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe, the blessings of a priest became a necessary step for a marriage to be legally recognized. By the eighth century, marriage was widely accepted in the Catholic church as a sacrament, or a ceremony to bestow God’s grace. At the Council of Trent in 1563, the sacramental nature of marriage was written into canon law.

Sounds good to me, as then the burden of proof is on you:smokin:. Prove that the inventors of the marriage institution invented it as a mythological ceremony.

Not that it matters anyhow. If marriage was originally a religious tradition, there's still no logical reason to disallow gay marriage. The best the opposition can do is quote selectively the portions of their favourite mythology that happens to favour their idea; appeal to tradition and culture; assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that divorce rates and the like are a direct result of homosexual marriage; assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that homosexuality is unnatural; and claim that because homosexuality is gross to them, it should be banned.

None of which, of course, is logical. And none of which is changed by the statement that marriage was originally religious.

Making statements based on evidence is hardly "guessing". Archeology, as all other science, does not operate by "guessing" - it operates by testing evidence. No one "guessed" World War I happened. We know it from historical evidence. Archeologists did not "guess" that many Viking captains were buried with their ships, they know it as they've excavated burial ships with bodies and personal possessions in them. We didn't guess ancient man hunted with spears, we know it as we've found old spearpoints and observed cave paintings of hunters with spears.

The argument that statements about the past can't be proven, only guessed at, was yours.

The argument that marriage was founded as a religious institution was Saquist's (I believe. Whatever the Heck - it certainly wasn't mine:D).

You weren't "questioning the authority of it", you were calling it names.

No more than accusing an opponent of ad hominem or non-sequitur fallacies. As a matter of fact, poisoning the well is ad hominem.

Certainly not me.

Poisoning the well (see above link) is to attack the source instead of what the source states (for example, by patronizingly calling a source "The Internet Guy"). I may be guilty of one thing or another by calling a statement "nonsense", but it's certainly not poisoning the well.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Theres no reason? I'm guessin that's because you find it convenent to just say so. If the bible tells us that marriage was an institution of God then I'm of course incline to believe if you can't tell me for certainty that marriage was an atheisic practice

Or even that it was started by atheist. Which frankly I dodn't believe existed at the time. All the peoples and tribes that I know of believe in a god.

I find your evassiveness pragmatic and your logic faulty.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

If that's the case, then your source clearly doesn't have a clue. Religion has been involved in marriage for at least 4500 years, in the Hebrew tribe. And since the Hebrews were a typical tribal culture, it is a reasonable theory that this involvement was common.



You are hiding behind the cloak of "the reality based argument": you don't believe in religion, so you declare that your argument is inarguably more reasonable.

However the evidence suggests otherwise. Though gay unions have only existed for a short period of time in San Fransisco, I just read in a local newspaper that gays are filing for "divorces" in droves.

Which is precisely my point. That method does not work in this case. Unless there is a written language in that society, there is no way to tell if they viewed marriage religiously. A few faded cave paintings and burried spear points cannot tell us this.

Which is true. Photographs and living witnesses only go back a certain way. Reliable written histories become rarer and rarer as you go back in time.

Yet you believe that something must be true if an archeologist said it is true.


You're just evading the argument through foolish finger pointing and you know it.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Well, if what Machiavelli's Apprentice here says is true, about marriage being a common tribal practice, then it would have been a pagan practise as well. and just like how not everybody is christian today, undoubtedly there were people in the ancient world who were gaiaistic, who worshipped some local hero, or even just believed in good hard work. in that case, you would have quite a hard time proving marriage was not an atheistic practise.
And also, before you go asking me to prove that is atheistic, you can apply the reasoning for 'innocent until proven guilty' to this argument (I am willing to concede that this mantra is also applicable to the 'existence of god' debate, though I am a firm believer god does not exist).

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

The word you're looking for is multi (poly?)-theistic - AKA, practiced by many religions.

Atheism is the absence of religion. But since so many religions developed it, that's obviously not true.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

well, yes, multitheistic is the word.

And just because marriage is practised among religious peoples as part of their religions, does not mean that marriage is not an atheistic practise either. each religion and atheism can be thought of as a different faction - just because one faction has that practise does not mean that it is unique just to that faction. Religions all over the world celebrate unions between man and woman, and each is different in their own way. Atheists get married as well, so obviously it is also an atheistic practise, but it is not unique to atheism

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

atheism is new practice on the world scene...all tribes and cultures believed in the worship or reverence of something for more powerful than man himself.

The homosexual "culture" is new too. Yes practiced but it was not a culture untill the twentieth century. All these "cultures" which really aren't cultures in my estimation only....but a restructuring of the parameters we identify cultures and behaviorial groups-are so NEW we are struggling to find them a place for them.

As a result they are hodge-podging, splicing, and grafting cultures on to theres. This is also a first in history. In the past cultures grew out of the melding of customs in unions like marriage or concubines. Generations would pass before a considerable population grew to accept the new traditions.

and homosexulaits are not passing these traditions to the next generation. It's an operation a Frankenstein culture....grotesque and patched work with parts we recognized arranged in a frankly hideous fashion....

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

What, you mean like gravity? cause I believe in gravity too. Dont you?

And I dont really think homosexuality is a culture. Its more a preference.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Good point. Homosexuality has always existed as far as we know - but before now it wasn't a culture - more of a hobby or a preference.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I don't think sexual orientation qualifies as a "hobby", and preference implies that there's a deliberate choice, while in this case the choice is pretty much made ahead of time.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I laguhed when I saw the thread title.

Anyway, I think if someone wants to merry the same sex, they should live on an island in the middle of no where.

Well I don't know... I really don't care actually.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Then what was the point of posting? To say that you're apathetic and uninformed?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

No. I thought I cared when I saw the thread title.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I thought I cared too....

Well, now that we've ascertained that you don't why don't you move along?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Because the discussion about gay rights and the existence of god is somehow very compelling.

and preference does not mean that you have to have had a choice in it, it is just an option you like better than other options, no matter the reason for that liking, it does not have to be conscious.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Don't they know they're damned?
Don't they know they're sinners?
Don't they know that they don't deserve to be married?

Stupid homosexuals with their cries for equality, don't they know this is a religious nation. Indeed, it’s unnerving to realize: we are being ruled by a collection of totalitarian, frat rats endowed with the introspective capacities of rampaging fire ants.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

well, obviously, if they're still crying out for equality, then they don't know that they're damned, or that they're sinners. And isnt everyone born equal in the eyes of God? So since we have decided that homosexuality is determined before birth, then any sins that take place because of said homosexuality have by default ben absoluted, because it is not a choice of the 'sinner', and was determined before birth

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

homosexuality is not determined before birth...EVER.

In some small population there maybe a predisposition to homosexuality...Hormone imbalances but genes are incapable of telling you what to do. You still have to chose...even in predispositions.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

How would you know? Have you ever asked anybody whether they became homosexual before or after birth?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

And your evidence for this can be found where?

The Bible? :lol:

Why would someone choose to be gay, if they could be straight?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

See? I also saw an article, which said homosexual people actually had their brains wired like the opposite sex.
However, I have a question - if homosexuality, and the preference for being the opposite sex, are determined during gestation, then do homosexuals emit male, or female-attracting pheromones?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Ive actually have asked almost every gay person I came across.
while I'don't have numbers...

I'm not bragging...but I seem to get hit on....alot.So I ask.
Most said they were'nt born with it. It was there opinion that this is a common excuse for explaining who they were to friends and family.

This same majority have told me frankly that they had suffered abuse at a yound age by another male.

I've come tot he conclusion as a result that the figures of homosexual rape is a lie. I've alreay met more people...young men...than I'd care to know that have been abused by other men. I can no longer accept that the majority of child sexual predators target little girls.

In any case no one can know if they were born with it. It's a scientific question of pschology and biology...Recolection and mentality at that age is indeterminite without any clear boundaries.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I've yet to see any truely conclussive evidence along those lines Aldaja.

I said this before...
So i agree with you....the thing is about gentics and our genome is that we don't know what all the consequences lead to...

As it stands ...They can link sexuality to a gene/chemical...does it decided sexuality...that's up in the air...because to say so would mean that we know all the out comes of all the combinations...and we don't.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

A variety of reasons. If there's no taboo against it, it can simply be a casual form of recreation - like in Ancient Athens (Though they did have their own taboos and rules concerning the practice).

It can also happen if there simply aren't any women around (We can see this in the animal kingdom, where males "relieve" themselves or each other)

Or maybe the guy just lacks the maturity and/or skills to deal with women.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Fair enough:D

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

I also find it irritating how this fact somehow makes homosexuality right.

Well animals do it! Yes, but they also eat their young, and kill each other. Does that make those practices right as well?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

well, since humans are technically animals, then i suppose its as okay as much as people think animals eating others of the same species is okay.

But I think people maintain that cannibalism is not okay, whereas in the rest of the animal kingdom it is, because people tend to think that because we can think independently and stuff like that, it means that we are somehow better than other animals, and not cannibalising others is just part of that distinction that people think makes us unique.

I dont know about you, but i tend to think homosexuality is okay because that is how people are. It does not matter whether it is a conscious choice on their part, or predetermined before birth, but some way or another, they got to be that way, and they should be respected rather than ridiculed for this.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Ooh, have the right-wing bigots still not acknowledged the right of the homosexual person to get married? Why am I not surprised?

People have rights. This is irrefutable. People have the right to get married to other people, regardless of gender. This infringes nobody else's rights. Who, exactly, is being hurt by gay marriage?

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

Well, nobody, physically, but i suppose it is an ideological, theological hurt.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

No one. That's why the opponents need to produce myths such as that kids of gay marriage get bullied to death (a claim which can be shot down by studying societies that allow gay adoption), that it's the cause of rising divorce rates (a claim for which there's no evidence whatsoever), and so on. My favorite is that it's "unnatural", despite the fact that over 400 species in nature engage in homosexual love and sex.

And, of course, they need to sprinkle it with fallacies such as Appeal to Common Belief, Appeal to Tradition, Appeal to Ridicule, and many others, sprinkled with a healthy dose of quotes from their favorite Holy Book.

But logical arguments? None.

(Wow, a short post from me? I wonder if such a groundbreaking event is not one of the signs of the End Times...)

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

it is awful, it degrades society!

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

i see some people here saying that they dont mind it...but hate seen two men kissing....what if its two women kissing? would you go yuck then?...what..whats that?? NO?!?! well thats fucked up...you dont like seen two men kissing even tho they love eachother...but yet two women??

grow the fuck up.

Re: Do you Jim take John to be your lawfully wedded something or other?
 

same sex "love" is wrong no matter