The Future of Love. was Re: [extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change, biology, last post, post, etc.

[Robbie Lindauer]

On Jul 22, 2005, at 9:45 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote:

>>
>> The only, I think, reasonable dissenting view would be the purely 
>> religious objection that Marriage is a Sacred and Holy thing ordained 
>> by God.
>
> Huh?  Which God?  As apprehended or the purported wishes thereof 
> apprehended supposedly by whom? Many theological positions (several 
> Christian sects for instance) have no problem with gay marriage.   
> What I am getting at is how does adding in this or that groups 
> religious views constitute "reasonable" dissent?
>

In the rest of my post you may have seen my brief attempt at a genuine 
clarification my meaning of "reasonable dissenting view" which I'll 
repeat.

A reasonable dissenting view is one that is not -obviously- false and 
for which there is no available clearly falsifying evidence.  A 
convincing dissenting view would be one for which, in addition to there 
being no falsifying evidence, there is positive evidence.  So for 
instance, the theory that there is lots of dark matter in the universe 
is a reasonable view, but not a convincing view because we can't 
actually find any of it.  As long as there are other viable 
explanations for the evidence at hand, one theory is as good as the 
next.

So there are lots of religious and non-religious groups (modern 
Platonists come to mind) whose views are not -obviously- false and for 
which there is no -clearly falsifying evidence- who, on the basis of 
their faith (which can be rational faith - what one person calls faith 
another calls rationality) reject Gay Marriage for what they regard as 
-reasonable- reasons (say the personal revelation of God to some 
particular historical person, perhaps even themselves if they are 
prophets...).  Some of these also have some convincing evidence (maybe 
perhaps not on this particular issue which explains the wide-ranges of 
opinions on the matter even within specific religious communities).  I 
say not -obviously- false because, as far as I know, there is no clear 
argument that establishes any of:

    God does not exist.
    God doesn't care what people do.
    God doesn't have a preference for Heterosexual marriages.

Absent any such arguments, the religious person who believes that God 
does exist and cares what people do and prefers Heterosexual Marriages, 
has a legitimate point of view.  That's just what I mean by legitimate.

NOW, if you'd gotten past the original explanation of that you'd have 
also read that I don't think that there is a convincing argument for:

Therefore the government should legislate about the ways people can 
interact.

There is no convincing evidence for something like this, at least in 
any otherwise convincing religious position of which I am aware.  
Certainly a Buddhist is not required to think such a thing, neither is 
a Christian.  Moslems are probably required to think this to a certain 
extent except "sophisticated" Islam which doesn't identify religious 
and worldly authority.  Hinduism doesn't appear to make this kind of 
claim -anymore- it having evolved from a state-run religion many 
hundreds of years ago.   But say, for instance, that someone believes 
that Christ's words are accurately reported in the modern translations 
of the bible and that Christ said that God created people male and 
female and thereby ordained marriage would still not count in evidence 
for the government making rules about it for Christ also says let 
whoever is without sin cast the first stone and advises people not to 
go to court and to settle their matters between themselves, etc..  
You'd need something much stronger which isn't found in the bible, 
anyway, to the effect that the Government is and should be God's hand 
on Earth (which is very clearly NOT true in the Bible anyway) and a 
very much better explanation of the inerrancy of the new testament, 
etc.

Best,

Robbie Lindauer
thetip.org