(October 24, 2013 at 3:00 am)Owlix Wrote: I only ask because marriage only exists because of religion. I've spoken to some people who are atheist and they think it's a load of bullocks, won't consider it even. I've spoken to others who said just the same as you.
I think the concept of a social commitment can be practical, and there do exist species of animals that mate for life. Perhaps where religion has gone off the rails is not in codifying the social commitment, but in demanding that it be permanent. Thus you get many people who stay in broken or unhappy marriages that should probably have gone their separate ways. Being bitter and miserable because you're with someone you've grown to hate and believe that you must stay together could certainly compel a child to avoid marriage when he grows older.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
