When my wife and I started dating, we heard many metaphors and illustrations about relationships.  One was of “iron sharpening iron”.  Relationships are often painful and you will have problems and numerous issues in your relationship to sort out and “work through”.  The reward is a stronger relationship with your partner.  In fact, without such work, we were told, the relationship will only be weaker in times of trial and crisis.

Since 1995, when we began dating, we never believed this and thought it was, frankly, a load of crap when people told us that we had to make our relationship work and that our relationship should be work.  It was as though not feeling the burden of work, feeling the need to make our relationship work, or that it was work or some effort that we had to expend beyond the day-to-day was a sign of weakness.  Strange we thought, that what we understood to be a rare strength in our relationship - never feeling that it was work or that we had “things” to work out - was often perceived as a weakness or a sign of being unhealthy or dishonest with each other.

As a result many thought that “we would not last”.  I was going to be a good cookie-cutter evangelical pastor and my wife had recently joined a sorority.  The pure and the impure cannot stand together is what some thought.  The effortlessness that we felt in our relationship when we were together, unbound by the expectations of others was a sign that something had to be wrong with us and that we would not last.  In fact, the only friction we have ever experienced is the undue pressure that people placed on us because we were not matching the picture of a successful relationship that so many of our friends and family assumed was a sign of goodness or God’s blessing.  Our relationship was not work even if getting people to understand our relationship was.

Today we mark 10 years since we conveyed our wedding vows to each other.  It was a day when I sat with my best man and the minister in the “upper room” and heard them discuss how difficult this was since both had been through messy divorces, my best man after he had agreed to be my best man.  I have not spoken to either of them very much since that day.  Unconsciously perhaps.  But then and there became a lasting wax seal on just how awful it was for the miserable to be around a relationship that somehow would work, without any real “work” in the sense of relationships that had been marketed to us, and had been assumed was a sign of truth.

• When we were dating we told people that it was not work for us.
• They told us, “Wait until you get engaged.”
• When we were engaged we told people it was still not work for us.
• They told us, “Wait until you get married.”
• When we were married a year we told people it was even less work than before because we were somehow validated and free to build our lives together.
• They told us, “Wait until you have been married for three years and the honeymoon is over.”
• We had our actual honeymoon at the beginning of our second year.  We got tattoos at the beginning of our fifth year symbolizing how wrong everyone had been and what we understood our identities to be at the time.  We watch many of our nay-saying friends and acquaintances go through divorces.  They were the ones living the Cinderella fantasy - work hard on your relationship and that pumpkin will turn into a chariot.  And sadly their work failed.  Yet we continued not to work and only grew closer.  We would rather carry that damn pumpkin to the top of a five story building and watch it smash to bits than wait for it to turn into a chariot.
• Then they told us, “Wait until you have kids.”
• We now have two.  Raising kids is hard work.  But our relationship is still not hard work.  It is not work at all.

We essentially raised my wife’s youngest brother through the better part of his teenage years, have had to deal with 9/11 and our respective anxiety issues, three master’s degrees, multiple moves, two house purchases, diseases, surgeries, and family issues galore (mine mostly).  Yet through all of it, and we think we have had it pretty easy, we have never “worked” on our relationship.

So I am waiting for the next stage where our relationship will be hard work and “reality” finally kicks into gear and we can have a real relationship like everyone else who works hard at it.

Nahhh.  I’d rather stay in this state of blissful ignorance of what the world expects of us for at least another decade or two…

Nick and Bryan have posted a list and so shall I. Only in the order I thought of ‘em.

Chris Cornell - No one can blend falsetto and head voice this way and still sound like a man.

Tom Johnston - More soul than Michael MacDonald and a better song-writer at that.

Ann Wilson - Apparently estrogen has no place in the other lists. I watched Fergie try to pull off “Barricuda”. Not bad, but not a Wilson sister either, which means not all that great. Then there’s what Ann does in a song like “Crazy on You”.

Robert Plant - Even with Alison Krauss he is fantastic.

Cheryl Crow - Ask any woman with American Idol chops to pull of “If It Makes You Happy”. You won’t find too many of ‘em I tell ya.

Roger Daltrey - Not “Daughtry” not even close.

Scott Weiland - Yes he’s a coke head and his movements on stage just copy Steve Tyler and Mick Jagger. But his tone on the song “Atlanta” is fantastic and he shows off his melodic range.

Doug Pinnick - Haven’t heard of him have you? From King’s X and Poundhound. One phrase. Soul that hurts.

Geoff Tate - Queensryche was always on the edge of cheesy, but this boy had serious chops that any hairband dude could not really approach.

Corey Glover - Living Colour needed to make at least two more albums after Stain. That is still a bummer of a band break up for music fans.

* Extra props go to Freddie Mercury (I still don’t like Queen all that much), Bruce Dickinson (One reason many cover bands can’t cover Maiden songs), Pat Benetar (Does she have good pipes), Janis Joplin (For changing the role of the woman in music), Dennis DeYoung (see Queen), Ronnie James Dio (Messed with Black Sabbath, but also created a lot of pretenders probably in a bad way), Steve Perry (Those solo albums were a mistake dude, but I still love you on Escape), Steven Tyler (”Dream On” is still amazing and reveals the effects of a hard rock ‘n roll lifestyle on the voice).

Untitled (Ode to Meat)

I love meat,
I love meat,
I hope my meat will flap.

I love meat,
I love meat,
I hope my meat will sleep all night long.

I love meat,
I love meat,
I hope my meat will do new stuff.

I love meat,
I love meat,
I hope my meat will use the sweeper.

I love meat,
I love meat,
I hope my meat will crawl like a spider.

<snap>

<snap>

How ironic would it be if he became a vegetarian…  Or a vegan.

Why is naturalism the mode of operation that is most satisfying to you? Can you justify that belief on the same grounds that you would ask me to justify belief in God? Or are we all delusional because we practice certain ideations to order our existence that are not empirically provable?

Post inspired by comment here.

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory…

…The long-awaited court decision stemmed from San Francisco’s highly publicized same-sex weddings, which in 2004 helped spur a conservative backlash in a presidential election year and a national dialogue over gay rights.

Read the complete story

It is the only correct legal position to take. However, marriage in the eyes of the state remains to be a civil contract between two people and nothing more. There is no legal reason why it must be defined as a union between a man and a woman. None of the arguments to the contrary are at all convincing. Thus the fall back is to define the civil law in terms of the desires of religious groups who forbid marriage to be defined any other way than between a man and a woman.

If there is a secular legal reason why marriage cannot be defined as a gender free statute, I have never heard one. Religions can maintain their doctrinal stance regardless of what the state confers in its marriage licenses. But the idea that a gender-free definition of marriage will destroy a foundation of our society is not only a ridiculous conclusion, but the current data on marriage does not support this notion since half lead to divorce anyway. Arguing on these grounds is about as rational as arguing that a black person is 2/3 of a person and therefore they cannot vote! Or the argument that women have a naturally weaker physical and psychological makeup that prevents them from voting or serving in the military. Not to see the clear lines of similarity between these equally absurd assumptions about the constitution of human beings is to remain mired in absurdity and a retarded sense of equal regard under the law for everyone regarding with whom they wish to spend their lives in a civil union with all rights and responsibilities thereto.

Beacon Broadside has a nice piece to discuss some of the conclusions and speculations that are false if we assume a data driven posture. See what Massachusetts has learned.

Other comments on the California decision can be found here, here, and here.

Update: Julie continues with a discussion of the overturning of inter-racial marriage as a precedent used in the case. Americans United for Separation of Church and State also weighs in.

Update II: A really nice article on Get Religion asks some important questions in the debate this issue raises with choice and religion among others.

James has been having a discussion with Larry Moran over the issue of God as a “supernatural being”. (And from Larry’s post I have not the foggiest clue what “If this is the best they can do then theism is in big trouble” means in the slightest.)

Atheists largely appear to have criteria for existence that anything religious or metaphysical simply cannot provide - empirical evidence for the existence of something “living” or “sentient” or any other category we may apply to being.

However, if God exists, God must somehow have an existence that is outside of the set of empirical experience via the five senses or God is just one more cause among every other object without any significant differentiation. Certainly to suggest that God is irreducibly an equal partner in the set of all objects in cause/effect conditions is considered idolatry in the Judaeo/Christian traditions. Since, in such a case, we cannot control for the kind of physical evidence required for something to exist like God, God must not therefore exist or what we call “God” is some amalgamation of physical events and objects in whatever form we desire.

The problem is that we have many experiences in life that transcend the process of observation with the synthetic apparatus of the mind. Love, justice, peace, civility, equality, etc. are all such factors that move civilizations and direct human behavior far more than anything that can be controlled in a petri dish or can be observed through any scientific apparatus. We can scientifically observe the effects of these beliefs, but we cannot observe the beliefs themselves. True, our beliefs are structured according to our experience, but the structure of those beliefs is not empirical. Note: This is not to differentiate between subjective and objective, but between empirical and non-empirical. The difference is not all that subtle.

Objection 1: Even if you say you had an experience with God or a god of some sort, there can be many other naturalistic explanations such as delusion, hallucination, social determinism, etc. So why do you hold to the belief that what you experienced is God especially since the evidence for God’s existence is not forthcoming? The assumption here is that since there is no physical evidence of God, God must not exist therefore you must have experienced something else. The possibility that the experience occurred with a real existent is jettisoned before we can even offer this as a possibility.

Objection 2:  Why this God?  It is just an arbitrary decision!  To ask the question why this God as opposed to Zeus, Mithras, Allah, or Ganesha would be like asking me why I do not like fried cockroaches, speak English, eat pork, believe in the equality of women, and the civil right for gays to marry. Experience is always irreducibly informed and conditioned by our psycho-social development. Even if God has an existence outside of the physical set of possible objects in terms of cause and effect, we must experience God within these conditions. Field theory, game theory, various forms of evolutionary fitness, etc. are used to argue for the rationality of a belief, but that is quite after the fact of the reasons why people believe in certain things. In fact, if this is true, then belief in God is quite good for our evolutionary fitness. But this does not mean therefore, that God is part of the set of cause and effect, or that for God to exist this must be the case. Such would be a post hoc fallacy that is quite obvious.

To ask for a naturalistic explanation for God that meets certain scientific criteria is therefore a categorical error. It is like trying to argue for the existence of chairs by examining the flight patterns of bees.

Therefore the issue comes to what is compelling evidence and what is interesting evidence for the observer. Arguments that James is encountering are of this ilk. Why continue to beat the notion of supernatural like a dead horse? The alternative is simply not interesting. So I would ask atheists why they hold to their criteria for belief in the first place? What motivates the way you believe is perhaps a more important question than the content of the belief itself. Brow-beating the issue of super-naturalism might perhaps be more honest if atheists would faithfully acknowledge the impact of desire on their preference for a physicalism clothed in the oft indubitable acceptance of a neo-liberalism for which they do not argue the veracity on the same grounds they require for God.