to believe that atheists shouldn't get married?

[Waspie]

I am an atheist. I do not feel that in all conscience I could ever get married as my understanding is that marriage is a religious construct.

Yet Richard Dawkins has been married three times so far and many of my friends who profess to atheism are married. To me it seems hypocritical.

Or am I wrong about marriage being a religious construct?

I would really like your opinions please.

anthropologists find evidence of some kind of 'marriage' in almost all human societies.

they also find evidence of some kind of 'religion'

but in many the religion and the marriage are not as intimately related as they are in ours.

e.g. in catholicism marriage is a sacrement and a symbol of jesus's relationship with his church... but in islam, marriage is a non-religious legal contract (hence why catholicism is not keen on divorce but islam has always allowed it)

We don't have to give religion the credit for all the good stuff you know.

I'm very happily married after a civil ceremony. I also have morals and know right from wrong - that's another thing that us atheists aren't supposed to have.

There may not have been marriage before organised religion, I don't know... but organised religion has been round a very long time in various forms. I imagine there weren't schools or hospitals before organised religion either but I reckon the non-religious should be allowed to participate in those.

Don't try to separate the religious from the cultural, you can't. Religion has formed the basis of our society for too long. Why don't you just try and work out why you feel a certain way about whatever it is and if you can come up with a good reason, then it's not because of religion!

And as some posters have said, don't get married if you don't want to, the only person you have to justify it to is your DP.

don't forget that weddings in churches are a relatively recent Christian phenomenon - they had to be held at the church doors - they only went in for mass. The Church not being so keen on sex, even within marriage, in the medieval period. The property endowment part all had to happen outside the church. I think it is more of a social construct that has been adopted by the church than the other way around.

It's a contract that originally a father would make with the groom and /or his family.
Wife until not long ago were property of men.
I have happily made a contract with my DH. We both know where we stand at present in this relationship and know the consequences if its breached. His car gets it!

what Hoochie said.

Is this a Daily Mail thread?

Anyway I agree with what ohjustgrowup said.

YABU - unless love is also about religion, in which case, if you have an other half, you are breaking your own rules.

Marriage is first and foremost about love. How you do it depends on your culture, and that is where religion, if any, comes in.

Haven't read beyond OP (so apologiesif I'm repeating what others have already said), but as a married atheist, YABVVVU!

Marriage is not about religion, it is a legal contract. It is how you determine WHO is your next of kin. Unmarried, your parents remain your next of kin; married, your spouse is your next of kin. This may seem unimportant, until you consider what it all entails. Should you be incapacitated/dead, your next of kin is the person making the decisions - about what medical treatments you receive, who cares for your children, who has access to your possessions.

Do you want your parents making these decisions in the event of a catastrophe, or the person you've chosent to spend your life with?

Religion has attempted to hijack marriage, but they are two completely separate things.

I'm an atheist and married. As an atheist marriage is whatever you personally intend it to be and you don't have to justify that to anyone.

YABU. I believe mariage is important even if you don't believe in God.

Just concurring with stickylittlefingers. Until the Reformation many people from the non-landed classes didn't bother involving the Church in their marriages. It was simply a case of making promises in front of their families and was often done without involving the expense of the clergy. And for some men, once they got tired of their wives, they could sell them at the annual village wife-sales.
The Church appropriated the idea of marriage as it did the commemoration of birth and death. That was the only way in which it would be able to grow and expand - but the desire to mark occasions predates Western religion.

My marriage is a practical contract, based on the fact that dh & I had decided to live together/have a child together/buy a house together.

We all share the more attractive name, given a choice between mine & dh's birth names.

Should either of us be required to make major decisions, there's a level of tacit consent that makes life easier.

If one of us dies, it'll be easier for the other to carry on as normally as possible.

If we BOTH die in, say, a plane/car crash, it's less hassle for the kids.

Dh's religion is not mine - he's a Buddhist, I'm an atheist. He is absolutely entitled to discuss his religious beliefs with the dc - they also have a Muslim CM & a state primary that (grrr) does Xtian belief.

Nobody's religion was relevant to our marriage. I was a bit annoyed in fact not to be allowed a John Donne reading - they didn't accept my alternative of 'For fuck's sake hold your tongue...' either...

Waspie read whole thread so you may be interested to know DH and I are both atheists and had a Humanist ceremony that we pretty much wrote, with our own vows... in a church. It was a deconsecrated church.

We also did the legal bit two weeks before in a registry office with just 2 witnesses.

We liken it to being a bit like when you buy a house. You do the paperwork and exchange contracts, but it's all just theory until you move in(!)

We wanted to get married because we were in love and wanted to be together and make commitments to each other in front of the people we love. We also had a small wedding for that reason.

However, we still get my mother saying "which date are you celebrating this year?". I reply, "Do you remember when we went to the church, I wore a wedding dress and DH and I made vows? That day" She thinks she's being witty...

Why shouldn't an atheist get married? Marriage is a contract of mutual committment between two people, witnessed by representatives of the community. You can make that contract before God or not as you choose, depending (among other things) on your belief system.

The only thing hypocritical about an atheist marrying is if they marry in a church or other religious ceremony. OTOH, they may actually be being respectful if they do so - respectful of their partner's beliefs, or their parents' or community's beliefs and practices.

???? Marriage is a religious contract? Only if you have a religious ceremony. Marriage is predominantly a legal contract. If you don't have a religious ceremony you don't have a religious contract.

I am married, but not in the eyes of "The Lord" as I am an atheist.

yabu

what's god got to do with my marriage??

i've made vows to my dh that i fully intend to keep for the rest of my life. don't see why only religious people get to vow.

how absurd.

I an atheist and married (civil ceremony).

It is a cultural construct, not a religious one.

Many so-called religious constructs are cultural constructs and important parts of our daily lives.

YABVU

Waspie - I've been thinking about this thread a lot - you've succeeded in getting a lot of brain cells going!

Would education be a good parallel?

As far as I'm aware, formal education, through schools, had its roots in the church (ie organised religion). However, changes over the centuries have meant that schools are seen as a positive thing, which play an important role in society, without necessarily having to have anything to do with religion.

As an atheist, you wouldn't choose to send your child to a faith school, but you wouldn't necessarily abandon the school completely and home educate simply because of the original link with religion.

Isn't marriage a bit the same? It has become something that is seen as legally and socially advantageous, and as an atheist, you might choose to marry for those reasons, rather than religious ones?

As an active Christian, I think the legal and religious side of marriage should be seperated.

Everyone shoudl be entitled to have a civil/legal ceremony, which they could either choose to be all they do, or should be able to add to with either a religious or non-religious extra ceremony.

We wanted to be married "in the eyes of God" as that is what we believe. But I get insanely irritated by people choosing a church wedding when it means precisely nothing to them except a nice place for pictures and a big white dress - it devalues what I believe, and devalues them as well, by making them into hypocrites (also feel the same about "christenings" for people who have no intent of keeping their vows.

But I don't think marriage has been "hijacked" by religion - for some people, the religious side is really important, like us, but a totally seperate version should be available.

Thanks to you all. I'm now starting to spiral in my own head about how far the link between religion and culture goes in British society!

A fully appreciate that marriage is a cultural and legal phenomenon. I guess my idea was that because the [predominant] culture of GB is judeo-christian this religious bias has seeped into all areas of our culture - social, legal etc.

There are areas that I can't do anything about but then there are areas in which I can, such as not sending my son to a faith school (amazingly hard to find a secular school around here at the moment though) and not swearing on the bible when I'm giving evidence in court etc...

As others have said, and with whom I agree entirely, it's impossible to disassociate religion from culture.

I did a bit of reading last night and it seems, as most of you are saying, that it is generally accepted by atheists that marriage existed before organized religion.

I'm probably going to be unreasonable again though and say that for me love is a personal thing. I have no need, wish or desire to justify it and declare it in front of anyone else except the person I love.

haven't read the rest of the thread. But marriage is a legal contract. It can be done in a religious context but doesn't have to be.

So yes - you are being unreasonable. A couple with children should be married for legal reasons - regardless of any religious tendency.

there is no proof as to whether marriage predated organised religion - because religion of a sort goes so far back in human history, as does marriage. Which comes first is impossible to distinguish.

But the concept of marriage - ie a stable monogamous relationship for rearing a family is fairly fundamental building block of society and probably dates from very early on. As do the rules about not killing people, and not stealing from them - at least within your own social group.

Religion sits on top of that as a way to have a cohesive set of rules laid down by a greater authority - rather than because a group of individuals agree it is the most stable way to live. Decent morals are not confined to religion - but they do adopt them as their own (and often seem to claim only their followers can be moral - that is the bit that bugs me !).

I like Violethill's comparison with education. That is where I stand on it too.