Will the churches be “forced” to perform the weddings against their core beliefs? Separation works both ways or at least it’s supposed to? Keep the government out of religion and keep religion out of government.
“Marriage” is only both a religious sacrament and a civil contract because the church was once the source of literate record-keeping, but there have been civil governments for about the last 500 years, and the United States was specifically set up such that religious leaders were not civil authorities.
Thus you can obtain a legal marriage at the town hall without ever having to go into a church, much less get the permission of a religious leader.
It’s probably pointless to try to add to this discussion, but I’m a sucker. Of course I agree with DrC for the most part, but here’s a point he may or may not agree with: There is no foundation. I think that’s what gives exoticdoc the willies — he needs a foundation or else he feels lost. Personally, I don’t need a foundation.+For example, for a long time mathematicians thought that the axioms of Euclid were foundational. Then gradually they began to realize that the fifth axiom, the parallels axiom, wasn’t necessary, and they developed non-Euclidean geometries, which are just as good as Euclidean geometries, and for some purposes better. There is no foundation. But math works just fine anyway. You pick the math you need to do the job at hand.+Here’s another example: modular arithmetic. In ordinary arithmetic, 11 + 3 would equal 14, but in modulus 12, 11+3 = 2 — that’s why if it’s 11 o’clock now, in three hours it will be 2 o’clock, not 14 o’clock (in a twelve-hour culture). There is no foundation. You pick which arithmetic you need to do the job. Sometimes we think of time as a cycle, so we need a modular arithmetic. Other times, we think of it as linear, and then we use linear arithmetic.+One reason we don’t need a foundation is that we grow into the world. When we are born we are not faced with abstract problems of reasoning to solve. We are faced with life. We grow into life, and we make terms with it. Reason is a great tool for coming to terms with life, but it’s not the only tool we have. We also have, for example, empathy, the ability to imagine the feelings of other people. It’s important to give children the tool of reason, but it’s just as important, perhaps more important, to give them the tool of empathy. A person who has good empathy is likely to be moral; but I’ve known some good reasoners who were not moral. (I knew a kid who was probably what you’d call a mathematical genius, but he ended up in an institution for the criminally insane because he didn’t have empathy.)+Also, not all moral problems have easy or obvious solutions. Some people really need to know the answer, and they need to know it now. I don’t. I’m willing to live with a certain degree of uncertainty — good thing, because as I understand the world, I don’t understand the world. That is, I think there’s uncertainly all over. For instance, is nuclear power a good option now? (I take this as a moral problem.) Well, there are good arguments on both sides, and for now I have to say I’m undecided.+Way too much. I’ve got work to do today. See you tonight.
I can see why you would think that I’m making empathy foundational, but I don’t think that’s what I mean to do. We may be running into the difficulties caused by the metaphorical aspect of language. The term “foundation” tends to encourage images of buildings: there’s one foundation for a building, it’s at the bottom, and the rest of the building is built on top of it. You certainly don’t want your foundations to leak. And without a foundation, the building collapses. There is a widespread assumption that everything has a foundation or should have a foundation. There lots of books with titles such as, “The Foundation of This and That”. I can see on my bookshelf right now A. J. Ayer’s “Foundations of Empirical Knowledge”. I don’t believe that empirical knowledge has a foundation. There are lots of things in the world that don’t have foundations. Clouds, for instance, don’t have foundations, and they do quite well without them. A sweater doesn’t have a foundation. I sometimes think that science is more like a sweater than it is like a building. Sweaters are networks, they are pretty flexible, and they can still be used even if there’s a little hole here or there. So I don’t mean that empathy is the foundation of morality, in the way that a building has a foundation. I mean that empathy is one of the pieces of yarn that is needed in the weaving of moral thought. Reason is another piece of yarn. I would also say that some knowledge of history and anthropology would add to the design. All of these are woven together, but no one of them is the foundation.+The idea that there is no foundation is found, of course, in existentialism, and I admit that I have been influenced by some existentialists. But I have also been influenced by structuralists, who have a somewhat different take on the problem of foundations. (I trace the conflict between these two views back to the 1940s, at least, and I think there’s a very useful contrast between Sartre’s play “The Flies”, which is existentialist, and Anouilh’s play “Antigone”, which is structuralist). Sarte would say that people are free, because there is no human essence, but that freedom is not a happy condition, since it implies what he calls the absurd. That’s a simplification, but it will do for now. Structuralists, however, would say that people are not free. For instance, if you are playing chess, you are not free to move the bishop laterally. If you do move it laterally, you are no longer playing chess. And they would further argue that you are always playing some game or other. These games are what we call culture. You can stand outside of one culture or another, but you can never stand outside of “game”. In somewhat the same way, you can speak one language or another, but if you speak, you have to speak some language or another. You can never speak outside of language.+Again, enough. For exoticdoc, too much. But I have no empathy.
You know I’m a big, big fan of science. (My only footnote to your description would be that guesses can play a legitimate role in science, at the stage of forming hypotheses.) But:1. You’re right that I’m also interested in art — I spend my working hours, and most of my leisure hours, thinking about art of one kind or another — and the artistic perspective isn’t the same as the scientific perspective.2. But in addition, I think there are some real philosophic problems with, for instance, many forms of empiricism, and certainly with the application of empiricism to, say, moral questions. As an example of the first, I’m not convinced that there is a way to get from the observation of empirical particulars to categories. And as an example of the second, most philosophers would agree that you can’t get from “is” to “ought”.+But all of this, of course, has nothing to do with our joint disagreement with exoticdoc, who evidently hears the voice of god.
DaveBNM almost 11 years ago
Will the churches be “forced” to perform the weddings against their core beliefs? Separation works both ways or at least it’s supposed to? Keep the government out of religion and keep religion out of government.
Michael Peterson Premium Member almost 11 years ago
“Marriage” is only both a religious sacrament and a civil contract because the church was once the source of literate record-keeping, but there have been civil governments for about the last 500 years, and the United States was specifically set up such that religious leaders were not civil authorities.
Thus you can obtain a legal marriage at the town hall without ever having to go into a church, much less get the permission of a religious leader.
Anything else you missed in history class, Chip?
lonecat almost 11 years ago
I hear that Adam and Eve weren’t married — they were living in sin.
Dtroutma almost 11 years ago
Anyone care to guess how syphilis was introduced to the human population? Ah, yes, when men were men, and the sheep were nervous.
CorosiveFrog Premium Member almost 11 years ago
Shhhh….check it on wikipedia, I want to know if the holy rollers know which one it is!
lonecat almost 11 years ago
It’s probably pointless to try to add to this discussion, but I’m a sucker. Of course I agree with DrC for the most part, but here’s a point he may or may not agree with: There is no foundation. I think that’s what gives exoticdoc the willies — he needs a foundation or else he feels lost. Personally, I don’t need a foundation.+For example, for a long time mathematicians thought that the axioms of Euclid were foundational. Then gradually they began to realize that the fifth axiom, the parallels axiom, wasn’t necessary, and they developed non-Euclidean geometries, which are just as good as Euclidean geometries, and for some purposes better. There is no foundation. But math works just fine anyway. You pick the math you need to do the job at hand.+Here’s another example: modular arithmetic. In ordinary arithmetic, 11 + 3 would equal 14, but in modulus 12, 11+3 = 2 — that’s why if it’s 11 o’clock now, in three hours it will be 2 o’clock, not 14 o’clock (in a twelve-hour culture). There is no foundation. You pick which arithmetic you need to do the job. Sometimes we think of time as a cycle, so we need a modular arithmetic. Other times, we think of it as linear, and then we use linear arithmetic.+One reason we don’t need a foundation is that we grow into the world. When we are born we are not faced with abstract problems of reasoning to solve. We are faced with life. We grow into life, and we make terms with it. Reason is a great tool for coming to terms with life, but it’s not the only tool we have. We also have, for example, empathy, the ability to imagine the feelings of other people. It’s important to give children the tool of reason, but it’s just as important, perhaps more important, to give them the tool of empathy. A person who has good empathy is likely to be moral; but I’ve known some good reasoners who were not moral. (I knew a kid who was probably what you’d call a mathematical genius, but he ended up in an institution for the criminally insane because he didn’t have empathy.)+Also, not all moral problems have easy or obvious solutions. Some people really need to know the answer, and they need to know it now. I don’t. I’m willing to live with a certain degree of uncertainty — good thing, because as I understand the world, I don’t understand the world. That is, I think there’s uncertainly all over. For instance, is nuclear power a good option now? (I take this as a moral problem.) Well, there are good arguments on both sides, and for now I have to say I’m undecided.+Way too much. I’ve got work to do today. See you tonight.
lonecat almost 11 years ago
I can see why you would think that I’m making empathy foundational, but I don’t think that’s what I mean to do. We may be running into the difficulties caused by the metaphorical aspect of language. The term “foundation” tends to encourage images of buildings: there’s one foundation for a building, it’s at the bottom, and the rest of the building is built on top of it. You certainly don’t want your foundations to leak. And without a foundation, the building collapses. There is a widespread assumption that everything has a foundation or should have a foundation. There lots of books with titles such as, “The Foundation of This and That”. I can see on my bookshelf right now A. J. Ayer’s “Foundations of Empirical Knowledge”. I don’t believe that empirical knowledge has a foundation. There are lots of things in the world that don’t have foundations. Clouds, for instance, don’t have foundations, and they do quite well without them. A sweater doesn’t have a foundation. I sometimes think that science is more like a sweater than it is like a building. Sweaters are networks, they are pretty flexible, and they can still be used even if there’s a little hole here or there. So I don’t mean that empathy is the foundation of morality, in the way that a building has a foundation. I mean that empathy is one of the pieces of yarn that is needed in the weaving of moral thought. Reason is another piece of yarn. I would also say that some knowledge of history and anthropology would add to the design. All of these are woven together, but no one of them is the foundation.+The idea that there is no foundation is found, of course, in existentialism, and I admit that I have been influenced by some existentialists. But I have also been influenced by structuralists, who have a somewhat different take on the problem of foundations. (I trace the conflict between these two views back to the 1940s, at least, and I think there’s a very useful contrast between Sartre’s play “The Flies”, which is existentialist, and Anouilh’s play “Antigone”, which is structuralist). Sarte would say that people are free, because there is no human essence, but that freedom is not a happy condition, since it implies what he calls the absurd. That’s a simplification, but it will do for now. Structuralists, however, would say that people are not free. For instance, if you are playing chess, you are not free to move the bishop laterally. If you do move it laterally, you are no longer playing chess. And they would further argue that you are always playing some game or other. These games are what we call culture. You can stand outside of one culture or another, but you can never stand outside of “game”. In somewhat the same way, you can speak one language or another, but if you speak, you have to speak some language or another. You can never speak outside of language.+Again, enough. For exoticdoc, too much. But I have no empathy.
lonecat almost 11 years ago
You know I’m a big, big fan of science. (My only footnote to your description would be that guesses can play a legitimate role in science, at the stage of forming hypotheses.) But:1. You’re right that I’m also interested in art — I spend my working hours, and most of my leisure hours, thinking about art of one kind or another — and the artistic perspective isn’t the same as the scientific perspective.2. But in addition, I think there are some real philosophic problems with, for instance, many forms of empiricism, and certainly with the application of empiricism to, say, moral questions. As an example of the first, I’m not convinced that there is a way to get from the observation of empirical particulars to categories. And as an example of the second, most philosophers would agree that you can’t get from “is” to “ought”.+But all of this, of course, has nothing to do with our joint disagreement with exoticdoc, who evidently hears the voice of god.