Why shouldn’t a man have two wives?

Marriage Day (Photo credit: Fikra)

A couple of months ago I posted about how redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships was a bad idea – gay couples wouldn’t be subject to the same restrictions as straight couples (i.e. you couldn’t divorce over adultery – bad idea), straight couples still wouldn’t be allowed to have civil partnerships, and it would start a slippery slope towards polygamy and incest.

Most people agreed with me on the first two points (this is a question of equal rights, after all), but most also disagreed on the third.

As a little example of someone who would have disagreed with me, check out the Washington Post’s Slate.com’s opinion, published way back in 2004 (please read it). Because they believed so strongly, they published a second article to underline their opinion in 2012 (this one isn’t as good, but help yourself).

Only one year later, they’ve completely turned around; now gay marriage is legal, why isn’t polygamy legal?

A brief quote from the first article:

Bracket all the hysterical and irrelevant stops along the slippery slope…and we are left to try to draw principled lines between gay marriage, in which no one is harmed, and adult incest, adultery, bigamy, or polyamory.

In other words, gay marriage is fine, polygamy isn’t. And a quote from the third article:

The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.

I’m sorry: I told you so.

Related articles

• And now on to polygamy (economist.com)
• Slate: ‘Marriage Equality’ Includes Polygamy (joemiller.us)
• Some traditions aren’t worth preserving (newsherald.com)
• “[P]rohibiting polygamy on ‘feminist’ grounds – that these marriages are inherently degrading to the women involved – is misguided.” (althouse.blogspot.com)
• Progressive Salon.com advocates polygamy as next step in marriage equality (illinoisreview.typepad.com)
• Archbishop of Canterbury ‘supports civil partnerships for heterosexuals’ (guardian.co.uk)

The Reason Rally

The symbol for the American Atheists group ("Permission is hereby granted to all who wish to use the logo for any reason other than to defame.") within the public domain Purple Poly Mobius symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may have spotted in the news that this weekend a bunch of atheists are gathering in Washington D.C. to celebrate reason. A couple of logical errors with this, if I may.

Number one. By having this ‘Reason Rally’ it would seem that they’re inferring that anyone who has faith in anything supernatural is somehow choosing to be unreasonable. By opposing the thoughts behind this rally I’m clearly disagreeing that reason is a bad idea…but I don’t. And, obviously, no-one does. No-one actively holds a position they consider unreasonable. So these atheists that are rallying clearly feel so little confidence in their beliefs that they feel the need to use straw man arguments. Good starting position.

Number two. David Silverman from American Atheists explained the reasons behind the rally:

The Reason Rally is not about eradicating religion. There is a difference between wanting a secular government and a nontheistic government. A secular government is one that gives no preference to any religion or to non-religion. This allows the government to remain neutral and to protect all religious belief.

Oh, well done, David! Maybe you are being reasonable after all!

Oh, no, actually it seems he’s not. Have a little read of his blog at the Washington Post and you’ll see that his issue is that people in America vote for religious people over atheists regardless of how similar their manifestos may be. So he’s not bothered about atheists not being able to run (he’s obviously not rallying against public policy) but he is bothered about people being informed of how to vote by their faith.

In other words, he’s saying that faith is fine, so long as it only affects your private life rather than being demonstrated in public.

Which is ironic, seeing as this is being communicated through a public demonstration.

Oh, and as a little postscript, the Washington Post has also stuck on a blog post written by a guy who shows the New Atheists’ irrationality a little clearer than I do.

‘Heaven is a fairy story’ – Stephen Hawking

Image via Wikipedia

Ok. So it wasn’t too long ago that Stephen Hawking published a book in which he claimed that he didn’t think it wasn’t necessary for creation to involve a Creator. This was notable at the time because Hawking had always sat firmly on the fence on this issue despite being an atheist, so received a bit of airtime.

Of course, Christians hearing this news didn’t have a massive issue with him saying that, because he’s entitled to his opinion and anyway, at least he’s not horribly rude and aggressive towards Christians in the same way that Richard Dawkins is.

But now our mate Stephen has actively leapt into Dawkins’ camp. He’s entirely written off any belief in God as lunacy by describing heaven as a ‘fairy story’. You can read a full story behind it over here.

Now, I’m never going to claim to understand science to the extent that Stephen Hawking does. That said, he clearly has lost all scientific thought. Just look at what he says here:

Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader in advance of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: “Why are we here?”

In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said.

He’s giving a lecture entitled ‘Why are we here?’. His answer to that question is just way off though – instead of answering the question he’s obviously made up his own question (‘How are we here?’) and has answered that instead. English class fail.

Then he goes on with this little phrase ‘science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing.’ Sorry, what?! How does ‘science’ predict that?! Hawking has replaced God with Science: ‘Science made me do it.’

Science doesn’t predict anything. Science is the study by which you can seek to understand what has happened, and continue to update your understanding based on what continues to happen. When there’s a single recorded observation of multiple universes being spontaneously created out of nothing, you go ahead and let me know. I’ll not hold my breath.

In the meantime, enjoy N. T. Wright‘s response to Hawking in the Washington Post. My favourite lines:

It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians.

Until he has [considered the evidence for Jesus' resurrection], his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.