Does The Government Have The Right To Rule On Gay Marriage?

[Winchester]

If evil exists it's a pair of train tracks,

and the Devil is a railroad car

[Socrates]

But marriages are sexual, and in that vein there are very good reasons for siblings not to marry. If you're wanting the same tax benefits by sticking with your sibling, that would be something else entirely, but not marriage.  

 

Bingo.

 

Marriage has always been between a man and a woman because only union of man and woman has the potential of creating new human life, and marriage forms the best foundation for the family, involving the raising of one's offspring.

 

 

But if you want to redefine "marriage" to include other groupings of persons, why does it have to involve sexual activity at all?  Why does engaging in genital activity with a homosexual partner entitle one to legal or tax benefits while simple brotherly (or sisterly) love does not?

 

We believe marriage does in fact have a real specific meaning, beyond merely a legal contract between any consenting adults, but it seems inconsistent to try to argue that homosexual relationships are entitled to legal recognition as marriage, but non-sexual relationships are not.

[Socrates]

Speaking purely as a history lover, that is a completely un-historical title. It uses a series of plastic words (Christianity, Freedom, Capitalism, Western, Success) and throws them together in a 2,000 year stew that encompasses the histories of a whole lot of different nations, people, events, and ideas and conveniently links them all together. An equivalent title would be "The Victory of Cheese: How Greek Farming led to Milk Moustaches, Free Cartons of Milk at School, and Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Apparitions." It also fallaciously paints the past as an embryonic form of the present, which it is not. Even the idea of "Christian civilization" is philosophical, not historical, as is "western success." Muslim empires were wildly successful before Western Europe really became anything resembling a "civilization" (and Byzantium was still thriving, legitimately, as the Roman Empire).

 

I don't know if the book is propaganda, but the title sure is. Hopefully, it was selected by the publishers and not the author, because it doesn't reflect well on the book's historiography from the get go.

 

I meant that you (or whoever) should actually read the book, not just read the title, and make an ill-informed critique based on your interpretation of it.

 

If you actually read it, you'd see that the title is not so wildly inaccurate as you suppose.  I don't have time to re-cap the whole book for you, but Dr. Stark doesn't claim medieval Christendom was the same as a modern liberal democracy, but does show how many ideas and things we take for granted in the modern liberal (in the classic sense) world actually had their roots in medieval Christian civilization.

It's not mere coincidence that modern civilization which came to dominate the world grew out of Christian Europe, rather than other, non-Christian parts of the world.

 

Dr. Stark's thought here is hardly unique to him. (Thomas Woods also has some good stuff on related subjects.)  I just recommended his books in particular because he's not a religious believer.

[Era Might]

It's not mere coincidence that modern civilization which came to dominate the world grew out of Christian Europe, rather than other, non-Christian parts of the world.

 

Yes, but you leave out an important side of that coin: it grew out of the secularization of Christian Europe, no longer operating in a world of Divine intervention (plagues, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, avenging angels, powerful patron saints, etc.), but a world of method and reason. And the learning of Christian Europe grew out of pagan Greece and Rome, and greatly depended on the Muslim world to hand over that learning in the early Middle Ages, when Muslim intellectuals were already using it in medicine, etc. The modern world is a world of technique, science, reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with the real Christian business of saints, miracles, prophecies, etc. (all the great stuff we love about the middle ages). The Protestant Reformation was also just as important as secularization in the making of modern civilization, forever severing the Catholic civilization of the Middle Ages.

 

 

Dr. Stark's thought here is hardly unique to him. (Thomas Woods also has some good stuff on related subjects.)  I just recommended his books in particular because he's not a religious believer.

 

He's also not an historian. Anyway, we don't have to debate the merits or demerits of a book I haven't read, but the bad use of history is just something I really really hate.

 

Edited January 2, 2015 by Era Might

[4588686]

I meant that you (or whoever) should actually read the book, not just read the title, and make an ill-informed critique based on your interpretation of it.

 

If you actually read it, you'd see that the title is not so wildly inaccurate as you suppose.  I don't have time to re-cap the whole book for you, but Dr. Stark doesn't claim medieval Christendom was the same as a modern liberal democracy, but does show how many ideas and things we take for granted in the modern liberal (in the classic sense) world actually had their roots in medieval Christian civilization.

It's not mere coincidence that modern civilization which came to dominate the world grew out of Christian Europe, rather than other, non-Christian parts of the world.

 

Dr. Stark's thought here is hardly unique to him. (Thomas Woods also has some good stuff on related subjects.)  I just recommended his books in particular because he's not a religious believer.

 

 

He's not a historian. He's also not an atheist. 

 

I'm not really interested in reading that sort of book. I generally don't read popular non-fiction. The exception being the occasional popular work by an actual specialist in the area who is trying to make the material more accessible to a lay audience.  

 

Any book written by a non-specialist arguing thesis for a popular audience is almost guaranteed to be [i][color=#ff0000]the essence of cow[/color][/i].  See Malcolm Gladwell. Or Thomas Woods. Et cetera. 

 

Really, anybody who is trying to advance a thesis in an academic field by pushing the argument just to a lay audience should be treated with a great deal of suspicion. If they don't feel confident enough of their findings to push it to other people who are experts in the area there's probably a reason. 

 

Generally speaking, the only popular non-fiction worth reading is structured something like 'Hello, I'm an expert in this area, here is my interpretation of the subject matter as I can explain it to a lay audience, some people disagree, here is my assessment of their argument but here is why other experts disagree'

 

Anything else is almost certainly a snake oil salesman. 

Edited January 2, 2015 by Hasan

[4588686]

 

Yes, but you leave out an important side of that coin: it grew out of the secularization of Christian Europe, no longer operating in a world of Divine intervention (plagues, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, avenging angels, powerful patron saints, etc.), but a world of method and reason. And the learning of Christian Europe grew out of pagan Greece and Rome, and greatly depended on the Muslim world to hand over that learning in the early Middle Ages, when Muslim intellectuals were already using it in medicine, etc. The modern world is a world of technique, science, reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with the real Christian business of saints, miracles, prophecies, etc. (all the great stuff we love about the middle ages). The Protestant Reformation was also just as important as secularization in the making of modern civilization, forever severing the Catholic civilization of the Middle Ages.

 

 

 

He's also not an historian. Anyway, we don't have to debate the merits or demerits of a book I haven't read, but the bad use of history is just something I really really hate.

 

 

Exactly

[xSilverPhinx]

Bingo.

 

Marriage has always been between a man and a woman because only union of man and woman has the potential of creating new human life, and marriage forms the best foundation for the family, involving the raising of one's offspring.

 

 

But if you want to redefine "marriage" to include other groupings of persons, why does it have to involve sexual activity at all?  Why does engaging in genital activity with a homosexual partner entitle one to legal or tax benefits while simple brotherly (or sisterly) love does not?

 

We believe marriage does in fact have a real specific meaning, beyond merely a legal contract between any consenting adults, but it seems inconsistent to try to argue that homosexual relationships are entitled to legal recognition as marriage, but non-sexual relationships are not.

 

 

So what's the official Catholic view on marriage between brother and sister? They have the potential to create new life, should they be able to marry?  

[SaintOfVirtue]

So what's the official Catholic view on marriage between brother and sister? They have the potential to create new life, should they be able to marry?

 
 
"Incest designates intimate relations between relatives or in-laws within a degree that prohibits marriage between them. St. Paul stigmatizes this especially grave offense: “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you... for a man is living with his father’s wife.... In the name of the Lord Jesus... you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh....” Incest corrupts family relationships and marks a regression toward animality." (CCC 2388)

[Socrates]

 

Yes, but you leave out an important side of that coin: it grew out of the secularization of Christian Europe, no longer operating in a world of Divine intervention (plagues, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, avenging angels, powerful patron saints, etc.), but a world of method and reason. And the learning of Christian Europe grew out of pagan Greece and Rome, and greatly depended on the Muslim world to hand over that learning in the early Middle Ages, when Muslim intellectuals were already using it in medicine, etc. The modern world is a world of technique, science, reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with the real Christian business of saints, miracles, prophecies, etc. (all the great stuff we love about the middle ages). The Protestant Reformation was also just as important as secularization in the making of modern civilization, forever severing the Catholic civilization of the Middle Ages.

 

 

 

He's also not an historian. Anyway, we don't have to debate the merits or demerits of a book I haven't read, but the bad use of history is just something I really really hate.

 

 

Yes, it's indeed silly and pointless to try to critique or argue against a book you've never read.  If you're really interested, you can always read the book, and then point out specifically where you think he's wrong and why.  Otherwise, you're just wasting time and attacking strawmen.

 

Dr. Stark has a PhD in sociology of religion, which cannot really be separated from history, and backs up all his statements with citations from numerous historical works.  In any case, he shows a lot more historical research and scholarship than is displayed by anyone in the pm peanut gallery.

 

He doesn't deny or ignore the contributions of pagan philosophers and Muslim scholars (nor does anyone else I've read), but points out how scientific inquiry and discovery in Christian Europe grew and surpassed them both by far, while Muslim science ultimately stagnated.  He credits Christian belief in the rationality of material creation and the goodness of inquiry into the natural world.  Much of the intellectual and scientific development in medieval Europe was in fact conducted by Catholic monks.  The Catholic Church never regarded faith as opposed to reason, but regarded faith and reason as partners, and supported learning.

Both the practice and theory of what would later become known as "free market capitalism" were first developed in medieval Italy, and spread to northern Europe.  

Much of what created modern civilization was not created ex nihilo in the enlightenment, but had roots in earlier Christian/Catholic thought.  Most modern scholars of medieval history reject the ignorant notion that the Christian middle ages were nothing but darkness and ignorance.

But if you've decided beforehand that nothing good can come out of Christianity, that reflects your own bias, rather than history or scholarship.

[Socrates]

 

 

He's not a historian. He's also not an atheist. 

 

I'm not really interested in reading that sort of book. I generally don't read popular non-fiction. The exception being the occasional popular work by an actual specialist in the area who is trying to make the material more accessible to a lay audience.  

 

Any book written by a non-specialist arguing thesis for a popular audience is almost guaranteed to be the essence of cow.  See Malcolm Gladwell. Or Thomas Woods. Et cetera. 

 

Really, anybody who is trying to advance a thesis in an academic field by pushing the argument just to a lay audience should be treated with a great deal of suspicion. If they don't feel confident enough of their findings to push it to other people who are experts in the area there's probably a reason. 

 

Generally speaking, the only popular non-fiction worth reading is structured something like 'Hello, I'm an expert in this area, here is my interpretation of the subject matter as I can explain it to a lay audience, some people disagree, here is my assessment of their argument but here is why other experts disagree'

 

Anything else is almost certainly a snake oil salesman. 

 

Of course.  No academic egghead worth his salt would ever have a good reason to come down from the ivory tower and write anything for us Great Unwashed Masses, and anyone who does so is obviously a liar and fraud and can be disregarded immediately.  (Unless of course, his work has the special approval of Hasan.)

 

Of course, the cheap (and ignorant) ad hominem is a lot easier than actual reading and research and addressing and making real arguments.  (I know.  I've been guilty myself.)

 

But using your own rigorous scholarly standards, I can confidently disregard everything you post as pure bs from the hack and fraud that you are.  Good day, sir.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Socrates

[Socrates]

So what's the official Catholic view on marriage between brother and sister? They have the potential to create new life, should they be able to marry?  

 

The official Catholic view is that incestuous marriages are not allowed, for reasons cited by SaintofVirtue and some you can probably surmise itself.

 

It does not follow from the fact that the Church only recognizes unions of man and woman as marriage, that it thinks that every man should be able to marry absolutely any woman (and vise-versa).

[4588686]

Of course.  No academic egghead worth his salt would ever have a good reason to come down from the ivory tower and write anything for us Great Unwashed Masses, and anyone who does so is obviously a liar and fraud and can be disregarded immediately.  (Unless of course, his work has the special approval of Hasan.)

 

Of course, the cheap (and ignorant) ad hominem is a lot easier than actual reading and research and addressing and making real arguments.  (I know.  I've been guilty myself.)

 

But using your own rigorous scholarly standards, I can confidently disregard everything you post as pure bs from the hack and fraud that you are.  Good day, sir.

 

I'm not selling anything. So you either completely missed the point or are practicing purposeful obfuscation. As usual it's impossible to tell. 

 

I think that it's great when academics make their research generally available. My favorite economist regularly writes reviews on Amazon.

 

Here he takes down Krugman's work: http://www.amazon.com/review/R26YBOD86NQRGB

 

And I think it's good when academics write popular works that explain their field. I'm currently reading A Capitalism for the People by Luigi Zingales. It's a good book. Because I'm capable of basic critical thinking I recognize that there is an incentive for him to be misleading since he's a Republican pushing an agenda and writing for an audience that knows much less about the subject then he does (as would any author working in a similar incentive system, the same is true Paul Krugman). However he's writing within his field and most of his popular ideas have been published in academic journals and he engages on his ideas with other people who disagree with him but have a comparable level of expertise. 

 

Someone who regularly writes outside of his own field, for a lay audience in a way that affirms their beliefs, and avoids publishing his controversial ideas in an arena where it will be vetted by people who are experts in the field, and is making a profit from his work, should very quickly alert the bs meter of anybody who is capable of basic critical thinking.

 

This is not a partisan point. Richard Wolff is a Marxist economist who appears on PBS and other left leaning outlets/outlets with a predominately liberal audience. He also publishes books in this field. He's a real economist. Accredited. He does not publish his ideas (the one he's selling, he has published respectable work on other subjects in journals)in academic journals because, as anyone with any sort of higher than average knowledge would know, the ideas he was pushing were discredited in the 1990's and early 2000's

 

However there's a sucker born every day so he makes a nice profit. 

[Era Might]

Yes, it's indeed silly and pointless to try to critique or argue against a book you've never read.  If you're really interested, you can always read the book, and then point out specifically where you think he's wrong and why.  Otherwise, you're just wasting time and attacking strawmen.

 

Dr. Stark has a PhD in sociology of religion, which cannot really be separated from history, and backs up all his statements with citations from numerous historical works.  In any case, he shows a lot more historical research and scholarship than is displayed by anyone in the pm peanut gallery.

 

He doesn't deny or ignore the contributions of pagan philosophers and Muslim scholars (nor does anyone else I've read), but points out how scientific inquiry and discovery in Christian Europe grew and surpassed them both by far, while Muslim science ultimately stagnated.  He credits Christian belief in the rationality of material creation and the goodness of inquiry into the natural world.  Much of the intellectual and scientific development in medieval Europe was in fact conducted by Catholic monks.  The Catholic Church never regarded faith as opposed to reason, but regarded faith and reason as partners, and supported learning.

Both the practice and theory of what would later become known as "free market capitalism" were first developed in medieval Italy, and spread to northern Europe.  

Much of what created modern civilization was not created ex nihilo in the enlightenment, but had roots in earlier Christian/Catholic thought.  Most modern scholars of medieval history reject the ignorant notion that the Christian middle ages were nothing but darkness and ignorance.

But if you've decided beforehand that nothing good can come out of Christianity, that reflects your own bias, rather than history or scholarship.

 

lol. Who said that nothing good can come out of Christianity? I simply rejected a stupid, unhistorical, ideological title. If a book's title can't even be historically credible, why would I waste my time when there are so many books out there to read.

 

And you are correct about the "Dark Ages." In fact, I just read a book on the subject, "The Inheritance of Rome" by by Christopher Wickham (who is an actual historian, and whose command of his subject is massive). His central thesis is that the Western "Dark Ages" were neither alien to Roman civilization (they carried on much of it), and neither were the Dark Ages the embryo of Christian Europe, Free Market Capitalism, or anything else. Each age exists on its own terms, which he explores in great detail, from the Carolingian/Ottonian empires in the West, to Byzantium, to the Ummayad/Abbasid Caliphates.

 

Lots of things have roots in Christian/Catholic thinkers. How could they not? Religion dominated the Middle Ages and the revolt from it. Lots of great things have been influenced by Christian thinkers. But it's a giant leap from that to making an ideological metanarrative about "free market capitalism" when the vast majority of Christian/Catholic society were peasants. For a "revealed religion" it's not much of a boast to say it took 1300 years to begin developing vague concepts like "free market capitalism." What a curiousity that Christianity happened to wait until the world started secularizing to invent modern bourgeois civilization (which is not, in fact, true, the church was a great enemy of bourgeois individualism and liberty).

Edited January 4, 2015 by Era Might

[Era Might]

But if you've decided beforehand that nothing good can come out of Christianity, that reflects your own bias, rather than history or scholarship.

 

I prefer not to make my philosophical mothers into whores, breeding all kinds of illegitimate children. Christianity/Catholicism as a political philosophy is distinct from the history of Christian/Catholic societies. I consider myself part of a broad anarchist tradition with many roots in Christian/Catholic thought (St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Leo XIII, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther, etc.). But I appropriate history to create my story of the world, I don't try to present my philosophical synthesis as a scientific historical narrative. You probably would have been killed under Charlemagne, who was crowned by the Pope, for your modern political ideas. The difference between medieval thought and modern science is that modern science is not a synthesis. The great project of the middle ages was to create a great synthesis of human meaning. Everything had a purpose in the Middle Ages, and society was an imperfect attempt to incarnate this harmonious vision of creation, from the Pope down to Peasant, all had a purpose, which inspired things like guilds, universities, etc.. This had nothing to do with "Free Market Capitalism" which eventually broke apart the Catholic civilization of the Middle Ages. Modern civilization is not a perfected Catholic social idea but something that has absolutely nothing to do with Catholic civilization. I happen to cherish much of that philosophical vision of the Catholic Middle Ages, which I think had some important philosophical perspectives which have not been entirely lost (e.g., through Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker). But I don't accept ideological narratives, however "well-researched," that try to impose a teleological view of history. I agree with Tolstoy's argument in "War and Peace" that it's futile to speak of "causes" in history:

 

Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusade—the deliverance of Jerusalem—had been clearly defined by historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has remained unknown.

Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the life of the peoples.

The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.

If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not the history of the life of the peoples.

 

Edited January 5, 2015 by Era Might

[Socrates]

I'm not selling anything. So you either completely missed the point or are practicing purposeful obfuscation. As usual it's impossible to tell. 

 

I think that it's great when academics make their research generally available. My favorite economist regularly writes reviews on Amazon.

 

Here he takes down Krugman's work: http://www.amazon.com/review/R26YBOD86NQRGB

 

And I think it's good when academics write popular works that explain their field. I'm currently reading A Capitalism for the People by Luigi Zingales. It's a good book. Because I'm capable of basic critical thinking I recognize that there is an incentive for him to be misleading since he's a Republican pushing an agenda and writing for an audience that knows much less about the subject then he does (as would any author working in a similar incentive system, the same is true Paul Krugman). However he's writing within his field and most of his popular ideas have been published in academic journals and he engages on his ideas with other people who disagree with him but have a comparable level of expertise. 

 

Someone who regularly writes outside of his own field, for a lay audience in a way that affirms their beliefs, and avoids publishing his controversial ideas in an arena where it will be vetted by people who are experts in the field, and is making a profit from his work, should very quickly alert the bs meter of anybody who is capable of basic critical thinking.

 

This is not a partisan point. Richard Wolff is a Marxist economist who appears on PBS and other left leaning outlets/outlets with a predominately liberal audience. He also publishes books in this field. He's a real economist. Accredited. He does not publish his ideas (the one he's selling, he has published respectable work on other subjects in journals)in academic journals because, as anyone with any sort of higher than average knowledge would know, the ideas he was pushing were discredited in the 1990's and early 2000's

 

However there's a sucker born every day so he makes a nice profit. 

 

As usual, you've simply called names and made accusations ("snake oil salesman," etc.) based on a book you haven't read, on a topic you yourself haven't a clue about.  You dismiss the book offhand for being insufficiently scholarly, while providing nothing remotely scholarly to back up your own claims.

 

It's just like every idiot who posts "reviews" trashing a book on Amazon they admit they never read, because the premise disagrees with their own pet ideology - they have nothing to contribute and only succeed in looking like an idiot.