Marriage in today's society

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I take the position that when you step into sacred territory, you are under sacred covenant. That's why I argue for a different term for those that want God and that which is sacred to be specifically excluded from the union in question.

I don't see where I said that. In fact, I've even tried to differentiate between sacred and civil unions...

But to the Religious (Abrahamic religions, anyway), Adam and Eve were the first humans, which placed marriage square in the hands of Religion...

And those same tax breaks could be extended to alternative unions with little fuss and fanfare, but it's been rejected...

 

Not wanting to beat a dead horse, but you said it right here:

You seemed to be calling any union sacred, and not excluding civil unions from this.

But it appears that it was just a poor choice of words on your part, as I acknowledged in the part of my earlier post that you didn't bother to include in your quote.

 

Realistically though, there were cavemen and the like, and they had no bibles until someone got around to inventing written language, so some of them must have been married long before they heard about what the bible has to say about it.

 

While I agree with what you're saying, HB, that's basically the difference between creationism and evolution. Those who believe in god deny that cavemen evolved into modern-day humans. Adam and Eve were the first, and the bible simply put into writing the rules that god made from the outset (I think).

 

That's a bit hard to answer and an accurate answer would require a great deal of detail, but basically, a valid marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman and while the sacramental quality belongs only to a valid Christian marriage (in a certain sense it is as if the sacramental quality "attaches" to a valid marriage, although the tie is more intrinsic, since exclusion of sacramentality prevents validity for Christians), I wouldn't want to go as far as to say that there is "nothing sacred" about say, a bona fide courthouse marriage of two people who intentions and disposition make for a valid marriage.

Abstinence is not a contraceptive. A contraceptive is something which allows you to have sex without the female partner becoming pregnant. Abstinence is not having sex at all, so it starts a level before. And I'm not talking about the kind of "abstinence" which does everything but going the whole way.

I reject the proposition that being a responsible adult necessitates being proficient in the use of contraceptives. People should be responsible about sex in the first place and contraceptives aren't even the right way to approach it.

The good way to be responsible about sex is to have sex in a permanent partnership in which both partners will be parents, i.e. marriage, and only when one is ready to have children.

Those teenagers who were examined did not keep their abstinence, but putting contraceptives in the story is like talking about trade wind in the context of arctic climate. Contraceptives come from a different system of values and rest on different premises.

The only successful method is abstinence and only if it is kept. Individuals choosing not to keep it does not make the method bad. Humans make choices. One of those is to have sex or not.

Sexual education reducing the purpose of human sexuality to avoiding unwanted pregnancy - and avoiding STD as a bonus goal - begins from the wrong end. Children are not our enemies and procreation is a natural result of sexual intercourse. Contraception is preventing that natural result so that people could enjoy their pleasure without consequences, and in many ways an illusion.

See above.

"Pledge" is not a contraceptive. We're talking about people who believe premarital sex to be wrong on moral grounds. They already accept a moral obligation not to do it and that pledge is only a public reinforced recognition of that already existent moral duty. But the values stay the same and so likely does the observance.

Safer? The only safe way to avoid STD is having sex only with a person you're married to and the other person doing the same. It would be a very sad thing to see a married couple that can't trust each other on this one. As for unwanted sex, again, children are not a danger and are not a hostile force that invades our safety.

Skills to do things one considers immoral? Learning how to do something you consider immoral is already a breach of a moral duty which one recognises.

I don't like the way unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lumped together. Avoiding disease is one thing, avoiding pregnancy is another.

The 50 cent argument won't work.

If I care enough about a woman, I marry her and then have sex responsibly, i.e. without an obsessive fear that a natural consequence of sexual intercourse, which is a child, will somehow ruin our lives. If I care for her but don't want to marry her, the care requires not having sex with her. In short, if I care about a woman, I don't reduce her to providing sexual pleasure to me, but deal with an integral person.

Yes, that is what the law mandates. That is what a secular marriage is according to the law. Doesn't mean it's marriage.

The point is to be responsible for one's actions and for the other person as well - and yes, loving, kind, charitable. Without that, there's no love, there's only sex.

There we'd disagree - a step into a sacred territory might well be an infringement of it and infringement is not a covenant, in fact, infringement in this case happens by entering into that territory without there being a covenant.

Correct, but God already existed before the Bible.

If they were human enough to have a soul, they may well have been married. The Bible, however, wasn't a one-time compendium of all you need to know or do before which nothing happened. The same message existed long before it was put in writing and God already existed. Creation began before evolution started.

 

OK, so far so good. But…

and:

and:

But then there’s your reply to Gnarff regarding an implied covenant:

So given the last quote, I don’t think I should be placing you in the same sinking boat as Gnarff regarding covenants. However, I have two questions:

1. What makes a courthouse marriage intrinsically sacred? (Or putting it another way, what do you mean by “sacred”? I acknowledge that I might not fully grasp what is meant by "sacred".)
2. Is it the use of the word “marriage” that makes such a union sacred?

You don’t have to be married in order for the other criteria to be met.

(And BTW, you attributed the second-last quote (anthropologist) in your post to me, but it was actually HB’s)

 

What about stone age tribes in the depths of the Papua New Guinea rainforest? They probably had marriage for millenia long before there were any priests to ordain their unions, therefore it's a bit rough to say they have been hijacking the sacred Christian concept of marriage for their own heathen purposes.

 

How can it be denied? I thought that was taken as a given that cavemen evolved from apes and humans evolved with cavemen? It is not proven? Surely religion can't just close it's eyes and shake it's head to the facts, that's just another way to lose credibility, surely? Genuine confusion.

 

This isn't exactly true. Some sects do believe this, but some groups (like myself) don't. In terms of the steps gone through, I basically believe in evolution. It's far from 100%, but I think it's got the right concept. The problem I have with evolution is that it relies on 'random mutation'. Believing in the guiding hand of God kind of eliminates the 'random' thing, but then a lot of evidence today is putting holes in that as well.