1. Gay Marriage will open the doors to bestiality, paedophilia, polygamy, incest, necrophilia, and people marrying inanimate objects or robots.

The foundational assumption of this argument appears to be a belief that prior to the last decade, marriage was clearly defined and had remained essentially unchanged since the dawn of time. The reasoning seems to then follow that any alteration to the eternal norm will be the thin end of the wedge which will ultimately result in the complete destruction of marriage as an institution and the legitimisation of every possible perversion.

Major Premise: Marriage has always been defined as between one man and one woman.

Minor Premise: Altering the definition of marriage in any way will set a precedent allowing further alterations.

Conclusion:  Gay marriage will inevitably lead to one massive clusterfuck of underage robotic animals who are dead and related.

Unspoken Assumption: This would be bad.

My personal theory as to why this argument has been so successful is that it leverages ignorance on a number of fields and is soothing to the ears of conservatives and, as any argument based on ignorance, can only be countered with knowledge. Knowledge rebuttals take time and research. Water cooler debates allow for neither. It is also a bit of a hydra. An unwary combatant may be tricked into decapitating the bestiality argument only to then face two more empty heads, each more ferocious than the last. The majority of debaters will lose patience in the face of this argument long before it can be fully addressed.

While the conclusion is the most glaringly obvious target, it is actually the argument’s strongest point because it can be quickly swapped out for an infinite number of ridiculous variations. The real weakness lies in the major premise and only requires a brief glance at the history of marriage to counter.

For all of these arguments, the basic rational justification for homosexual marriage in a modern context is as follows:

Major Premise: Marriage is currently defined as a legally binding “life-long” union between two consenting adults of opposite genders until one of them dies or they decide they don’t really want to be married anymore, which provides legal and social benefits.

Minor Premise: Discrimination of legal status on the basis of sex is a violation of accepted human rights.

Conclusion: It is a violation of human rights to deny the legal and social benefits of marriage to any person on the basis of the sex of their partner.

A brief history of Marriage: The current Western idea of marriage as a partnership between equals is only about fifty years old. Prior to that, a marriage was essentially a transaction of ownership of a woman from a father to a husband. You don’t have to go back very far to see virginal child brides fetching lucrative dowries for enterprising fathers. Less than 400 years ago regional marriage laws which prevented women from owning property could put childless widows into poverty and force them into begging or prostitution if not for the saving grace of laws allowing polygamy. Want to go back further? It can be observed in nature that animal species where a single dominant male have multiple female partners will have males that grow larger than the females, monogamous species will be of equal size. In the space of human history, the one man one woman marriage is an aberrationrather than the norm. Far from having a single, eternal definition, ideas of the meaning of marriage throughout history have been as fluid and changing as the languages used to describe them.

 1.A: Gay Marriage will open the doors to Polygamy.

Of all the claims presented by the slippery slope argument, this is probably the most realistic. In essence, it states that if marriage is redefined as a union between two equals of any sex, it is a natural progression to allow partnerships involving three or more members to achieve legal legitimacy through marriage.

From a point scoring perspective, same sex marriage is a gender equality issue dealing with human rights. There is no human rights issue involving the number of partners a person is permitted to have and therefore the logic used to demand gay marriage is not strictly applicable to polygamous marriage. However I am also keenly aware that social trends do not tend to hold closely to the logical foundations but more to the cosmetic appearances. Once a partnership between two consenting adults can be legitimised through marriage, the next obvious question is why only two?

John is married to Mary and Jane, who are also married to each other. Jane is married to Thomas who is in an open marriage relationship with Frank. Mary is secretly having an affair with Frank behind Jane and John’s back. Thomas knows about the affair and while he acknowledges Frank’s need for intimacy outside of their relationship, he cannot abide by his husband having an affair with the wife of his wife and decides that he wants a divorce. Who gets custody of Thomas and Frank’s adopted child, Reginald?

Aside from the massive potential for exploitation for tax evasion and access to other legislative advantages provided to married couples at the expense of singles, and the legislative nightmare of multi-tiered marriage webs and their associated divorce cases, there really isn’t any good reason to stand in the way of group marriages among consenting adults other than that it is damn confusing.

Having spent the last decade living in student share houses, I have first hand experience of the financial and social benefits of group living situations, and also the problems associated with having two house mates who can get along with everybody but each other. I can see the practical benefits of group marriage, as well as elevated risks and potential for pain and betrayal if things go wrong. That said, if people want to put themselves in that kind of position, there really isn’t any intrinsic reason why it wouldn’t work. I can’t see a legitimate reason for society to stand in the way of people giving it a go.

To summarise: Gay marriage might open the door to polygamous marriage. Okay. If that is the case then the onus is on the opposition to present a case why this would be a bad thing. I am yet to see such an argument which is founded on anything other than vaguely held religious imagery or misguided feminist assumptions about multi-amorous marriage conditions.

1.B. Gay Marriage will open the door to Paedophilia.

This is a stunningly weak argument but it has prominence in the debate because it pushes people’s buttons and gets people excited. This is a genuine slippery slope fallacy because it fails to account for the sizable differences in legal status for a legal relationship between two consenting adults and an illegal relationship between an adult and a child below the age of consent.

To humour this argument far more than it deserves, let’s ignore the obvious issue of a police raid on the honeymoon suite followed by a jail term which grows longer with each congical visit. Unless you live in France, marriage doesn’t give you automatic rights to sex so let’s just look at this issue in terms of legal union for the moment. Most cultures have specific rites of passage that distinguish an adult from a child. These range from reciting large chunks of religious texts to slitting the throat of a Greek warrior on the field of battle. Western countries tend to base it the number of times the earth has orbited the sun’s relative position to the rest of the Milky Way galaxy. It takes between sixteen and twenty five revolutions to confer full adult status. Until the position of the stars decrees an individual to be capable of adult decisions, they cannot legally engage in certain risky activities. They cannot drink whiskey, drive a car, own a firearm, buy shares, upload naughty photos to the internet, get a mortgage, run up a massive credit card debt, or get married.

It is not possible for a minor to get married. Even if the laws are changed to reduce the number of required solar rotations to qualify for adult status, the new age of consent would then mark the point where that individual is no longer a minor. If you are worried about 12 year olds getting married; I recommend you should be more worried about them driving a car they charged to their MasterCard after downing a bottle of bourbon.

The social and legal changes required to classify children as consenting adults for the purpose of marriage are massively prohibitive and entrenched into Western culture. It would take a lot more than gay marriage to re-open the door to legitimised paedophilia to even a fraction of the degree that was common during the Christian middle ages.

1.C. Gay Marriage will open the door to Beastiality.

Now we are getting to the more obscure and less compelling arguments. The idea of marriage between a consenting adult human and any non-human living organism has the same basic issues of consent. The foundation of the logic of allowing homosexual marriage is the idea of mutual consent. So even setting aside the fact that a sexual relationship between a human and an animal violates a bunch of laws, animals do not currently have the cognitive capacity to make an informed decision on the matter and are unlikely to be considered capable of such decisions for some time into the future.

1.D. Gay marriage will open the door to relationships with robots, corpses, and other inanimate objects.

Again, this is an issue of consent. Programming a robot to say “I do” is not the same as informed consent. Technology may advance to the point where computers are able to able to understand the concepts of marriage sufficiently to enter into such a covenant, but that is a fair way off and it is a fair bet that they’ll be keeping us as pets shortly after in any case so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

1.E. Gay marriage will open the door to incest.

To be fair, I will admit that there is a remote possibility of this happening. The laws preventing marriage to close relatives are from an assumption that marriage exists for the purpose of producing children. Due to the availability of contraceptives, planned pregnancy, adoption and IVF; marriage, sex and reproduction are no longer considered inseparable. Gay marriage removes any doubt. Marriage no longer carries an expectation to produce children nor is it a requirement of producing children. Sexual intercourse also, is no longer a requirement for producing children nor does it necessarily lead to children. Since the foundational reason for a ban on marriage between close relatives is to avoid the genetic bottle neck caused by successive generations of inbreeding and the resulting deformities; a separation of sexual intercourse and child production could potentially allow for the legalisation of incestual relationships. It is my prediction however, that since it would still be undesirable to produce children from such a union and no politician wants to be in the position of writing laws for mandatory abortion, it is likely that marriage between brother and sister will continue to be unacceptable. While there is no practical reason to deny siblings of the same gender the right to marry each other, I suspect that there will not be sufficient public support to push it through for a very long time.

2. Gay Marriage will affect children’s right/need for access to both male and female parents.

The first response that comes to mind when I hear this argument is to assume that the person had extremely neglectful parents and somehow is under the impression that babies are produced by “marriage”. After a few attempts at explaining the facts of life, bees pollenating flowers and such, I have come to realise that proponents of this argument are marginally less ignorant than initially supposed. But only marginally. The basic argument goes like this.

Major Premise: The primary purpose of marriage is to raise children and the only reason that people would want to get married is because they want to have children.

Minor Premise: Children who are raised without access to male and female role models (some versions require that these are their heterosexual biological parents) will be irreversibly scarred.

Conclusion: Gay marriage leads to child abuse.

Unspoken Assumption:  Homosexuality is something that young children should not be exposed to.

I WISH that was a straw man but I am appalled to say that I have not found a single example of this argument that can’t be reduced to “homosexuality is bad and homosexuals should not be permitted to raise children”. That said, because people believe it, it is necessary to examine the foundations rather than dismissing it out of hand.

Regarding the major premise: Marriage is not a parenting licence. While I do occasionally think that a healthy dose of progesterone in the water supply would do a lot more good than fluoride, I always come to the conclusion that people need to be able to choose for themselves if raising a child is something they have the resources (love, time, money, etc) to do in order to be considered free. Since there is no law preventing unmarried couples or singles from adopting or getting IVF treatment, this argument does not appear to be about homosexual marriage but rather about preventing children who are being raised by homosexual parents from having access to the stability that marriage could provide.

Regarding the minor premise: I have seen articles on this argument which quote long lists of academic journal articles as evidence that children who have access to a mother and father do better than those who don’t. Things always sound more convincing if you quote scientific studies… unless you are dealing with a Jaminologist who will look up those studies to check their methodologies. Every study referenced in these articles that I have seen is comparing children raised by two parents with children raised by one parent. At the time of writing, there are a number of scientific on the effects of children being raised by two loving homosexual parents (like this or this) by comparison to those raised by both biological parents, and they actually compare favourably.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. —James Madison (4th US President)

Since there is rational foundation for neither the major nor minor premises, the only foundation for this argument is the unspoken assumption. Since this assumption generally comes from religious motivations, it should not have a role in determining the rights of people who do not hold the same religious convictions in order to preserve religious freedom. As such, this argument is also invalid.

So there you have it: Some extremely thorough responses to the two most common objections to homosexual marriage. If you feel I have misrepresented your opinion or have arguments or rebuttals which I have not addressed, please feel free to comment. I always relish the possibility of being proven wrong. I consider it the most rewarding part of argument. If you have encountered any arguments which I have not covered that you would like addressed, please post a comment. The more arguments I can address in this post, the more useful it will be as a resource. If you loved the article, please rate it and send the link to people you think would benefit from reading it. If you’d like to get updates, there are numerous ways to subscribe.

However, I PASSIONATELY support their right to gather in peaceful assembly to communicate on political issues with each other and their elected representatives as granted by the Australian constitution. I vehemently oppose any action to break up these gatherings as a violation of the rights conferred upon them by the establishment of this nation.

Now before you go reaching for your wallet for a concrete example, pause a moment and have a think about the nature of value. What do you value in life? Health? Family? Food? Shelter? Security? Self Actualisation? Happiness? Does your wallet contain any of those things?… Okay. You’ve considered. Now go ahead and pull out your wallet and hold a note up to the screen. What you hold in your hand is fairly widely accepted as a measurement of wealth yet aside from the very brief history lesson you could pull from it, it has no real intrinsic value or worth. Its value comes from what it represents. So what does money represent?

To understand the purpose of money it is first necessary to look at life before money. Early human tribes functioned internally on each member working individually to add value to the tribe as a whole. Human tribes distinguished themselves from Neanderthal tribes by the division of labour: the men hunted live prey while the women gathered edible plants and cared for the children. The division of labour created the foundation of reciprocal behaviour. If I feel you have added value to my life, I have a desire to then add value to your life. This works within small family groups but in order to see this division of labour provide even greater benefits to the tribe there developed the idea of barter.

Let’s look at two Neolithic craftsmen: Muurk and Gomp. Muurk is an expert craftsman; he is particularly good at making hand axes. In one day, he can make either six stone axes or two spears. Gomp is a less specialised craftsman. He is able to make either two hand axes or two spears in a day. Because it takes just as much time for Gomp to make a spear as it does to make an axe, he can benefit from any deal which brings him more than one axe per spear. Since Muurk can make a lot of axes, a spear is of greater value to him than an axe. If they both spent half a day on each, Murk would have three axes and a spear while Gomp would have one of each. If instead, Muurk spent the day making axes and Gomp spent the day making spears and they traded at the end of the day, they could each end the day with one more axe than they would have had otherwise. There is significant evidence that this kind of trade did happen in our prehistoric ancestors, and it is even believed that it is inter-tribal trade which enabled homo-sapiens to gain an advantage over the larger, smarter and stronger Neanderthal tribes which did not engage in a division of labour. Most hand axes which have been uncovered in archaeological digs were never used as axes but were created as aesthetically pleasing artworks which were exchanged for goods and services. They are arguably our first form of currency.

Without going into too many specifics, the hand axe currency works for animal hides and spears but doesn’t tend to be practical for big ticket items that nomadic tribes never needed to worry about. European nations settled this dilemma by a general agreement that gold is valuable and began minting coins. Aside from the occasional unexpected inflation caused by large discoveries of mineral deposits, this created a stable system of resource based trade. Eventually it became inconvenient to carry a lot of heavy metals around so bank notes were invented which would represent a contract on behalf of the person storing gold to pay an amount of gold to the holder of the note. The notes were therefore considered as good as gold. In 1931 the British government permanently decided that the pound was no longer redeemable for gold. The pound has lowered in value every year since then and interest rates are now controlled by the Rothschild owned Bank of England (which also owns all Australian currency). The United States of America was founded on an attempt to recreate a wealth based currency with a gold standard but this was also eventually dismantled, the right to set interest rates and profit from the creation of currency now belongs to a private company known as the Federal Reserve Bank.

Pathfinder offers a service to calculate how much a given amount of fixed income will be worth over time.

Money as it is today in Europe, America, Brittan and Australia is valued by steadily decreasing scarcity. Rather than backing the currency with mineral resources, money is worth only what people are prepared to trade for it. There is as much money in circulation as the central banks choose to create. Rather than placing a cap on the level of inflation (devaluation of currency) they will allow to happen each year, these banks control inflation through manipulating interest rates to make the economy behave the way they want it to. To increase growth, they lower the interest rate and encourage people to borrow money from banks (which add additional interest to cover risk, expenses and obscene profits) and stimulate the economy. Every time interest rates are set at a low level, the market is flooded with new currency, the supply of money increases which causes the demand to decrease and value decreases. The dollar you earned today will, on average, be worth 3.5% less each year. At this rate, the money in your wallet will be worth approximately half of its current value in twenty years time. If you have money in the bank which is earning less than 3.5% interest per year, you are losing wealth even as you gain money. If your employer gives you a 2% pay rise every year, you are actually getting paid 1.5% less every year.

The exponentially increasing wealth gap between the very wealthy and the rest of society is largely due to the difficulty of tracking money values with a brain that evolved accounting strategies for dealing with the trade of hand axes for the vast majority of human history. The intuitive understanding that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay does not extend to factoring in productivity ratios to product exchange variability. The rapid technological advancement of the last fifty years has enabled human labour in all areas to become increasingly efficient. We have taken the specialisation methods of Muurk and Gomp to the point where there are millions of specialised workers involved with the creation of a single product. Instead of benefiting the craftsmen as in the Neolithic example, this massively increased productivity is giving massive amounts of wealth to a few people who control the system. Inflation and a reliance on currency allows the workers to believe they are being paid more when they are really being paid less; and the cheaply produced products which are now available reduces the personal impact of the loss of wealth. Individually, members of both Western society and developing nations have a much higher standard of living than those

Get him!

living before the technological boom, but these standard of living increases are in exchange for providing far higher profits to those who own and operate the system they sell their time to for an ever decreasing share in global wealth.

What people are angry about is that the concept of trade and fairness which allowed our species to thrive and advance is clearly being violated in this situation somewhere. While it isn’t entirely clear whose fault it is, there is a very efficient method also wired into our pre-industrialised minds for finding a person to blame: when you know there has been an injustice, look for the guy with the biggest collection of hand axes. There is a good chance he had something to do with it.

So what is money?

At its fundamental core, money is a manifestation of reciprocity. It is a symbol of gratitude for services rendered and goods provided. It is a method of tracking the value one individual has added to society in order to provide a fair trade of value added back into the life of that individual at a later date. Currency is a representation of money. For the value added for providing a standardised system within which people are required by law to trade, the banks have set the value of their service at half of everything you own every twenty years (plus interest and not including the effect of fraction reserve banking). If you agree with their estimation of how much value they have added to society then you can put that note back into your wallet, secure in the knowledge that in the time it took you to read this article it has lost 0.0002% of its total worth. If, however, you believe that this price is more than you are prepared to pay, you may want to start considering your options.

Now I want to hear from you.

How much value do you think a single, national or international economy adds to society?

What do you suggest as an alternative to centralised currency?

How has reading this article challenged your assumptions about the nature of money?

What do you think would happen if the rest of society adopted your current views on the nature of money?

What steps could you personally take to make somebody adopt a more beneficial view of money?

Do you think they’d pay you for it?

The original image of Lt John Pike spraying students

The initial video is intense, but what seems to stand out is the casual nature of the action. The protesters being attacked are not screaming and chanting. They are quietly sitting on a footpath preparing to be sprayed. They know it is coming yet they still refuse to move. They are bound by their conviction to stay. The police involved also know what is coming. They are not granted the option of backing down. They have been charged with the duty of clearing the path at any cost. Neither side is here for fun. Both have a job to do. The officers prepare themselves and with grim determination, they carry out their obligation without rage, malice or mockery.

I feel that the central point here is that the torture of people exercising their right to peaceful assembly has become so mechanised that it is something that can be performed as casually by a school rent-a-cop as a grounds keeper watering the lawn. It is this casual normalisation of inhuman acts of violence which the meme highlights. Pictures which place the officer in different contexts show how an action which has become normalised in American culture to the point where people can callously claim that they deserved it because they are hippies/students/unemployed/inarticulate. By shifting the context of the action, it forces the viewer to reassess their perspective of normalcy.

Say we view the initial scene as normal; what if the cop were spraying a self immolating monk? Or the writers of the american constitution? Or defacing a priceless artwork? Could we ignore that as easily as we are able to ignore violence against people who have placed themselves in the line of fire by voicing concerns that the current system is guilty of symbolically defacing the constitution?

Far from diluting the message, I think this meme clarifies it. The message is not the passion, the pain or the jeers from onlookers. The message is that we as a culture have been conditioned to look away from the brutality perpetrated on western soil while condemning what we see in developing countries. There is only so much rage people can feel before they want to look at something else. This meme puts the message into a form where it can be more widely received, understood, and spread.

If the establishment is presented as a monster, people will be afraid. They will live their “respectable” lives and actively distance themselves from those who would challenge the stasis quo. If the establishment is a joke and becomes the subject of ridicule and scorn, people will cease to fear it.

Those in power know how to respond to violence and outrage. But if the language is changed through viral memes like this, then their rhetoric will cease to be effective.

If they hit us and we cry about it, they are bullies. If they hit us and we laugh about it, they are impotent and powerless to silence our message.

Christian Self Help

There are a lot of Christian self help books available offering quick fix solutions to the dangers and emotional pitfalls of modern dating. In fact, it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Clearly they aren’t working, otherwise people would have stopped buying the books right? In this article, I’m going to offer some advice based on lessons I’ve learned during the course of my life which have changed the way I look at dating.

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1) Partner Preference Lists Don’t Work

On the off chance that the perfect partner does exist, chances are they're not interested in dating a flawed person like you.

I’ve heard many well meaning Christian leaders telling people to write a check list of qualities they want in a partner. These lists can become pretty extensive and often grow more and more specific the longer a person remains single, sometimes even being divided into sections by priority. I had a list for a few years. It had over a hundred check boxes and eventually developed into a spreadsheet that awarded 30 points for an athletic body, -15 points for being a smoker, -30 if she’s been married, -60 if she has kids. If she could name all three MacGyver  references in the StarGate SG1 series she’d get an additional 5 points for geek cred. The scores were divided into three categories each with required a minimum score in order for me to even consider dating the girl. Now, as carefully and lovingly created as it was, this list did not help me get a girlfriend. Would you like to know why?

Human beings are not subway sandwiches. People are not made to order according to customer specifications. So while being minutely specific in what you want may result in an ideal sandwich/mouth compatibility, it will not provide you with an ideal human being. Rather, it will provide you with an image of a person who does not exist. Even if you do find a partner that meets a lot of your criteria, on the off chance that you also meet enough of the checkpoints on their criteria list for them to be interested in dating you, you will find that they can never live up to you idealised expectation.

Humans are not made to order.

Also, people change over time. If you did find the ideal partner described in your list and got married, what would happen in ten years time if they changed? If they no longer meet all the points on your list, does that mean they are no longer the man/woman of your dreams? Do you get a divorce?

When you actually have a look at the lists people write, they generally form from a the kinds of people the writer has dated (or wanted to date) in the past. Considering that the purpose of these lists is supposedly to help single people find partners, it is fair to suggest that the writer hasn’t had much success dating the kind of person their list describes. Maybe it would be a good idea to branch out a little bit.

My Recommendation:

The relationship checklist really should contain things that can be agreed on and worked toward, rather than being a required starting position.

Evaluate a prospective partner on their own merits, not on how well they fit into a prefabricated mould. Learn to love/accept a person for who they are, not how well they fit into your preconceived idea of perfection. With any luck, they’ll extend the same courtesy to you.    (Recommended reading:  Matthew 7.1-5)

Rather than writing a list of traits you want in a partner, write a list of up to five key elements you want from a relationship. Here is the list I use as an example.

1) Communication

2) Mutual physical attraction

3) Communication

4) Openness to accept and support each other as we grow and change together

5) and more communication

2) Reading the Signs

When the corners of her mouth turn up and her eyes are squinty, she is having fun. When the corners of her mouth move up but her eyes don't go squinty, she is trying to signal her friends to come rescue her from the freak who is talking to her.

I’ve heard a lot of guys claim that they are no good at reading subtle cues and that if a woman is interested in them they should just say so. There are a couple of issues here so I’ll deal with them one at a time.

Guy: Don’t expect girls to express an interest in you. That isn’t how it works. For a guy to know if he is interested, it is usually about how attractive/intelligent/funny the girl is. For the majority of girls, the major factor is how attractive/intelligent/funny he makes her FEEL. So if you are a guy, don’t wait for somebody to show an interest in you before making a move, it isn’t going to happen. It isn’t because they’re keeping it to themselves, it is usually because they won’t become interested until after you start showing an interest in them. Pursue the people you find interesting, it is generally how you pursue them that will allow them to decide if they like you back.

70% of communication is non-verbal. Learn to understand it.

For most girls, it takes thirty seconds to decide if they want to talk to you, and seven minutes of conversation to decide if they are interested in more than a conversation.

The second issue is guys (and some girls) say that they don’t recognise body language and that is why they have some much trouble reading the non-verbal cues of the opposite sex. Body language is not some mystical thing which you understand or you don’t. It is a language which needs to be learned. If you didn’t pick it up in childhood (maybe you were an only child or didn’t play with other kids much) there are plenty of websites which can teach you.  (link)

70% of human communication is non-verbal. Unless you want to date blind or autistic people exclusively, learn to read body language. This should be a priority as it will aid in all levels of physical communication. The benefit of learning body language at an older age is that you can learn more than basic survival skills. Most people who learn instinctively plateau at a comfortable spot where they can get by, study and practice take take you beyond that level.

3) Dealing With Commitment Breath

Dealing with commitment breath is simple. Find somebody who makes you laugh and is great fun to talk to right now. If you works out, you'll be together anyway. If it doesn't, you have fun finding out.

I’ve worked in a variety of high pressure sales jobs. Managers put a lot of pressure on sales staff to push to sell certain items, often offering a bonus commission for every sale. Toward the end of the day, sales staff who haven’t reached their quota for the day begin to stick of desperation to close a sale, customers can sense this desperation and avoid buying the product instinctively even if they may’ve otherwise been interested. This effect is called “commission breath”.

I’ve noticed that people who’ve been single for an extended period of time (particularly as they approach their thirties and start thinking about their window of opportunity to produce children) begin to develop commitment breath. Some common signs of commitment breath are: talking about marriage/babies/settling-down on the first date, refusing to “waste time” by going on a date with somebody who isn’t “marriage material”, questioning the other person’s “seriousness” after just one or two dates. I’m nearly thirty and I’ve been guilty of this a few times. The trick is to identify when it is happening and take steps to prevent it.

Go on a few one-on-one platonic dates with various people who you have no intention of marrying. I know that the Christian dating books say not to do this but they are mostly concerned with preventing teenagers from having sex. The group date is one way of diffusing the pressure that you are putting on a first date, except that the pressure is still there if you’ve got commitment breath, and taking these extreme measures to filter the people you’ll date only increases the pressure placed on the dates themselves. If you make a habit of spending one-on-one time with all of your friends, not only does this make you a better friend, it also enables you to have first dates without the pressure of “I’ve only asked you on a date because I want you to marry me.” Informal lunch dates are your friend. Don’t pay for everything.

So your coffee has a heart. Don't read too much into it.

If your current conversion rate for asking somebody on a date and getting a positive response is lower than 50%, you may need to alter your approach before trying again. I haven’t been turned down for a date in years. This isn’t because I am super attractive (though I’m sure it helps ). It is because my super seductive technique sounds a bit like “Hey you wanna grab a coffee after this?”.

note: it is a very specific invitation to ask somebody out for coffee immediately, a negative response isn’t always an “I don’t want to date you” but can genuinely be a “I’d like to but I have stuff I need to do right nowt”. A follow up of a negative with a “no problem, next week then?” is genuinely guaranteed a “yeah, sounds great” if the person isn’t a complete stranger. While this is a bit of a slight of mouth trick which will get somebody to agree to a date they may not have otherwise agreed to, it is not an excuse to think that they want to produce offspring with you. Sometimes coffee is just a hot caffeinated beverage.

4) Revise Your Assumptions About Gender Relationships

Nice guys stay in the friends zone.

Conservative churches seem to be very efficient at making men completely terrified of the lure of female friendships. So at the risk of stating what is obvious for the majority of my audience, the concept of distancing yourself from all female friends after you get married or only spending time with women you consider to be potential life partners is inconsistent with the idea of developing a friendship before you start dating.

Never tell somebody that you don’t see them as a potential partner unless they bring it up. It is rude and if you intend to stop spending time with them because you don’t want to marry them, it is also degrading as it suggests that a woman’s only value to you is as a potential partner. Getting to know somebody as a friend first is one of the most effective ways to ensure that it never becomes more than a friendship, particularly if you are the kind of guy who plans to stop socialising with all other women once he finds a partner. Woman are smart. If they know that they have your friendship now, but if you try a relationship and decide that you aren’t compatible, they’re going to lose the friendship too, they simply aren’t going to go there. Telling a friend that they are your ideal partner is a very effective way of destroying a friendship and you will not get a date out of it. A man who only hangs out with women that he sees as potential life partners is effectively communicating that the only value that women have to him is sex (albeit monogamous sex in the context of marriage). If you are only developing friendships with women in the hope that one day you will marry one of them and discard the rest, then there is no friendship, you’re just using them for sex. This is called the “niceguy” approach, and I assure you it is not nice. This is the main reason that “nice guys” tend to get “friendzoned”. Girls can see if you are only being their friend because you want to get into their pants. They won’t necessarily stop being your friend, but they will never let you get in their pants.

A purely platonic friendship can teach you how to relate to the opposite sex as human beings rather than as conquests or necessary breeding equipment.

Learn to have friendships with women who you would never marry and maintain friendships with people you’ve dated that didn’t work out. This demonstrates that you aren’t going to discard somebody because you decide that you aren’t compatible after a few dates and will increase the likelihood of you female friends feeling safe to go on experimental dates with you without the risk of losing the friendship.

I have heard people claim that the reason it is so hard for Christian guys to find a partner is because women have their priorities out of order and and focussing on their career or social groups rather than on finding a husband. Let me be very clear about this. Don’t blame society or women’s equity for your inability to attract a partner. Church attending women outnumber the men by nearly two to one. Short of dance/aerobics classes, it is the best ratio of single women to men you are going to find anywhere. The problem isn’t the women, it is the emasculated boys in the congregation who have never learned how to be men. Women in the church usually miss out on their ideal partner because their ideal partner doesn’t go to church.

SOME ADDITIONAL TIPS

Dating sites are good for training. Don't expect to meet the partner of your checklist here.

Make a profile at plentyoffish.com or a similar site. No, you won’t meet anybody there. There are 10 guys to every girl and most of the girls are just there to have guys tell them that they are attractive. The value is in the forums. When you make a profile and get people in the forums to give you advice on improving it, the tips they give you are useful for adjusting how you present yourself in person as well as online. They also have an “ask a girl” forum which I think would be highly beneficial.

Being independent is good. Interdependent can also be good, but leave that till you’re married. Making a single person exclusively responsible for your personal happiness is too much pressure and will inevitably lead to relationship breakdown.

Complimenting a woman on her unique qualities is good. Telling her that she is attractive is also good. Society puts a lot of pressure on women to be physically attractive and a lot of women need constant reassurance that they look good in order to feel good about themselves. Tell ALL your female friends that they look good.

I hope this has been helpful.

If you think this advice is useful and would like some specific advice for a situation you are facing, you can leave a comment anonymously on this post and I will address the issue either in the comments or in a new post.

Friendliness

Olson lists friendliness and a feeling of being wanted or needed as two of the top three reasons given by congregation members for joining their current church. In a selection of Methodist congregations, the most common reason for joining was a feeling of being accepted, loved and wanted, and the most common reason for leaving was feeling unaccepted, and unwanted (2). Religion performs an important function in providing people in a new geographical environment with a means of developing a social network quickly (3). The desire to satisfy social needs is at least as strong a motivating force in new conversions as doctrines or specific gospel interpretation; groups that surround prospective members with warmth, love and acceptance will attract more new members (2). Strong friendships are also important in retaining existing members(5), particularly those who may be dissatisfied in other areas(2). Friendships require an investment of time to maintain(6), so congregations where most members already have as many church friends as they want or are able to maintain are difficult for new members to find a place and will appear cliquish (2). Cliquish churches will retain existing members but will struggle to attract new members.

To put it simply, retention will be high if the average number of friends per person is high; recruitment will be high if the average number of additional friends desired per person is high (2). Small group ministry teams, special interest groups and weekly Bible study groups can help strengthen ties between members(5). Creating a church culture where members shower affection on new visitors will increase recruitment rates, though it must be possible to follow that up with at least some genuine friendships which last more than a few visits. Most people can manage five close friendships, fifteen good friends, fifty friends, and so on in stages out to distant acquaintances and people who look a bit familiar(6). Since the potential for close friendship is such a crucial element of attracting new members to a church, leaders who want their congregations to grow may increase their congregation’s friendship resources by encouraging members to limit their close friendships to people within the congregation. This has the added advantage of increasing member loyalty, as people will shift their identity to a group identity when their attachments within the group outweigh their attachments outside of the group(4).

Congregations often grow to and then plateau at the size which their members can maintain face-to-face relationships with the other members of the congregation (2) the majority of church friendships develop in special interest groups and small group activities(2). It is therefore important that as well as facilitating social interaction during or after services involving the whole congregation, a growing church should also provide a range of church programs for its members. Church sports teams, community works projects and choirs are an expensive option. Weekly Bible study groups in member’s homes on the other hand can be almost resource neutral and provide a similar effect.

Doctrine

Click on the image to see it full size in its original context.

Church doctrine will also have a significant effect on member commitment, specifically in regard to strictness and perceived difference from secular society. Conservative doctrines like those of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists provide definite answers to universal questions and appeal to the human need for uncertainty avoidance(7). Liberal doctrines reduce the apparent tension between the congregation and secular society. While this reduces the social cost of membership, it also reduces the rewards of exclusivity and difference, providing little incentive to attract new members (5). The religious free market does not reward academic humility(9). By either attempting to create an internally consistent belief system or acknowledging uncertainty in the search for truth, liberal scholars have undermined the mainstream denominations ability to make exclusive claims to knowledge of ultimate reality(9). An emotional message will have a greater effect on an audience than an intellectual one. Church leaders who want to compete in the religious free market must be prepared to allow emotional appeals and highly simplified slogans a greater voice than complex theology(10).

Conservative churches also provide a level of strictness which offers distinctiveness and meaningfulness generating greater commitment(11). The high cost of membership also screens out potential freeloaders who dilute the quality of religious product (5). The result is that conservative churches have an internally perceived tension between their members and secular society which leads to increased loyalty and commitment, and subsequently a higher rate of donation of time and money(5; 12). Churches with a high level of surplus money and volunteer time are able to offer a more extensive range of programs for their members and also pay for a range of promotional activities which can attract new visitors(5).

Service Style and Content

Every time Christian revival has occurred in America, it has been efficiently organised, advertised and planned(3). High satisfaction with various aspects of service style, including music and preaching are a strong predictor of the likelihood of an individual’s desire to participate in a church community, leading to satisfaction and a desire to share their beliefs with friends and family(4; 2) potentially leading to an increase in visitors. While God may move in mysteries, the elements of a church service which recruit and retain congregation members can be measured and analysed for optimum efficiency.

The very earliest religions existed to create social cohesion. They were purely experiential with no theology(6). While religions have developed a lot of complexities since their animistic origins, human nature hasn’t changed all that much. Sermons with an emotional message ranging from prosperity to hellfire, delivered in a stimulating way, will provide a higher degree of member satisfaction than an intellectual or complex theological message(9). Regarding style, excitement and laughter both produce an endorphin release in audience members, which lead to increased social bonding and the friendship effects described earlier, as well as adding to member satisfaction (6). Emotive music and lighting, dancing, singing, cheering and other endorphin stimulating activities will all assist in developing social cohesion and commitment within a congregation(6; 9).A successful church will provide what the market wants, not what works best or costs least, or even what they might actually need(7).

Marketing

Churches with a surplus of volunteer time and donated money are very likely to have an extensive range of programs but use relatively few resources on marketing. Church programs, such as a junior sports club or choir, may assist in member retention, but do not show a significant effect on church growth overall. Effective church marketing on the other hand, shows a strong correlation with overall church growth(5). There are many different denominations and congregations competing for membership resources; a church that needs to increase its market share should therefore put the majority of its surplus resources, after the costs of putting on a stimulating weekly service and small group gathering to develop friendships, toward marketing itself in the community (10; 8). Marketing a church isn’t simply a case of proving the community with an address and description of the service. The modern needs based marketing approach, developed from the suffering and salvation teachings of St Augustine, suggests framing the tangible product (attending this particular church) as satiating an emotional need (status, approval, novelty, vitality, embarrassment avoidance, etc) in a way that no other product can(7). It is important to focus on the specific needs of the target market. A church located in a newly developed suburb might advertise itself as a place to meet new friends, while a church in the heart of the city could offer status and networking opportunities for business executives with an exclusive business lounge.

Conclusion

The observations of these major factors which contribute to church growth may assist church leaders who wish to stimulate growth in their congregations. While some variables, such as denomination, may appear outside of what an existing church can change for the sake of attracting new members, it is still possible to use this information to alter the way an existing message is delivered. An older congregation may not be interested in loud music and dancing, but adding a few jokes during the service and a member catered morning tea at the end could provide similar internal benefits. Any church that focuses on creating a friendly atmosphere, preaches definite answers to universal questions, emphasises the differences between members and non-members, provides emotive services and utilises persuasive needs driven marketing is likely to experience the growth necessary to spread its core message. If that message is important, then it is worth the effort.

Works Cited

1. All Creatures Great and Small: Megachurches in Context. Chaves, M. 4, s.l. : Religious Research Association, 2006, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 47.

2. Church Friendships: Boon or Barrier to Chuch Growth? Olson, DVA. 4, s.l. : Blackwell Publishing, 1989, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 28.

3. Two Centuries of Christianity in America: An Overview. Boyer, P. 2, s.l. : Cambridge Universtiy Press, 2001, Church History, Vol. 70.

4. Institutional Influences on Growth in Southern Baptist Congregations. Dougherty, KD. 2, s.l. : Religious Research Association, 2004, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 46.

5. Church Growth and Decline: A Test of the Market-Based Approach. Stoll, LC & Petersen, LR. 3, s.l. : Religious Research Association, 2008, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 49.

6. Dunbar, R. How Many Friends Does One Person Need? FORA.tv. [Online] 2010. [Cited: February 8, 2011.] http://fora.tv/2010/02/18/Robin_Dunbar_How_Many_Friends_Does_One_Person_Need.

7. The Sweetness of Salvation: Consumer Marketing and the Liberal – Bourgeois Theory of Needs. Applbaum, K. 3, s.l. : The University of Chicago Press, 1998, Current Anthropology, Vol. 39.

8. Cultural Influences on the Growth in Evangelical Christianity: A Longitudinal Study of 49 Countries. Rosson, T & Fields, D. 3, s.l. : Religious Research Association, 2008, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 49.

9. How the Upstart Sects Won America: 1776 – 1850. Fink, R & Stark, R. 1, s.l. : Blackwell Publishing, 1989, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 28.

10. Is Nothing Sacred? The Eclipse of the Holy in Contempory Christianity. Goetz, JW. 2, s.l. : Antioch Review, 2003, The Antioch Review, Vol. 61.

11. Church Growth: Statistical Pitfalls and Their Consequences. Iannaccone, LR. 3, s.l. : Blackwell Publishin, 1996, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 35.

12. Religious Brand Loyalty and Political Loyalties. Djupe, PA. 1, s.l. : Blackwell Publishing, 2000, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 39.

13. Passing the Plate in Affluent Churches: Why Some Members Give More that Others. Davidson, JD & Pyle, RE. s.l. : Religious Research Association, 1994, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 36.

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:14-15)

In a humble, single room hut in the village of Capernaum, a small boy quietly tends to the animals in the lower, hay covered floor that was carved out for the animals, while in the raised family area of the hut a group of young men, guests of his father and disciples of the Rabbi Jesus, argue over which of them will hold the higher position when they’ve overthrown the Roman oppressors. The rabbi returns. His disciples run to him, demanding that he tell them the positions they will hold in his kingdom. The rabbi’s eyes scan the hut quickly as the little boy crouches low behind his goat. The rabbi smiles; he has found his answer. Pushing through the demanding young men, he reaches down and lifts the boy up to the higher level of the hut, placing him in the midst of the men, and tells them that the one of them who is most like the little boy will be the greatest; that those who cannot be like him are not fit for his kingdom. (Matthew 18:1-5, Luke 9:46-48, Mark 10:14-15).

The Synoptic Gospels each contain an account of Jesus declaring that being like a child is a requirement for entry into the kingdom of Heaven. Given that over half the world’s population consider Jesus an authority on the topic of Heaven, and a third say he is God (1), and also given the implications of being left out of the kingdom for failing to be like a child are disastrous by dominant modern interpretations, it would appear that having a correct understanding of this verse would be of critical importance. Unfortunately, those seeking to understand the meaning of this statement have left large bodies of information unused in forming their conclusions, with the result that the dominant understanding of Jesus’ statement may be incomplete. In this essay, I plan to bring together the major sources of information on the reality of what it meant to be a small child within the Roman Empire during the early part of the first century from both primary documents and archaeological evidence, in order to present four alternative readings of the phrase, and their theological applications.

These are as follows:
1) Being like a child means being vulnerable and dependant on others.
2) Being like a child means learning by asking challenging questions.
3) Being like a child means having a low status.
4) Being like a child means existing outside of the Mosaic Law.

While it is a common assumption that children are the same in every culture and context, it is also incorrect. Modern

What does it mean to be childlike, Atreyu?

Western audiences generally consider childhood to be a time of innocence and naiveté, a receptiveness and unquestioned acceptance of whatever their parents say, and of absolute contentment with life as it is (2). The irony of course is that this is not even universally true in cultures which promote this romanticised stereotype. To understand the meaning of childhood in the context of Jesus’ teaching, it is necessary to put aside preconceived ideas of what modern culture claims about the nature of childhood (3). This is especially important when considering the implications of Jesus’ association of the Kingdom of God with little children (Matthew 18:4; Mark 10:15; Luke 9:46-48). What does it mean to be like a child in the context of Jesus’ command?

"Little Timmy died of syphilis at the age of five. He's from the first century. He has a message for you. He's speaking in Latin but the spirit world is translating for me. Timmy says Hi."

There are a number of challenges involved in trying to understand the life of a child living in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the first century. The main problem, which is so obvious that it is frequently overlooked, is that researchers aren’t able to actually speak to a child from the first century in order to ask them about their experiences. This is true of all historical research, but is particularly relevant in this case as there is also no access to literature specifically written by members of the target group, as might be available for researching the experience of other members of ancient society. This leaves the anthropologist to piece together a picture of the likely experiences of children in ancient times by examining what adult writers had to say about their own experiences and opinions of children, and what archaeological evidence can say about the kinds of experiences children may have had and their place in the society. Any interpretation of this data is then vulnerable to the author’s own expectations and biases (4).

Little is known about children in the first-century Mediterranean world (2). The use of archaeology in the study of children in antiquity is a newly accepted discipline within the academic community because certain difficulties in drawing information from younger skeletal remains have only recently been overcome (5). As a result, the current dominant archaeological narrative presents a picture of the ancient world in which children are conspicuously absent (5). Theologians have also shown little interest in child focussed readings of the Bible until relatively recently (3).

Fortunately, it will not be necessary to specifically determine whether Jesus is using Roman or Jewish definitions of children in his teaching, as it is widely acknowledged that by the beginning of the first century, the Jewish culture had become thoroughly Hellenised (6) and its approach to children was much the same as the rest of the Roman empire (7), with a few notable exceptions in its approach to infant exposure and parental responsibility (8; 9). In this article, unless otherwise stated, general comments about children will refer to both Jewish and non-Jewish children, with specific comments about Roman, Greek and Jewish children when there is a disparity between the subgroups.

1. Being like a child means being vulnerable and dependant on others.

The story of Moses begins with a heatwarming account of infant exposure.

A casual glance at the available archaeological evidence of mass child graves shows that a major factor of being a young child in the first century Mediterranean area must be vulnerability (5). Every child in the area of this study would be considered “at risk” by modern standards (10). Infant mortality was common, with an estimated 30.6 to 35.8% of infants dying in their first year of life (9; 11). The variation in these estimates is based on how widespread instances of child exposure are believed to be in the specific area and how likely those instances were to result in the death of the infant. Greek mothers did not commonly form a strong bond with newborn children before they reached the age of two (11) and it is a reasonable assumption that some Hellenised Jewish and Roman communities also adopted this measure for dealing with the reality of high infant mortality. The Jewish Mishnah does not permit any form of grieving for children born before the eighth month of pregnancy or who die within thirty days of birth, they are considered stillborn (Halacha 6-8); this suggests that such deaths were sufficiently common that this kind of legislation was necessary to prevent excessive disruption to society by frequent ceremonial grieving practices. It could be argued however, that the Jewish practice of naming male children on the day of circumcision provides some level of humanisation to Jewish infants at an earlier stage than traditions of the surrounding cultures (12).

As well as death by natural causes, newborn infants faced the threat of infanticide. Marriage existed in Rome for the primary purpose of producing children (8). Since Rome valued the production of male children as citizen-soldiers (8) children with birth defects which were not immediately fatal were required by Roman decree to be killed immediately (9). This practice was generally performed by the midwife, and usually by drowning (9). The Jewish scholar Philo, considered the killing of infants to be excessively cruel (13).

The story of Romulus and Remus is another tale of infant exposure.

More common than infanticide was child exposure, the practice of taking a new-born infant to a secluded location to be exposed to the elements. While many exposed infants would have died, this practice was considered distinct from infanticide as it was possible, though not necessarily probable, that the child may survive (9). Exposure can be roughly divided into two forms. Parents who expressly wished their child to die, usually if the child is either disabled in some way or illegitimate, would leave the infant naked or in a location where it would be unlikely to be found (9). The softer form of exposure was to leave the child clothed in a public area or a secluded area which was a known place for child exposure where people seeking infants to raise as their own, or more commonly as slaves and prostitutes, could possibly rescue them for this purpose (9). Martial, in his letter to Domitian during the first century, praises a relatively new Roman law for protecting infants from castration (14).

Child exposure was common across the Roman Empire, and was generally accepted as unavoidable (9). Poverty was a major cause of child exposure, and people would often expose a child rather than raise one in poverty (9). Since Roman culture considered it the obligation of a parent to provide the children they raised with an inheritance of property equal to what they received from their own parents, exposure would often be used to prevent an excessive division of an inheritance between too many heirs (9). Most families would only raise two children for this reason (7). Exposure also allowed parents to choose the sex of the children they raised and was therefore a more common practice than contraceptives and abortion, which were both also practiced at the time (9).

This is the more likely consequence of child exposure.

Cornelius Tacitus actively condemned the Jews for failing to expose unwanted children(15), though the reality was that while Jewish scholars did try to take a stand on the issue more than those of any other cultural group of the time, the exposure of deformed and illegitimate children still seems to have been considered to be unavoidable (9). Some claim that Philo’s aggressive language toward men who killed infants also extends to a condemnation of exposure as well, however there are little grounds for this claim, as while it was the man who made the decision (8), the actual procedure of infant exposure was considered to be women’s work (9). Also, due to the Mishnah’s distinction between a live birth and stillborn being determined when the infant reaches 30 days of age (Halacha 6-8), it is possible that child exposure occurring in the first month of an infant’s life would not be considered as severe in Jewish law because the child was not technically a person yet. However, there is also evidence in contemporary poetry of the period that single Jewish mothers were more commonly recognised to attempt to raise an illegitimate child in poverty than their Roman counterparts (14).

Children who survived infancy were by no means guaranteed survival. Twenty three percent of children who reached their first birthday would still die before the age of five*. The most common causes of death at this age are violence and neglect (9). Since male children were more highly valued, it was female children who were at the greatest risk at this stage (9; 2). Jewish scriptures advised parents whose children were disrespectful to them allow other members of the community to discipline their children to avoid overly harsh punishment (7); it can be inferred from this and the fatality statistics available in the archaeological record that this is in response to a common problem of overly enthusiastic corporal punishment, resulting in death (5). As children, particularly female children, were considered the “least” in family and social structures, when times of poverty and scarcity occurred, it was usually the youngest who would go without food or clothing; the results were often fatal (2).

Children who survived to the age of five would now have a much better chance of surviving to adulthood (16). Male and female foundlings** would be sold on the slave market at this age (9). Child prostitution was also a commonplace for both male and female children (14) which would increase the child’s material worth and consequently their chances of survival would also increase.

It is possible that Jesus was referring to their vulnerability and absolute reliance on the benevolent charity of adults. Somebody looking for a biblical justification of this interpretation need look no further than the gospel account which has Jesus send his disciples out into the surrounding villages without an outer coat or shoes. This put them in a position similar to a child who has been left out for exposure. They were reliant on somebody in the town they were visiting to take them into their home or else they could possibly die from exposure to the elements (Matthew 10:10).

2. Being like a child means learning by asking challenging questions.

Rich Breakfasts
Rise; the baker is already selling breakfasts to the children; and the crested birds of dawn are crowing on all sides (14)

"Bye Dad, I'm going to school!"

In the Roman Empire, formal education began at the age of five. In this section I plan to focus on the education of children raised by Roman parents compared to the education of Jewish children.

It was usual for children in Ancient Rome to attend both primary and secondary school (17). While there is no record of girls being required to attend school, there is also no record of them not being permitted to do so; it likely depended on the father’s willingness to pay tuition for a daughter (17). Roman law stated that only children who had attended both primary and secondary school were required to support their parents in their old age (17) so it is likely that girls who had no brothers would be sent to school to ensure their parents’ retirement plans. Repeated mention of female poets Sulpicia and Theophilia in the works of Martial, and of Cynthia in the works of Propertus indicate that there were at least some literate females in Rome at the time (18).

Detention doesn't seem so bad now does it?

A normal school day would begin before dawn (19). The students would wake up before sunrise and begin the journey to school, often purchasing baked goods from local businesses that began their day early specifically to cater to hungry school children (14). Classes would be conducted in a loud, teacher centred, pedagogical style which was apparently very effective at robbing local poets of their beauty sleep (14).

In nearby Jerusalem, it was considered the responsibility of Jewish parents to teach history and religion to their children (12), and it was the responsibility of the father specifically to teach them the law (20) According to the Mishnah, a child at the age of five years was fit to begin memorising the Torah; by age ten they could study the Mishnah (Avot 5:21). Since it would not have been practical for every household to have a copy of all the scriptures, synagogues became the central learning institutions for the Jewish population of the Roman Empire. Teachers were not paid for their services and were often tradesmen who taught part time in a synagogue or elderly men who were supported by their children (21). Children learned to read the Torah but only developed limited writing skills unless they were specifically training to be scribes; this is implied from the limited language ability demonstrated by laymen in funeral carvings (7). Scribes and rabbis were expected to also have a trade to support themselves if necessary (12). Synagogue lessons for young boys were primarily focussed on reading the Torah and Mishnah and how to live life “under God and among men” (21). Classes were conducted in a student focussed discussion style (21). As well as being responsible for ensuring that their children either attended synagogue or learned religion, the law and history at home, Jewish fathers were also responsible for teaching their son a trade (12). Children in poor families would be expected to work from a young age (7).

Some Christians like to claim that Jesus’ call to be like small children is a command to simply accept what you are told by your pastor on faith alone and stop asking difficult theological questions for which they don’t have an answer. While this may be true of the nature of Roman education, Jewish children however were encouraged to ask difficult theological questions as part of their learning. The account in Luke of Jesus staying behind at the temple as a child and being involved in discussion with the rabbis shows that Jesus, or at the very least the writer of the gospel, did not consider accepting what somebody else says without rational inquiry and questioning to be a positive characteristic of children (Luke 2:41-52). Therefore it is curiosity rather than blind acceptance which defines the childlike learner.

 

3. Being like a child means having a low status.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:4 NIV)

Humility hasn't always meant what it means now.

The dichotomy of adult and child fails to do justice to the complexities of social age in a first century context (5). Infants and small children were a marginalised subgroup. In a culture dominated by powerful, adult men, they were not powerful, not adult, and not men (5). They held the lowest social status in a first century Mediterranean family in every area that was valued. Considered ignorant, capricious, in need of education and strict discipline (3), they were considered the “least” (2) in all of society and were completely at the mercy of the adults who took responsibility for them (2).

In a Roman family, marriage existed for the specific purpose of producing children (8). For mostly financial reasons, Romans would seldom have more than two children in a family (9). It was the responsibility of the father to decide if a new born infant would be killed, exposed or raised as his child (8). Sons were more highly valued than daughters (2). To a father, a son could work to support him in his old age, carry on his name and bring honour to the family. To the empire, a Roman son was particularly valuable as a citizen-soldier, essential to the continued Roman conquest and domination of surrounding lands; this is likely the reason that it was necessary to kill handicapped infants (8; 9). A father who accepted his daughter was obligated to nurture her to marriageable age, provide her with an appropriate dowry and arrange a man for her to marry after she’d reached the legally marriageable age of twelve *** (8; 7). Considering the expenses involved and the fact that Roman culture placed a very low value on newborns, particularly females, exposure of daughters was very common (9). The fact that this action was not romanticised with ideas of surrendering them to the will of the gods seems to suggest that the fate of abandoned infants was not of concern to the parents (9). The children they did raise, however, were cherished. Both Roman men and women chose parenthood for the pleasure and joy of raising, teaching and generally enjoying their children (8). Roman parents place a high value on the quality of life of the children they raised, and sought to provide them with at least the same level of security and opportunity which their parents had provided them in their own childhood (9).

For a Jewish family the parents’ responsibility to raise the child began somewhere between birth and when the infant reached the age of thirty one days (Halacha 6-8). Parental responsibility to children was to put food in their mouths and clothing on their backs. The father was culturally responsible for financial support, such as the cost of redeeming the first born, teaching sons a trade and eventually providing dowry for daughters (7). Fathers who did stay around to assist in raising their children were expected to handle the majority of the discipline, which leaned exclusively on corporal punishment (7; Ecclesiasticus 30:1), though in cases where they were personally offended by their child’s behaviour they were encouraged to seek assistance from men in the community to avoid over disciplining their children (7). Jewish parents did not play or laugh with their children (Ecclesiasticus 30:9-10). Their focus was on discipline and education. Children were expected to obey their parents without question (12). Daily care was provided by mothers and only very wealthy Jewish families would employ nursemaids (12). Because most Jewish families were comparatively poor, they were likely to be involved in informal marriages (7). Under Roman law, this meant that the decision over life and death was the responsibility of the mother (8), who was master of the house in an informal marriage (7). In such a situation, the father was only responsible for the upbringing and financial support of his offspring while he stayed with the mother (12); if the parents divorced the mother would be left to support the children by whatever means she could. In the absence of a husband, prostitution and begging would be the only viable options (9; 14).

Mothers teaching their children to beg was a common sight in the city of Rome.

According to Martial, it was a common sight to see a poor Jewish mother teaching her son to beg in the streets of Rome. There are a number of factors which would lead to this situation. As a result of their position on child exposure (9), Jewish families were more likely to have larger families than they could support; with limited land in a time when wealth was reliant on land holdings, families with more than two children would see their per capita resources reduced significantly with each generation. Without being able to expand their territory or reduce their population through war (due to being part of an Empire), and being culturally incapable of controlling their population growth through other means, the Jews were comparatively poor and often unable to support their own children (7). Poor people were likely to have informal marriages rather than paying a registration fee; Roman law stated that children from informal marriages were the responsibility of the mother in case of divorce (7). The average life expectancy of thirty five (16) incorporated with a high age difference between married couples, with girls marrying as early as twelve years of age though usually in their late teens and men marrying in their late twenties (8), it can be expected that there would be a lot of Jewish women left to raise their young children without a father or any legitimate means of income. Since trade skills were passed from father to son (7), women did not have the skills to teach their sons a trade. So while a daughter raised by a single mother could still potentially be married off at a young age, a son had to be taught a means of earning an income. Without the assistance of men in the community or older male siblings, the only trade a mother could teach her son was begging.

4. Being like a child means existing outside of the Mosaic Law.

The final aspect of what it might mean to be like a child could relate to the fact that small children are not required to keep the law (22). According to the Mishnah, children under the age of thirteen are not expected to fulfil the Mosaic Law (Halacha 6-8). There is not a lot written on the theological ramifications of this, though the influence of such a radical interpretation of Mishnah and Mosaic Law could well lead Jesus to develop theology similar to the one which is attributed to him in the gospels without necessitating an expectation of his own death as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of mankind.

Saint Peter (Kephas) taught a very different gospel message to that of Paul.

There is a way to test this theory. If it can be shown that Christian libertinism amongst the followers of Kephas existed prior to the development of a doctrine of substitutionary atonement through the human sacrifice of Jesus; entering the kingdom “like a small child” would be a likely origin for such a belief (23). If that is the case then the substitutionary atonement story is likely an etiological adaption of the existing resurrection myth to add emphasis to an existing philosophy by which Jesus was initially able to exclude himself and his followers from any obligation to the Mosaic Law (24). What can be shown is that there were Christian leaders in the very early stages of the church that gave up all pretence of legal observance and held great influence over Christian churches by their direct, physical association with the Messiah well before the earliest Pauline letters were written, (23). While that does not prove that Jesus’ original teachings did not involve substitutionary atonement, it does present an alternate method for libertine beliefs to have developed prior to any record of a belief that Jesus’ resurrection carried any form of atoning meaning other than to justify his teachings.

If Jesus was referring to the unaccountable under the law characteristic of children when he told his followers to be like a small child, it would alter the primary focus of his teaching and suggest that the libertine Christians, more than the Judaizers and Paul, had the most faithful interpretation of the earliest teachings of Jesus. For a modern Christian who accepts this as the most likely meaning of Jesus statement, it would mean a greater emphasis on grace and a significantly reduced ability to justify excluding people from the faith and church community on the basis of sexuality or external behaviour.

". . . and that is what God really meant by the tenth commandment."

What does Jesus really mean when he calls his followers to be like children? Does he mean for Christians to be vulnerable like little children by releasing their attachment to the things that grant them worldly security, like money and career, and place their trust in something greater? Does he mean for Christians to learn like little children, asking the difficult questions and searching for an answer without fear of a conclusion they don’t like? Does he want Christians to be humble like little children, voluntarily placing themselves as lower than others rather than constantly trying tear down others to build themselves up? Does he want Christians to be free from the law of guilt and shame like little children, able to find their way and make mistakes without fearing that their God will smite them if they fail to live up to some impossible standard? Maybe it is all of these. Or maybe he just wants everybody to just shut up and stop asking difficult questions. It is my hope that this essay has shown that there is always more than one way to read a Bible verse, and God isn’t going to get angry at anybody for looking at a few of them to see what makes the most sense.

* Using the statistics that approximately 35% of children die in their first year (9) and that approximately 50% die before age five(16) to calculate an approximate mortality rate of 23% for children aged between 1 and 5 years of age. The second figure is based on burial rates in wealthy families who can afford a formal burial for their children; the mortality rate is likely to be much higher in poor families.

** Foundlings are children who have been rescued from exposure, usually after being “found” by a slave trader.

*** Roman women were allowed to own property so in the event that the father died before he was able to organise a husband for her, which was fairly common with short life expectancy and high age difference between husbands and wives, she could organise a husband for herself and have an accountant arrange dowry payment from her inheritance.

Works Cited

1. Hunter, P. Adherants.com. [Online] [Cited: January 30, 2001.] http://www.adherants.com/religions_by_adherents.html.

2. Experiencing the Kingdom as a Little Child: A Rereading of Mark 10:13-16. Bailey, JL. 1, 1995, World & World, Vol. 15.

3. The Child in Christian Thought. Ward, JD. [ed.] Marcia J. Bunge. Grand Rapids : s.n., 2001, Theological Studies .

4. The Teaching of Jesus. Miller, LH. 4, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1914, The Biblical World, Vol. 43.

5. Harcrow, SE & Tayles, N. The Bioachaeological Investigation of Childhood and Social Age: Problems and Prospects. Dunedin : Springer Science & Business Media, 2008.

6. New Light on Hellenistic Judaism. Goodenough, ER. 1, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1937, Journal of Bible an Religion, Vol. 5.

7. Jewish and Christian /families in First-Century Rome. Jeffers, JS. [ed.] Karl P. Donfriend and Peter Richardson. Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing, 2008, Judaism and Christianity in First Century Rome.

8. Treggirari, S. Women in the Time of Augustus. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

9. Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire. Harris, WV. 1994, The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 84.

10. Gurr, TR. Peoples VS States. Washinton : United States Institute of Peace, 2000.

11. Children in Antiquity. Henderson, J. Salowey : ?, 2009, Art, Vol. 395.

12. Jewish Family Life. Burton, EDW. 6, Chicago : The Universtity of Chicago Press, 1896, The Biblical World, Vol. 8.

13. Philo. On Special Laws.

14. Martial, MV. The Epigrams of Martial: Henry George Bohn edition. London : G. Bell and Son, 1904.

15. Tacitus, C. The histories of Tacitus. The Internet Classics Archive. [Online] 1994. [Cited: January 29, 2011.] http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/histories.html.

16. Excavating Jesus. Spalding, J. 2008, The Christian Century.

17. Compulsory Schooling at Athens and Rome?: A Contribution to the History of Hellenistic Education. Schmitter, P. 3, s.l. : The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 96.

18. Martial’s Sulpicia and Propertius’ Cynthia. Hallett, JP. 2, s.l. : Classical Association of the Atlantic States, 1992, THe Classical World, Vol. 86.

19. The Daily Life of a Roman Gentleman in the First Century A.D. Spaeth, JW. 12, s.l. : Classical Association of the Atlantic States, 1924, The Classical Weekly, Vol. 17.

20. Philo. Hypothetica.

21. The Christian Teacher in the First Century. Filson, FV. 3, 1941, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 60.

22. Gundry-Volf, J. To Such AS These Belongs the Reign of God: Jesus and Children. Theology Today. 2000.

23. Smith, M. Paul’s Arguments as Evidence of the Christianity from Which He Diverged. The harvard THeological Review. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1986. Vol. 79, 1/3.

24. Coogan, M. God and Sex. New York : Grand Central Publishig, 2010.

25. Aristotle. Zoika. nd.26. Wilson. Discipleship in Jesus Day. Jewish Roots of Christianity. [Online] 2007. [Cited: January 30, 2011.] www.jewishrootsofchristianity.org.

reaching out in love

Modern society continues to be plagued by conflicting ideas about sex practices, how they relate to marriage, and what God thinks of all this. Being the good Samaritan that I am, I thought I’d help out a bit by giving the argument a Jaminological treatment. In this post, I intend to strip Western ideas of sex back to their basic components, identify the common religious assumptions, and consider how a religiously enlightened Jaminist would view sex and marriage.

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, this is especially true of cultural memes like attitudes toward sex, sexuality, marriage and religion. Each generation of attitudes is a slight alteration of the attitudes of the previous generation. Even in cases where attitudes appear to have shifted violently, they still shift along the axis established by previous generations of thought. Gay marriage, for example, may seem like a huge shift of perspective, but it is merely a single and very minor alteration to one aspect of the marriage meme (an aspect which has been edited numerous times throughout history). No part of the sexual revolution is particularly revolutionary in terms of new thoughts or ideas. This is all just part of a natural ebb and flow of ideas that are held in tension between asceticism, hedonism and humanism. There is over six thousand years of cultural development which needs to be studied before a person can claim to understand society’s views on sex and marriage. Accepting that social deconstruction and practical reconstruction are ideas which have developed in a modern context, I’d like to skip the degree in cultural anthropology and just break the whole argument into its basic parts and rebuild an attitude toward sex, marriage and religion which is acceptable for a Jaminist.

Does sex exist only for reproduction?

While it may not have been immediately, consciously apparent to our primitive ancestors, sexual intercourse has a pretty clear function which relates directly to the survival of the species and propagation of genes. Sex isn’t the only way that living things can reproduce, but in complex organisms like humans, it seems to be the most effective way of giving various generational mutations a fair shot at either being useful, or substituted by the partner’s DNA. All things considered, the act itself is an evolutionary marvel, but when organisms become large and complex, having people just wander around and hoping that their genitals bump together isn’t a particularly effective way of ensuring genetic survival. So when a sexual organism shows up with an innate desire to touch its genitals against the non-matching genitals of another member of its species, and even gaining positive neural feedback after the act to teach it to do that repeatedly with as many genitals as it can find, hey presto, we have an effective survival trait. Does this mean that sex exists for the purpose of reproduction? Well yeah, in the same way that the larynx exists to keep food and water out of your lungs, but also happens to have been adapted to also allow speech.

An early example of interior decorating.

So sex is originally for reproduction. I think a lot of the conservatives are on the same page with me on this point. But here is where things begin to get complicated. Sexuality exists primarily to allow organisms with fairly simple brains to identify their own genitalia as male or female, and identify the genitalia which theirs connects to in order to produce offspring. Sexuality clearly developed after sex (possibly the male thing that developed the ability to only be attracted to female things had an advantage over the male things that were sticking their things into every other thing) and also develops separately in the womb. Sometimes the development of sexuality doesn’t match the sex of the organism, and you end up with males attract to male genital and females attracted to female genitalia. If this posed a significant survival disadvantage to humans it would have died out thousands of years ago. It seems that a tribe may actually benefit from having a few males who aren’t interested in competing for females but are still happy to lend a hand with hunting and interior decorating.

Oh look, it is a baby.

Human babies are possibly the most pathetic organism in the world. A horse foal is up and walking within a few minutes of being born. Baby sea turtles dig their way out of the ground and fight their way to the ocean in their first minutes of life. The only responsibility a sea turtle mother has is to dig a shallow grave for her unborn children and to leave them in it.  Human babies on the other hand are completely dependent in their parents for up to thirty five years. During the early years in particular, these resource intensive, food powered poop machines require constant supervision at a degree that is well beyond the level of what a single parent can provide without the aid of stimulants and government a pension. So to keep these screaming lumps of flesh alive long enough to produce their own screaming lumps of flesh, humans developed basic pair bonding. This creates a love feeling between two humans for up to around two years, which is generally long enough to get the child past the most labour intensive phase. After this the partner bond could break down and the father could wander off and produce children with other partners. A process of elimination would then find that fathers who developed a love attachment to their newborn child and stuck around to help raise it would increase the child’s chances of survival, so that ended up becoming a secondary pair bonding effect. This didn’t actually happen in a narrative form by the way, it is just a bit easier to comprehend when it is taught this way.

One kind of tribe

So sex and love are still mostly about producing healthy babies at this point. Commitment and fidelity are weak memetic survival traits. Parental attachment to offspring is a strong survival trait. So far we have only talked about individual selfish gene style survival of personal DNA. That would be fine if we were talking about animals which live solitary lives, but in terms of human development, we also need to consider the tribe. Tribes form something of a macro organism for humans. In the same way that many cells sacrifice personal interest to become part of a larger organism like a human, humans give up individual autonomy and personal survival for the benefit of the tribe. People who don’t want to believe in evolution have trouble getting their heads around this point so I’m going to take a moment to spell this out carefully. An individual human can probably survive on their own in good conditions, foraging in the forest, making their own clothing, etc. When food gets scarce though, a tribe has a significant

Another kind of tribe

advantage over a lone individual because it only takes one very good hunter to sustain a whole tribe with less effort than sustaining themselves (if the other tribe members take care of turning animals into food, clothing, shelter, etc). Even without a division of labour, a tribe is far stronger than an individual in terms of warfare. So there is a lot to be gained by being part of a tribe. In fact, in an area where humans have developed into tribal groups, refusing to be a part of a tribe is likely to mean extinction. Since the majority of interpersonal human behaviour is going to develop in a context of people who seldom encounter members of other tribes outside of a context of war, one would expect social meme selection to favour prosocial behaviour or, at the very least, behaviour which appears to be prosocial. Since the majority of modern human behaviour seems to be supportive of people deemed to be part of one’s own tribe (whether that is family, college group, religious group, sporting organisation, ethnic/sexual identity and so on) at the expense of the out group (people who are not members of a person’s perceived tribe) it seems that tribes are still a part of daily human life. The size of the group an individual can identify as their tribe does seem to expand as they develop psychologically (self, family group, church group, whole church, whole denomination, all members of the religion, all humans, all animals, all living things, all of God’s creation) but that is a topic for another article.

pic only partially related

To recap our progress thus far: Sex exists primarily to produce children. Sexual attraction exists primarily to facilitate sex. Romantic love exists primarily to keep a couple together long enough to produce a child and keep it alive long enough to survive with only one parent. Parental love exists to bind the parents to the child to increase the individual child’s chance of survival. Tribes exist to create a secure, cooperative environment for their members, and are generally strengthened by larger numbers (and are therefore beneficial toward raising children and also benefit from the production of children within the tribe). So now we have a very basic understanding of the forces involved in the creation of the memes of sex, marriage and religion. Now it is time to complicate things.

1. the larynx

So far I’ve only mentioned primary functions of most of these factors. The fun thing about evolution is that it takes things which have an existing purpose and sometimes edits them to develop new functions and meanings for them. The example I mentioned earlier, is your voice box. Its primary purpose is to allow air to enter into your lungs while keeping water and solids out so that you don’t drown in your own saliva. It does this by a method involving two constantly vibrating flaps, which also happens to produce a constant humming sound as a side effect. Over time, air breathing animals have developed the features of their heads (such as nasal cavities, teeth, tongues, beaks, lips, etc; each with their own different primary functions) into sound editors and amplifiers which are then used for communication over distance. The degree that humans use and rely on speech in daily life can make it difficult to intuit that the organs which allow us the ability are actually coopted from other purposes. That is, of course, until we get home from a sporting event or concert and discover that our voice really isn’t particularly good at extended use for high intensity shouting and has been reduced to a faint crackle while the larynx concentrates back onto the primary business of keeping us alive.

Just as the larynx, cranial cavities, lips teeth and tongue have developed into more than merely a correction of the early design flaw that put the breathing and eating holes on the same tube (which would have been fine for animals with gills), the functions of sex, love, and tribalism in humans have developed into a lot more than just facilitating the production of more humans. And that is what I plan to look at next.

"Why does it matter what gender I am?"

While sex (as in the kind of genitals and chromosomal composition possessed by an individual) is something which is fairly clear from birth in the majority of cases, sexuality and gender identity are both much more fluid concepts which relate to sex but are not exclusively defined by it.  I won’t go into detail about gender in this article, but sexuality does have an important point to add in a discussion about the function of sexual intercourse. Sexual preference is a biological level feature which would have originally increased the likelihood of an individual organism selecting a mate with which it would be able to produce children. It seems that the biological hardwiring functions on a sliding scale, and (in men at least) is determined largely by antibodies that develop in women to combat the development of heterosexual sexuality in unborn male children. Whether this is a feature which developed in early mammals to prevent any single female from dominating the gene pool (which would potentially lead to inbreeding and localised relative species weakness in groups which lacked this immune response) is a matter of speculation. The observable reality is that sexual activity between partners who would be incapable of ever producing children through the act still produces the psychological and physical health benefits that sex between partners who are capable of producing children creates. It is also something which occurs frequently in many species of air breathing animals. It therefore has not been a sufficient problem for survival to be bred out of existence.

Romance can occur without the possibility of producing children.

Romantic partnerships, also, will often occur between people who have either no intention or no ability to produce children. These relationships, which may originally have developed in primates for the purpose of protecting young children, come with many other benefits which remain even when the possibility of producing children is removed. Men, in particular, become much more relaxed when they are in a romantic partnership (regardless of sexuality) and the impact of a stable relationship can increase their life expectancy by up to five years. In a modern, Western environment, where cultural engineering has caused a breakdown of the smaller tribal unit, romantic partnerships are able to form a kind of micro-tribe where resources can be shared, allowing the couple to survive on fewer resources together than they could separately. There are also numerous psychological and health benefits to having a romantic partner.

The benefits which sex and romantic relationships provide to individuals and communities have now come to be the primary purpose of relationships, with child production becoming a non-essential feature. The invention of contraceptives/abortion and the existence of IVF, child support and single parent allowances has placed the relationship between sex/romance and parenthood at an increased distance; both now being able to exist comfortably without the other.

Bound for the chapel. Marriage was used as a way of controlling women's sexual power over men.

So where does marriage come into all this? From an individual perspective, monogamy offers very little to either partner. Mating with multiple partners would provide more opportunity for diversity of genes for a male. A system where one dominant male has many female partners would be much more favourable for females, being able to have access to the strongest genes. The fact that male humans are slightly taller than females indicates that this was at some stage in our development the standard relationship model. So what changed? Monogamy seems to be a tribal development to sooth tensions within a tribe and reduce jealousy based in-fighting. Marriage has a similar role, drawing clear lines of which women belong to whom. In patriarchal societies, marriage is also used to subdue the sexual power of women by limiting them to a single mate/master for life. Religion does come into this as well, but it is important to note that the gods tend to agree with the personal opinions of the male priests and seers (and the idea of celibate clergy did not feature in Western religion until around 200 BCE unless you count ritual castration). So marriage is a social institution created to make heterosexual men feel loyalty to the group and secure that they could go on long hunting trips without somebody else knocking up their missus while they were out. Initially, marriage was not a lifelong commitment on the man’s part, but when tribes grew to the size where individual wealth took the place of tribal wealth, it became too easy for men to marry young virgins and then discard them when they got a bit too old, so the til death do we part addition ensured than all unwanted wives would be disposed of without becoming a burden to the community. The tradition of burying/burning wives alive with their dead husbands has a similar origin.

Defending my right to oppress others.

Marriage has developed into a religious process of sanctifying sex. This concept (in the Christian tradition at least) began in the Jewish tradition with the honourable intention of preventing men from simply raping young girls from conquered towns and forcing them to take care of any girl they raped for the rest of their life. Early Christianity was plagued with platonic asceticism which separated the body and spirit, claiming that the spirit was clean and the body (and with it, sexual desires) were unclean. This was mostly a Gnostic belief, but it permeated the early Christian church until the fourth century, when the orthodox (soon to be Catholic) church distanced themselves from the Gnostics by saying that it was only the priests who had to abstain from sex. Eleventh century thinking brought back the idea that sex was bad and fleshly, but it was decided that sex was permissible within the context of a monogamous marriage as long as it was done for the purpose of producing children and not for pleasure. Since homosexual sex could not produce children, it became stigmatised at that point (it had been previously but this represents the current generation of stigmatisation). The effect is that sex within a marriage is legitimised sex and the baggage of this decision which was made for political reasons has stuck with Western culture even to the present day, particularly among Christians.

As a reward for having read this far: cute baby penguin chicks!

Time for another midway recap. While sex and sexual desire originally developed to produce children, the chemical impulses involved have developed into something which is not limited to fulfilling the genetic imperative, and is able to exist independently of child production. Likewise, romantic love has basic roots in keeping two people together long enough to raise a child to an age where it doesn’t have to be carried everywhere. It has now transcended both the need for sex and the need for children, and exists as a social factor in its own right. Marriage developed as a cultural meme to prevent fighting between males and to control women. It has developed into a means of legitimating in-group romantic relationships and marginalising minority romantic expression.

So where does all this leave the Jaminist?

Seal of Approval

It seems that after breaking down the origins of sex, sex drive, sexuality and reproduction, the act of who is permitted to have sex with whom needs to be reordered. When heterosexual sex was inseparably associated with childbirth, it had to be socially regulated to prevent young girls from being left alone with babies who, let’s face it, take a lot more than fifteen months to raise to independence. These days, with the abundant access to contraceptives afforded to people in most developed Western countries, sex does not necessarily lead to childbirth, and has become instead something between an intimate bond between people who are romantically in love, and a fun recreational activity for those who may not be. Providing that sufficient communication takes place to ensure that both parties are there for similar reasons and appropriate precautions are taken to avoid the spread of disease, this situation meets a Jaminist seal of approval. Homosexual sex has always been in the category of either partner bonding or recreation, and was therefore stigmatised in past ages for being luxurious at a time when having fun was a most abhorrent sin. If non-reproductive heterosexual sex is considered acceptable, it would be hypocritical to hold homosexual sex to a different standard. Homosexual sex therefore also meets the requirements for the Jaminist seal of approval.

Romance is changing into something new, something sober and most importantly, something consensual.

Romantic love has also gone through a bit of a revolution in recent years. With the inclusion of the female vote, the female in the workforce, and equal opportunity laws, men and women now have a lot more in common than just sex. As such, loving partnerships can develop which are far stronger than temporary chemical attraction. Sex is an acceptable but non-essential expression of such feelings of closeness. Same sex romantic partnerships have always been capable of this connection, and were seen in ancient Greece as a far stronger bond than was possible between a man and a woman. While modern circumstances may have changed that last point, I have to conclude that loving partnerships of any combination of sexes (genders) with any number of partners is something to be celebrated. Whether or not sex is involved in the expression of that love is up to the individuals involved to determine. The important part there is again, communication and faithfulness to whatever limits are agreed to by all parties.

A new face for marriage?

Marriage may continue to have a place in modern culture, but I think its current form is going to have to change. Modern marriage contracts do not have the security of a business contract. If marriage is to have any level of credibility in a modern world, it is going to have to be remodelled in a way that is clearly distinctive from the archaic models of the past, but also a solid, predictable and stabilising element for society. My suggestion would be to have a variety of standardised marriage contracts which provide couples with a clear understanding of the agreement they are entering and the consequences of failure to uphold their end of the agreement. Obviously it would include homosexual marriage. I would also take it a step further to allow marriage contracts between more than two members. Committed poli relationships do exist and should be recognised with equal legal status.

As always, I encourage feedback. Particularly so if I’ve said anything you disagree with.

-A poem by Emily Dickenson

Some say that it is our opposable thumbs that set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Others claim it is the brain or the soul. I think the thing that really sets us apart is the awareness of our own, inevitable death. But then, perhaps we aren’t as aware as we think we are. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the finality of death, cultures all over the world hold beliefs of people surviving death in various forms, whether through reincarnation, resurrection, netherworlds of reward and punishment, ghostly forms, cryogenics, or even the more down to earth ideas of living on in the memories of loved ones or the genetic code of biological descendants. In this essay, I intend to examine some possible reasons for these beliefs and to consider whether there is any validity to the claim that we can outlive our own mortal bodies.

What makes human belief such an interesting topic is that the reasons we believe what we believe are rarely what we would expect. Recent studies have shown that emotional decision making usually precedes rational justification of those decisions (Seybold 78). So even when we think we have a rational justification for what we believe, it is necessary to examine our own emotional response to the question to correct for our own personal bias. With that in mind, any thorough investigation into life after death must begin with a review of the baggage which all humans bring to the table: imaginative obstacles, fear of non-existence, the desire for purpose, and wish fulfilment.

Children automatically assume that psychological states continue after death. Studies have shown that this is a natural state rather than a learned behaviour by observing a reduction in the belief in older children (Nichols 215). This appears to be the result of an imaginative barrier. When trying to imagine the experiences of another, we draw on our memory to create simulations of ourselves in their situation, but we encounter an obstacle when imagining a first person perspective of death (Nichols 216). Without personal conscious experience of death, we can only project our own consciousness into a dead body. We cannot actually imagine ourselves from a first person perspective in a state of non-existence (Nichols 215). Even in imagining our own death, we survive as spectators (Menz 318) we cannot simulate the absence of mental states so we attribute psychological continuity to dead subjects (Nichols 217). Imagining personal non-existence requires imagining personal awareness of personal non-existence. This is an impossible task, as awareness requires personal existence (Nichols 220). We can, however, have second person experience of somebody else dying and are therefore able to indirectly conceive of the possibility of our own death through second and third person perspectives through simulation (Nichols 226). If we cannot easily imagine a present where we do not exist, and we see evidence of physical death in the world daily and have no reason to expect that we will somehow escape this fate, it creates a state of disequilibrium. The most direct resolution of this problem is to invent a concept of spiritual afterlife (Nichols 230). This certainly doesn’t count as proof of an afterlife, but it does appear to be a major factor influencing human belief in an afterlife.

The next psychological barrier is wish fulfilment. The deepest human desire is to be free of death (Ahrensdorf). Freud and Feuerbach both believed that belief in an afterlife, like other religious institutions, fulfils human desire too conveniently to be believable (Jonte-Pace 81) and is in fact a manifestation of childhood anxieties (Kunkel 58). Hobbes claimed “Human contentment requires us to suppress our awareness of the truth that we are mortal” (Hobbes). Augustine said “Life will only be happy when it is eternal” (Augustine). Every animal has a drive to avoid death. Humans avoid death by denying it, to prevent despair (Menz 318). We naturally try to push away even the idea of it on a conscious and unconscious level. Nurses respond to less ill patients faster than they do to patients who are near death (LeShan). The funeral industry is built on the denial of the reality of death, coating corpses in cosmetics and laying them in velvet lined coffins with inner spring mattresses to create an illusion of life (Menz 319).

The horror that many feel in the face of personal extinction may be an extension of the basic animal will to live inherent in the survival instinct, coupled with the advanced emotional outcome prediction abilities of the human brain (Moxon 315; Menz 79). A belief in the afterlife may well be a simple case of desiring something so badly that we simply convince ourselves that it is true (Stewart 20). The brain may’ve evolved these characteristics to make awareness of our own death more bearable (Seybold 85).

Wish fulfilment isn’t necessarily tied exclusively to survival instinct. Belief in an afterlife can also be inspired by the need for a conservation of values (Moxon 309). The part of the brain that simulates emotional outcomes of actions in humans produces an internal sense of punishment and reward based justice (Seybold 79). The desire for compensation and reward in life is universal to the human condition (Kunkel 59). Since emotion generally makes our decisions for us (Seybold), it is understandable that if the rewards in this life for what a person considers good behaviour and the punishments for what a person sees as bad behaviour do not appear to be sufficient for the actions, they will rationalise a belief that would have the rewards and consequences of people’s lives balanced in some way that can reach them after death (Seybold 79; Moxon 309; Stewart 20; Kunkel 60). Personal immortality implies that human values are good, and are preserved after death (Moxon 309).

All of this provides some very convincing reasons for why people believe in an afterlife, but it doesn’t really address the question of whether or not they are right. The fact that every person is predisposed to believe in an afterlife and has to work very hard to imagine a world without one does not necessarily mean that they are wrong. The universe may be indifferent, but it isn’t cruel. Let’s have a look at some of the beliefs and see if they are possible, plausible or likely.

There are numerous life after death theories. Pantheism holds that the death of an individual life in the universe is like the death of a cell in the body. The body is still alive so there hasn’t really been any death. Other theories include a kind of reintegration of the spirit back into the divine with the individual self merges into and is lost within the divine self, or that we live on in the memories of those we leave behind or in the perfect memory of God (Schmidt 238). For the purpose of this discussion, I am going to focus on the kind of afterlife where something that can be identified as an individual self is able to go on living after the physical body has ceased of function, as this is what the majority of people mean when they talk about an afterlife.

To know if the self can survive physical death, the first point that must be defined is what exactly the self is. The self is not the physical material which makes up the body. The cells that make of a life form are being constantly renewed through a process of homeostasis, and the cells which make up a person today are completely different to the cells which made up that person seven to eight years ago (Moulton 50). So assuming that an individual has the same self as they did a decade earlier, their identity is not in physical matter.

The second option is that the self is a non-physical entity that exists in a dualistic relationship with the physical body and continues to live on after the physical body has expired. At first glance this appears to solve the problem of physical death and fits well with the intuitive expectations mentioned in the first half of this essay; unfortunately it quickly runs into problems. Afterlife requires the continuation of consciousness and personality; otherwise it would not be considered the same person (Foster 123; Moxom 492; Moulton 53). There is a theory that the brain is a receptor through which the conscience of the soul flows but which is not itself the source of consciousness (Foster 130). This argument is not convincing in the light of modern research into the effects of brain damage on personality and consciousness. The brain does not merely conduct thoughts, it generates them (Moulton 46). Since damage to the brain has been shown to cause alterations to personality, it can be reasonably assumed that the personality also exists within the brain and cannot exist independently of it (Seybold 79). Memory is also dependant on the brain (Foster 132). If the life after death lacks consciousness, personality, memory and the matter which made up the person, then there is no way to claim that the being that continues to exist is the original person at all.

A third option is that the self is not a physical or spiritual object at all, but is rather the pattern that forms within matter and is maintained and developed by a process of homeostasis throughout the individual’s physical life (Moulton 50). It is this pattern which contains the personality, the consciousness and even the memories and emotions of an individual. If the pattern can be preserved at the point of death and then recreated in another body, then the new body could justifiably be called the same person even if it contained none of the physical matter which made up the person in their previous life (Moulton 49). This option has one possible flaw in that it would allow for the possibility of multiple recreations of the same pattern being made in different bodies at the same time. This could be addressed by some kind of arbitrary metaphysical soul marker or atom which functions as a non-divisible authenticity certificate which would only have to make up a single part of the overall pattern to make it impossible to perfectly duplicate more than one copy of the individual at any given moment. The other option would be to say that in such a circumstance, at the moment of creation the copies would begin to have different experiences and become separate individuals. They would both be the person they were in their previous life, but they would also be themselves. I personally find the second option to be neater but they both fit the requirements for a life after death to be a logical possibility.

Moulton claims that whether man is immortal depends on the intentions and essence of God (53). I disagree. Recreating the pattern of an entire human being would require technology that is not currently within the grasp of humanity, but could be easily within the reach of a finite being with sufficient technology (Vernor). Absolute immortality may still be a long way off, but a technologically assisted afterlife for individual humans may be as little as fifteen years away. Possibly even less (Vernor).

While the reasons for the widespread and almost universal human belief in an afterlife may be illogical conclusions based on emotions and wishful thinking, the conclusion may actually be correct. An afterlife is indeed possible, though for those of us alive now, whether we will ever experience such a thing will be entirely dependent on the nature of the beings, be it God, sentient computers, future humans or aliens, who control the technology. Until we experience it for ourselves, we will never know for sure.

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