First of all. Thank you so much for refusing to fight against strawman arguments and putting forward what people actually believe. It’s much more productive, and interesting to talk about. I hate religion and I hate their stupid arguments, but I wish that criticisms would focus on the stupid arguments they actually make, instead of stupid arguments they don’t make.
On the marriage front, and I know it’s not your beliefs I’m rebutting here, that argument has always especially bothered me. Because it’s like. Yes, actually, I do think gay marriage is nonsensical. Marriage is indeed a religious concept, and all of the religions that promote it condemn homosexuality. I hate marriage in general and wish nobody would get married. Yet it still happens, why? Why do gay people even care about being married then?
Primarily, it’s because the Christians forced their religious construct to become so intertwined with legal and financial benefits that are otherwise unobtainable, that you put yourself at an objective disadvantage as a couple, economically, medically, legally, if you do not get married. The problem is that once marriage passed from the religious conceptual realm where it gestated, and into the political sphere, it should have become a separate, secular concept under the idea of separation of church and state. But of course the Christians can’t accept that kind of compromise either. They want to have it all, all, all. So if Christians didn’t want gay people to want to get married, then they shouldn’t have enshrined their religious concept unfairly above others in the governmental system. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, motherfuckers.
This presupposes that marriage is a strictly religious tradition - which is false. Marriage as a concept exists across many cultures sometimes as a religious tradition and sometimes as a civil one or as a swearing of personal oaths.
It is also not strictly a thing that all religions abhor same sex unions or do not have traditional same sex marriage as a thing. There are a number of Indigenous religions across the world which have gay marriage as a feature, new religions can factor them in as valid or existing religious sects can change. Bans on gay marriage force the state to adopt the traditional Christian stance on marriage at the exclusion of other religions and cultural traditions… While also denying a number of functions at a civil level such as spousal benefits, rights regarding legal decisions, visitation rights in hospitals and so on.
I don’t agree that marriage is strictly a religious thing. It’s for the same reason I also don’t think that Christmas is a strictly religious thing. I’m not religious, and even if I were, my parents’ religion is not christianity. Despite this, I celebrate a secular Christmas. Gifts are given, mirth is enjoyed, and various other traditions observed. Perhaps some day I’ll be secularly gay-married.
Christians rarely complain about non-christians celebrating christmas but wrong, but some christians are quite vocal about gay marriage being an affront to god or whatever. I wonder if it’s because Christians understand that there’s “christmas” (the capitalist funtimes holiday) and then there’s Christmas (the religious holy day). Maybe this understanding can be extended to marriage as well.
Either way, as someone who doesn’t really understand religion and is happy to let other people do their own thing, it doesn’t bother me if there are churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages. I can understand that perhaps a baker shouldn’t be allowed to reject a making gay wedding cake on homophobic grounds, but I think it’s a tougher sell for me that religious congregations should be forced to do same-sex marriages. But again, I don’t care strongly either way.
Yeah, that’s a good point about Christmas. I guess the reality of whether something is religious or not really just depends on the way that it’s practiced culturally. I feel like the majority of marriages still involve altars and vows and all of the Christian trappings, so I think that they have a lot more of their original Christianity retained than Christmas does… Especially since the most iconic elements of Christmas were pilfered from earlier religions (which probably contributes to why Christians don’t want to complain about it that much).
It really is as simple as just having a clear distinction between secular and religious marriage like you said. I think that if someone is licensed to perform a legal marriage, they should not be able to turn down a customer on account of them being gay. But I do agree that a religious marriage should be able to turn down gay people. The problem of course, is that the boundaries between the two are so muddied - and it’s only the Christians that are doing the muddying. I used to be more of the " let them do their own thing" type of atheist, but I think the real key thing to watch out for there is that a core tenet of most religions involves spreading itself to others whether they like it or not. They believe they have a moral imperative authority over your private behavior. It kind of reminds me of the bugs in Factorio if you’ve ever played that. Like, at first it seems fine for me to just let them chill and breed their little hive off in the corner of the map, since we both leave each other alone. But the problem is that the intrinsic nature of those bugs is that they’ll eventually come and fuck up my factory - they can’t and won’t leave me alone. When it comes to Christianity at least, I’ve started to see it more like this:
If they’re leaving me alone right now, it’s just because they’re incubating power to force upon me later.
Cough I think you might not have considered things from the bugs’ perspective.
An alien vessel lands with an explosion. Within days, the air is full of pollution, the trees are all dead, and the water has turned a nauseating green. The source? A rapidly expanding Von-Neumann machine, with flying robots carrying materials around to make more flying robots and more factory and more pollution, and is on track to cover the entire surface of the planet, if not more. It will surely destroy life as we know it. It’s a Lovecraftian horror: incomprehensible, casually omnicidal, and it came out of nowhere.
I love Factorio. It gives me real are we the baddies? vibes.
Hah, I should have known better than to pull an example from something I’ve only played a little of. But you’re right, from the bug’s perspective, the humans are like the bugs. And indeed, this analogy hits on many of the problems with what I’m saying.
First of all. Thank you so much for refusing to fight against strawman arguments and putting forward what people actually believe. It’s much more productive, and interesting to talk about. I hate religion and I hate their stupid arguments, but I wish that criticisms would focus on the stupid arguments they actually make, instead of stupid arguments they don’t make.
On the marriage front, and I know it’s not your beliefs I’m rebutting here, that argument has always especially bothered me. Because it’s like. Yes, actually, I do think gay marriage is nonsensical. Marriage is indeed a religious concept, and all of the religions that promote it condemn homosexuality. I hate marriage in general and wish nobody would get married. Yet it still happens, why? Why do gay people even care about being married then?
Primarily, it’s because the Christians forced their religious construct to become so intertwined with legal and financial benefits that are otherwise unobtainable, that you put yourself at an objective disadvantage as a couple, economically, medically, legally, if you do not get married. The problem is that once marriage passed from the religious conceptual realm where it gestated, and into the political sphere, it should have become a separate, secular concept under the idea of separation of church and state. But of course the Christians can’t accept that kind of compromise either. They want to have it all, all, all. So if Christians didn’t want gay people to want to get married, then they shouldn’t have enshrined their religious concept unfairly above others in the governmental system. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, motherfuckers.
This presupposes that marriage is a strictly religious tradition - which is false. Marriage as a concept exists across many cultures sometimes as a religious tradition and sometimes as a civil one or as a swearing of personal oaths.
It is also not strictly a thing that all religions abhor same sex unions or do not have traditional same sex marriage as a thing. There are a number of Indigenous religions across the world which have gay marriage as a feature, new religions can factor them in as valid or existing religious sects can change. Bans on gay marriage force the state to adopt the traditional Christian stance on marriage at the exclusion of other religions and cultural traditions… While also denying a number of functions at a civil level such as spousal benefits, rights regarding legal decisions, visitation rights in hospitals and so on.
I don’t agree that marriage is strictly a religious thing. It’s for the same reason I also don’t think that Christmas is a strictly religious thing. I’m not religious, and even if I were, my parents’ religion is not christianity. Despite this, I celebrate a secular Christmas. Gifts are given, mirth is enjoyed, and various other traditions observed. Perhaps some day I’ll be secularly gay-married.
Christians rarely complain about non-christians celebrating christmas but wrong, but some christians are quite vocal about gay marriage being an affront to god or whatever. I wonder if it’s because Christians understand that there’s “christmas” (the capitalist funtimes holiday) and then there’s Christmas (the religious holy day). Maybe this understanding can be extended to marriage as well.
Either way, as someone who doesn’t really understand religion and is happy to let other people do their own thing, it doesn’t bother me if there are churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages. I can understand that perhaps a baker shouldn’t be allowed to reject a making gay wedding cake on homophobic grounds, but I think it’s a tougher sell for me that religious congregations should be forced to do same-sex marriages. But again, I don’t care strongly either way.
Yeah, that’s a good point about Christmas. I guess the reality of whether something is religious or not really just depends on the way that it’s practiced culturally. I feel like the majority of marriages still involve altars and vows and all of the Christian trappings, so I think that they have a lot more of their original Christianity retained than Christmas does… Especially since the most iconic elements of Christmas were pilfered from earlier religions (which probably contributes to why Christians don’t want to complain about it that much).
It really is as simple as just having a clear distinction between secular and religious marriage like you said. I think that if someone is licensed to perform a legal marriage, they should not be able to turn down a customer on account of them being gay. But I do agree that a religious marriage should be able to turn down gay people. The problem of course, is that the boundaries between the two are so muddied - and it’s only the Christians that are doing the muddying. I used to be more of the " let them do their own thing" type of atheist, but I think the real key thing to watch out for there is that a core tenet of most religions involves spreading itself to others whether they like it or not. They believe they have a moral imperative authority over your private behavior. It kind of reminds me of the bugs in Factorio if you’ve ever played that. Like, at first it seems fine for me to just let them chill and breed their little hive off in the corner of the map, since we both leave each other alone. But the problem is that the intrinsic nature of those bugs is that they’ll eventually come and fuck up my factory - they can’t and won’t leave me alone. When it comes to Christianity at least, I’ve started to see it more like this:
If they’re leaving me alone right now, it’s just because they’re incubating power to force upon me later.
Cough I think you might not have considered things from the bugs’ perspective.
An alien vessel lands with an explosion. Within days, the air is full of pollution, the trees are all dead, and the water has turned a nauseating green. The source? A rapidly expanding Von-Neumann machine, with flying robots carrying materials around to make more flying robots and more factory and more pollution, and is on track to cover the entire surface of the planet, if not more. It will surely destroy life as we know it. It’s a Lovecraftian horror: incomprehensible, casually omnicidal, and it came out of nowhere.
I love Factorio. It gives me real are we the baddies? vibes.
Hah, I should have known better than to pull an example from something I’ve only played a little of. But you’re right, from the bug’s perspective, the humans are like the bugs. And indeed, this analogy hits on many of the problems with what I’m saying.