Quote:
By "the church" simply referring to religion in general, as opposed to "the state". I fully recognize that other religions (or churches) may allow gay marriage and that it is completly within thier rights to define marriage that way. I just don't think the state should do it. To me THAT'S a violation of church/state separation.


Oops, I think you just got caught there. So only YOUR religion's version of marriage should be sanctioned by the state then? Only your religion has the right to define the institution, and even other religion's definitions should be banned if they disagree.

Well, where to start? I have stayed out of this conversation this time but I want to weigh in because no-one else is saying what I am going to say.

First of all marriage was not created by religion. Many other animals mate for life, without the benefit of religion, and I think it stands to reason that early pre-homo sapien human species did so long before their brains got thinking about religion and they formalized it in that framework. Of course since I am sure you don't believe in that, or the fact that Judaism is not the first religion in human history and that those early peoples' had marriages just fine without ever hearing of your god, so those arguments will mean little to you.

Second, external morality is an illusion. The only morality is that which is built into us for the benefit of the survival of the species, or more specifically the survival of the family and clan groups which we have surrounded ourselves with until just recently, and even more specifically than that, the survival and reproduction of the genes of that group that our similar to ours. Morality was not put in us by some god; it evolved to make it possible for us to live in a group instead of only concerning ourselves with just ourselves because in a group we have better odds of surviving as a whole. It has been built up by millions of years of evolution through natural selection; those that were 'immoral' got ostracized and died. This has been proven by studies of primates that have discovered they have very similar concepts of right and wrong, though unspoken; most of the things we associate with morality; empathy, self sacrifice, the concepts of fairness and sharing and rules and the consequences of breaking them, all are in them without the concept of morality as we know it or some god. Without these evolved behaviours, their society would not exist, nor would ours. Religion has snaked its way into these concepts and re-enforced them with made-up external threats for the purposes of control, but without any concept of religion a society and the people living in it would still follow these precepts.

Anyway, I doubt that argument will mean much to you either. But I just wanted to state that I have a framework of morality that stands up fine on its own without being propped up by some god, and is much more internally consistent without having some of the logical flaws that an imposed morality does.

Edited to fix some typos


Edited by ninti (14/07/2004 20:37)