To Have Rules or Not, That Is the Question

   Brevity might be the soul of wit, but even you would think there should be more.

   Should you one day wonder what the difference is between a "Christian Atheist" and a "Military Atheist" the answer is not very much.  It is somewhat like the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  H. Ross Perot famously said decades ago that "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties."  That is still true today, but understanding it requires much reading.

No, the stigma of divorce disappeared because people started to recognise that divorce was better than the alternative.

That's easy; I believe that marriage can continue to mean anything in such conditions because, unlike you, I have a firm grounding in reality.

In a legal sense, marriage is a contract which brings certain benefits with it. The terms of that contract change from time to time, but never, not ever, have there ceased to be rules regarding what it is and how it works.

In a more personal sense, marriage has whatever meanings the individuals involved choose to assign to it. In that regard modern marriages are no different to marriage at any other point in history. There have always been marriages based in love, marriages based in politics, marriages based in economic benefit, marriages of convenience, and a dozen other things.


All this comes down to is that other people are behaving in ways that you don't want them to, and it bothers you. So you pretend that your preferred version of "strict" marriage is the "proper" version and that the only people who disagree are those who want to tear down the whole institution. It's nothing but self aggrandisement cloaked in concern.

So somebody asked a question and you once again spewed out an only vaguely related bit of nonsense. What a shocker.

    You made an argument there that I cannot refute. I concede the points.

   I know graham. I wish I could win one every now and again, though. But I'm just too ignorant.

   I wet myself at nights. I have to wear adult diapers.

   This discussion board is of course a place to discuss religion, faith and spirituality. Oh wait, that's not all, it's also a place to discuss atheism. That is natural enough. How can you address any thesis without addressing its antithesis anyway?

   Over time any discussion can get stale. People get tired of listening to the other side. They can become stubborn and dismissive. Worse than that they can lose sight of the issues they all need to address. They can lose sight of the reasons the discussion started in the first place.

   When "religion" began it might well have been more about things like whether there are any rules, where they came from, what assurance is there they will be followed, can they be changed, by whom, and so on. All of which does get discussed on this board somewhat. Some think rules come from a god, some think they arise "naturally."

   I think it might significantly refresh the process if we set aside some issues and concentrated on others. We can get back to whether there is a god and what its properties are later. I think the underlying question whether there are any rules needs direct attention.


   It appears inevitable that wherever there are rules there will be some opposition to them. In some cases the complaints might be trivial, in others there might be a total rejection of all the rules, or all between.

   With very few exceptions the people on this board have what they consider rules. Some Christians, some atheists, and others all have their versions of rules with obvious differences.

   A curious development from time to time however is that two parties form, call them group 'A' and group 'B,' where the rules of group 'B' are designed only to ensure no one has to follow the rules of group 'A.' The central issue really then is to have rules or not.

   One side develops that assembles rules and another side develops that dissembles them. It appears to "make sense" and "work out" in that "power" is "balanced." The people who make and enforce the rules are kept in certain bounds, kept from taking "advantage" of their position by misusing it. There is always someone there to challenge their work.

   Before the Republican Party there was the Whig Party. One became the other after Abraham Lincoln. It, before and after Lincoln, was the party of a strong central government (the one that favored rules). The Democratic party of the time opposed them (compare group 'B' somewhat).

   You might complain at this point that I have it backward all through. Everyone knows the Democrats favor a large government and the Republicans favor a minimal role for government. Yes, that is true today mostly, but that didn't happen till much later. What caused the reversal was the observation over a long time that government can give people things. At first it was just a "job" in the military, but it expanded later.

   Having realized that, the Democratic Party became a full fledged "group B" that used its rules and power to ensure no one had to follow the rules of "group A." The attitudes of quite many Democrats are not that there are rules to marriage that need to be followed by whatever gender, but that no one has to follow them. They can make up their own. They can then break their own rules later. Marriage today is all about letting the government settle any issues, letting government manage the charges of family responsibilities, all while adults come and go as they have a whim.

   I have much more to say on this especially about religion and what role it has in all this, but I want you to see the underlying issues and whether you have any comments on them.