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Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Now Can Perform Marriages In New Zealand (stuff.co.nz)
New submitter scrote-ma-hote writes: From stuff.co.nz, news comes that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is now able to solemnize marriages. The registration was listed in the NZ gazette yesterday. The Registrar-General decided that the Church met the criteria in New Zealand for solemnizing marriages, as per the Marriage Act 1955, namely that the "principal object of the organization was to uphold or promote religious beliefs, philosophical or humanitarian convictions."
The idea was to show that religions are ridiculous, not to join the ranks of the bullshit peddlers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
i thought marriage ceremony was about people making binding commitments(made scared based on ones' religious beliefs) to each other as individuals before community.
and not some ceremony to make a political point about religion or lack of it, and rights.
would a marriage performed before church of the flying spaghetti monster, be 1st or 2nd? if 2nd, would it really be a marriage however legal?
In Pennsylvania, the couple can "self-solemnize," meaning they don't necessarily need to have an officiant from either (1) a church or (2) the state. While this stems from Quaker roots, it seems like a good solution to the issue where governments requires you to have a religious officiant if you do not have the state solemnize the ceremony.
Nobody wants to take your gas-guzzling SUV from you. Just don't don't come running up my mountain when the waters rise, ok?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seems like a good way to give the middle finger to conventional religions which is pretty much what FSM is all about!
It's bringing to the public attention that it is ridiculous for government to allow alleged representatives of bearded men in the sky to solemnize marriage.
This use of the FSM meme is spot on, an excellent addition to the list of religious things to be ridiculed, and hopefully eventually eliminated.
That's why the spaghetti monster is a strawman. God can't be just "anything", or he wouldn't be God. God is a very precisely defined concept, not some bearded guy or any "creature" for that matter. That's why portraying God in art was forbidden for the majority of Christian history so no one would get the ridiculous idea that God can be some dude. Look at Islam's depictions of Allah to see how they understand this concept.
Anybody can enter into a legal contract, overseen by standard contact law, to live together and share stuff.
THAT is not "marriage" in any normal sense, but it probably is the view of marriage that some secular humanists have. If humans are just evolved animals though, then there's really no more reason to have the institution of marriage than there is for any other evolved creatures. Whales do a perfectly good job of rearing offspring and hanging out in groups without any form of marriage.
Traditionally "marriage" presumes that humans are more than just animals, more than mere flash&blood, and in most cultures that there is a God or Gods involved in human existence (depending on the religion). As such, marriage is a binding agreement to stay together through thick and thin, in situations where normal contract law would happily support dissolution, with a reliance on, and an additional commitment to, some God/Gods. The fact that so many have in recent years succeeded in making modern marriage so cheap and easily undone that it now differs little from a secular legal commercial contract is very sad, and says more about those who have done this than about the institution itself. Now people walk out of marriages more easily than out of any other legal contract. Things like "no-fault divorce" were promoted as wonderful new "reforms" that would make people happier, but when I look around today I see very few people who are happily married after many decades where that was once the norm.
Nonsense. Marriage pre-dates religion. Google it if you want some arguments for and against that stance if you want.
It's not "divisive" when you point out both sides are full of crap. If anything, it brings both sides together to attack you.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Nonsense. Marriage pre-dates religion.
Google tells me:
The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350 B.C., in Mesopotamia.
And Wikipedia tells me:
Tsodilo, a 30,000 years old worshiping place found in northwestern Botswana.
There seem to be no proof that marriage pre-dates religion.
Perhaps you meant to say that there is no evidence suggesting that early marriages had anything to do with religion?
THAT is not "marriage" in any normal sense, but it probably is the view of marriage that some secular humanists have
Historically marriage has been about forging alliances and transferring wealth and property. Is that normal? Historically marriages have been polygamous. Is that normal?
And no that is not the view of marriage that secular humanists have. It is the view of secular humanists that marriage be treated as a contract by the government. This is specifically to avoid preferential treatment to some groups (i.e. people of certain religions or sexual preferences) by the government which is supposed to provide equal protection under the law.
If humans are just evolved animals though,
Humans are not *just* evolved animals. We are evolved animals. Just like how evolution is not *just* a theory. Evolution by natural selection is a theory.
then there's really no more reason to have the institution of marriage than there is for any other evolved creatures.
It is not the fact that humans have evolved (at all) that makes us worthy of institutions. It is the fact that we have evolved to the point (unlike any other organism currently on earth) to actually have abstract concepts like institutions.
Whales do a perfectly good job of rearing offspring and hanging out in groups without any form of marriage.
And if whales ever evolved to the point where their culture became advanced enough to create institutions like marriage, then the whales might very well benefit from those institutions.
Traditionally "marriage" presumes that humans are more than just animals, more than mere flash&blood, and in most cultures that there is a God or Gods involved in human existence (depending on the religion). As such, marriage is a binding agreement to stay together through thick and thin, in situations where normal contract law would happily support dissolution, with a reliance on, and an additional commitment to, some God/Gods. The fact that so many have in recent years succeeded in making modern marriage so cheap and easily undone that it now differs little from a secular legal commercial contract is very sad, and says more about those who have done this than about the institution itself. Now people walk out of marriages more easily than out of any other legal contract. Things like "no-fault divorce" were promoted as wonderful new "reforms" that would make people happier, but when I look around today I see very few people who are happily married after many decades where that was once the norm.
It's paragraphs like this that philosophy students use as homework problems to find logical fallacies.
You may now touch the bride with your noodly appendage.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Odds are that religion predates humanity.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Odds are that religion predates humanity.
Worship of Tsathoggua certainly does, so you're right there.
I'm always surprised to learn about such progressive countries which doesn't have separation of church and state. The fact that an organization have to prove it is a religion on order to issue marriages seems so medieval.
I much prefer how things are in my country, where marriage is only a civil matter, a contract signed-off by an officer of the court. So around here, people also have religious rituals performed by some kind of cleric, but those have not force of law, instead they follow the ceremony with a pit stop at the civil office where a justice of the peace issues the actual marriage.
And by the way, I'm not sure how I feel about the USA solution as well, where they claim full separation of church and state but allow clerics to issue official marriages, with the excuse that anyone can issue marriages. It feels like a cop out and it is frequently used to weaken the separation of church and state.
Odds are that religion predates humanity.
In order to have religion you need language, and a part of your brain that makes you have religious experiences (which we've actually located in humans.) Do other animals have the same center in their brains? No non-human has developed complex language*, although some appear to have a simple one. Odds are that no prior creature had religion.
* The jury is still out on cetaceans...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is the view of secular humanists that marriage be treated as a contract by the government. This is specifically to avoid preferential treatment to some groups (i.e. people of certain religions or sexual preferences) by the government which is supposed to provide equal protection under the law.
The best solution is to eliminate the concept of marriage entirely, and to just let people fill in the blank when they determine who is permitted to see them in the hospital. I do not want to see any of my relatives if I am sick, they will just make me feel like shit. And I most absolutely certainly do not want any of my relatives making medical decisions for me, those religious fucks can fuck right off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Traditionally "marriage" presumes that humans are more than just animals,
Traditionally, marriage has many purposes but despite a very long interest in all things culture and society, this is the first time I've read that one of its purposes was to highlight how we are different from animals.
Marriages primary purpose in most cultures is to remove the participants from the dating market, thus reducing competition and increasing the amount of peaceful cooperation within the society. That is why marriage is by necessity a public, i.e. social, and not a private contract. That is why most cultures have some kind of indicator for married vs. unmarried people (in western culture, marriage rings).
The previously high barriers to getting out of a marriage are due to the secondary purposes in western culture, where marriage is also an economic union. The fact that divorce is still heavily tilted against the husband is due to the ancient assumption that the woman gives up something she can't get back that will reduce her future value to future husbands (i.e. her virginity), so the husband should be prevented from divorcing her unless he can compensate for the difference.
As the economic imbalance between men and women is more and more reduced, so it becomes more easy to get out of a bad marriage.
when I look around today I see very few people who are happily married after many decades where that was once the norm.
Was it, or was it an image projected into a society expecting such? And if it is, are you sure the causality you outline is the correct one? There are many more reasons why it might be more difficult to have a happy long-term relationship today than it used to, the primary reason is probably that you have so much more comparisons than you used to, and some of them are artificially created and appear unnaturally good. Against what you see in movies, your wife can only fail. Not because she is bad, but because that image is a fake.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Just don't come after my gills because I'm special enough to swim wherever I please, ok?
#WATERWORLD
Life is not for the lazy.
Anybody can enter into a legal contract, overseen by standard contact law, to live together and share stuff.
THAT is not "marriage" in any normal sense, but it probably is the view of marriage that some secular humanists have.
That is marriage in the sense most of Europe understands it. There, marrage is a civil contract and can only be performed by a public agent. No religious group is allowed to perform marriages. All they are allowed is to perform a service after the civil union has been established.
What about the pagans who worshipped natural events because they didn;t understand them. i doubt they needed a language to bow and grovel. i expect one person grovelled in a particular way to an event (thunder) and "it worked" once so a few others copied etc
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
While parody of free speech is just more free speech, parody of religion is not itself a religion. Unless you're a dipshit, which many self-proclaimed FSM adherents seem to be.
Ironically enough this season, "Jedi" as a religion probably actually has more legitimacy than "Pastafarian" does. If you're the type of person who puts Jedi on a census form or attempts to speak the Klingon language to another person, you're probably the (nerdy enough) type of person who attempts to adopt that as a bona-fide moral philosophy, or who puts in the effort to use a defined grammar to attempt to convey an idea. Although they started as fictional concepts, they are both legitimate examples of what they'd purport to be.
On the other hand, FSM adherents don't *actually* believe in a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Could they say so under oath? No, you couldn't. Sad they can't distinguish between ironic parody and real life, they're just being assholes trying to (as someone put it earlier) "sit in a clown suit next to people that don't think they're wearing something ridiculous".
Yes, you might have a right to wear Google Glass with a prescription lenses generally, but suing establishments to try to force them to allow you into a movie theater or other sensitive place on those grounds just makes you a complete douchebag.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
+1, THIS is why I still come to Slashdot.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Now the happy couple should go off and spawn some pirates!
Animals can exhibit magical thinking. Pigeons can develop elaborate (by pigeon standards) rituals in the "belief" that it will cause food to be dispensed from a box, when it's actually just on a random timer.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
...marriage is a legal protection, distributing property in the unlikely event one of the partners die.
Among the set of living beings, death is probably the single event most likely to occur.
So marriage is a racquet in US too.
Table tennis, badminton, racquetball, squash, or tennis?
Easy train of thought:
Mocking Christianity = not Republican
Perhaps you meant "easy knee-jerk". I know plenty of Republicans who think organized religions are bunk.
Historically marriage has been about forging alliances and transferring wealth and property. Is that normal? Historically marriages have been polygamous. Is that normal?
Good to see that someone brought this up.
Morality and normality sometimes seeks practicality. In places, where for some reason or other, there is an imbalance in gender, polygamy will often become normal. In a world where population has overridden resources, procreation is not as important, or is even detrimental, and homosexuality becomes more normal.
While there are always exceptions, a well known pop culture one is the Duggars (as representative of the small group who is in favor of making as many offspring as possible) but these people are blips on teh radar, outliers that are of interest to many because they are freaks.
And it's worth noting that the latest far-right fundamentalist hero in Kentucky, who refused to sign marriage certificates for same gender couples, is also an outlier, as the others in her office were quite willing to sign them.
Point is, times change, situations change, and so do mores.
Whereas the original folks believing in the dominant religion where I'm from would be aghast at the evolving acceptance of homosexuals in today's cultures, we can rest assured that most of us, gay or normal, are repulsed by their invading the neighboring tribes, killing all the men, grown women and male children, but taking the young virgin girls as their sex slaves. Condoned and ordered by their deity - therefore a moral act to them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Among the set of living beings, death is probably the single event most likely to occur.
Not taxes? I need to pay income tax twice a year. (State and Federal) I plan on dying maybe once or twice at most.
Everybody knows that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is the only true goddess.
May her hooves never be shod.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
It's not a +2, it's a +1. An AC posts at 0. A logged-in Slashdot user with average karma posts at 1. I get a +1 bonus because I have excellent karma, which means I post at 2 by default. Don't like something I post? Then log in, wait until you get mod points, and then mod it down.
You might also want to read the FAQ.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I once "got in trouble with a dyke" too when she read my Fight Club tshirt that said "Recycle your animals". I told her it was from a movie, she said which one...I then realized that she probably really hated Fight Club since it's a "male empowerment" movie...which is too bad because having a tshirt from a movie that rages against consumerism is quite ironic...
So did Jesus, at least according to the Gnostic Gospels. Even is the accepted canon many of the modern practices are ideas Jesus specifically spoke out against; ideas like public prayer, letting the poor fend for themselves, megachurches...
Ssince you're not big on reading the instructions, there's something you might not know about this newfangled Internet thingy: There are many, many other web sites for you to visit and complain about. You're absolutely free to do so.
Or you can keep trolling, and I can keep pretending that I can't figure out that you bear some sort of grudge against me. Up to you, of course. HAND.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Among the set of living beings, death is probably the single event most likely to occur.
Not taxes? I need to pay income tax twice a year. (State and Federal) I plan on dying maybe once or twice at most.
Excellent point. I probably should have said that death is the single least escapable event.
Pretty sure those pagans would still count as "humanity", so the statement, "Odds are that religion predates humanity." still doesn't fly. Perhaps he meant "civilization".
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
If you want religion to be some spiritual-religious ritual, there are a few steps that would have to happen first:
1) Remove any secular meaning of a "marriage". I.e. tax rebate, heritage laws, visitation laws in hospitals, the whole stuff that deals with reality. ... you get the idea. Call it whatever you want if you cling to "marriage" being something sacred and holy. I don't give a shit about the name of that contract.
2) Create a secular (!) way two people can enter such a contract that entails tax rebates, heritage
Then I (and I'd have to assume a lot of other people) would not care anymore whether you define marriage as a contract gays cannot enter.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That should be "if you want marriage"...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree that is the best solution.
Do you think the AC would have also gotten in trouble if s/he had said "the rule of thumb is"?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It is called a Civil union, and for some reason, it wasn't considered good enough. This is how we got the whole same sex marriage issue, despite the availability of same sex civil unions.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Marriage has not always been a religious ceremony. Sometimes it has been primarily a civil affair, where the happy (or otherwise) couple go to a notary and sign a contract.
FWIW, my first marriage was almost certainly the biggest mistake I ever mads, so I was happy to have a legally easy marriage dissolution, and then I met another woman. We had our 34th anniversary last June.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Civil unions were not necessarily the equal of marriages, legally and socially. Personally, I'm happy with the idea of having civil unions for legal purposes, and letting people get married if they want a legally meaningless ceremony.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's NOT what people in history generally said was the purpose,
Love and war are full of lies. More importantly: Many elements of culture evolve the same way natural evolution does: What has a positive contribution, raising the survival chances of the society, will survive, even if nobody understands the why.
Maybe my choosing of the word "purpose" was not perfect, as it implies more intent than I meant. But here's the thing: A lot of conflict in society can be traced to unmarried young men. Some social scientists go so far as to see them as the major source of revolutions and wars.
Sure, occasionally as with some royal families, it's been purely about economics and politics, but not for the vast majority of people in human history who simply lacked sufficient wealth for economics or politics to matter.
Which is why even among simple people, marriages throughout human history were more often arranged than left to chance, yes? This is so incredibly stupid that it makes me angry whenever I hear it. That everyone thinks poor people can't think about economics. Of course they do. Just on a different level. Where the king thinks about securing another realm for his lineage and brokering peace with an arch-enemy, the miller thinks about keeping the mill in the family and matching his daughter to the smiths son instead of that poor farm hand.
If anything, economics matters more to poor people. For the king its about politics and how big they will write his name in the history books. For the miller it's much closer to sheer survival.
only ONE couple I can recall did not remain happily married until one of them died.
And I'm trying to tell you that there may be several other factors at work here.
Firstly, a lot of couples are not as happy inside as they are outside. Most people keep whatever troubles their marriage to themselves or to a very, very small set of highly trusted people. Unless you are in that circle, which if you are a man you almost never are because women don't share such things basically with their mother and their BFF, while men share it rarely at all, you can't say.
Secondly, the definition of happiness has been twisted. People used to be what we call content today and considered themselves happy. Especially the Disneyfication of love and romance that women suffer from is so incredibly cruel it should be considered torture (this dream of being a princess who never has to work, is always admired by everyone, etc. etc.)
Thirdly, I wasn't talking about the relationship image of movies, but of the women image. 200 years ago, even 100 years ago, all the women you would ever see in your life would be real or realistic (painting), and their number would be limited to your immediate surrounding plus a little bit (paintings). With movies and television, we have all seen 10,000 women by the time we are old enough to marry, and half of them have been photoshopped, got make-up applied for two hours by a professional and put under perfect lighting done by another professional. It's inevitable that comparing those images to the real life pictures of real women doesn't work - but our primitive brains don't understand it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org