Calling all same sex marriage proponents!
Fill in the blanks:
Marriage is a special institution that should be reserved for *blank* (number) people who *blank* (describe relationship).
As far as we know, our planet is the only place in the universe that contains life. But, the universe is so vast that it has been suggested that the chances of another planet being suitable for some sort of life are pretty good. I’m ok with that. Sure. There are probably planets out there on which life could flourish. And if you believe that life on earth was a random occurrence, then yes… there may as well be life on other planets.
However, if the universe was created only for us, it would seem that this vast universe is a huge waste of space. But is it?
If you wanted to produce life, what would you do? You’d build a lab. This lab would have rooms in which chemicals are stored. Rooms where scientists would meet to discuss strategy. Bathrooms. A reception area. A place for brooms and mops. Rooms with machines for mixing chemicals. A desk or two would be necessary to hold microscopes. And on and on.
Finally, there would be a microscopic space where you may eventually actually create life. Immediately surrounding that space would be its womb. Perhaps it would be an incubator.Only a few cubic feet in volume, but still millions of times bigger than the life it contains.
If you built all of this and actually created life, would the broom closet be considered to be a wasteful use of space? Would the incubator itself be? Or would every part of the facility be seen as necessary?
Heck, it doesn’t have to be life! How about what is needed to produce a cookie? It takes acres of wheat fields, cocoa fields, grazing lands, gas or electricity production facilities… All the way back to the Big Bang which provided the means for all the necessary elements of matter, gravity, and time that allowed a single cookie to be produced in my home oven.
The universe has to be exactly the way it is in order for cookies (as we know them) to exist. As such, the universe had to come to be in the way that it did for cookies to exist. For every tiny thing that is created to exist.
So is it a huge waste of space? Or is our universe the vast facility that it is for the purpose of providing a tiny place in which to place life that is completely dependent on it being exactly what it is?
This is not one of my normal topics, but it is something I’ve been thinking about. Perhaps it’s a little nuts, but nutty stuff sometimes appeals to me. Indulge me.
Gravity is the force that pulls stuff together. Right? Or is it a trait that stuff has? Or was Einstein right? That matter somehow warps the space around it?
Now, I’m no physicist. But I’d like to take a shot at it.
Space is not nothing. It’s stuff. It’s the stuff that’s not matter. Or maybe it’s the same stuff, just a different state of stuff. Either way, it’s not nothing.
When two bits of matter are apart, what’s between them? Space! Physical distance! That’s not nothing. It’s just not matter.
Why then do pieces of matter attract each other? In fact, do they? Certainly, they appear to. Just as an apple, once loosed from the surly bonds of the limb, moves predictably toward the center of the orb from whence its maker (little “m”) sprang, two objects alone in the stuff of space will fall towards each other.
Stuff (the stuff that isn’t space stuff) is said to pull on other stuff. I don’t think this is the case at all. Neither do I think that the warped space stuff around the stuff is warped by the stuff! (Sorry, Albert)
Indeed, I believe that gravity is the mechanism that allows the two types of stuff to exist next to each other. Its apparent “effect” is really just the way matter stuff must act in the boundary between matter stuff and space stuff.
In other words, the “warped” space is really just a gradual giving way to matter. The more stuff comes together, the less space can be next to it, or even in-between it. Until the resulting spacelessness in the center allows a whole lot of matter to be completely on its own, like in a black hole.
Look at our atmosphere. At sea level, the air is fairly dense. There is less space between its particles than at higher altitudes. Why is this? Is it because, as we have always believed, the weight of the air above is packing down the air below? Or is it that, because there Is so much matter below it, there is not as much room for space, it having already given way to the matter which comprises our planet, to be between the lower air particles?
I mentioned before that it may be that space and matter are the same stuff, just in different states. We used to think that different elements were actually all completely different stuff. We now know that it’s all the same stuff in different configurations.
So, let’s look at two different configurations of that stuff and how they interact. Our atmosphere and a helium balloon. A helium balloon will float upwards through the atmosphere. If I’m right about space giving way to matter, then why do the helium molecules not have just as little space between them as air at sea level? Or for that matter, water, or any other stuff that might fall right through air and sink right to the bottom of the deepest ocean? Well, the stuff of matter actually does come together in different ways. Ways which make some more apt than others to allow space to get out of it’s way. We call it density. Dense stuff sinks. Is it coincidence that the the stuff on earth that has found it’s way to the furthest point from outer space is its iron core? While earth was a ball of liquid, able to be easily arranged according to the laws of space/matter proximity (if such laws exist), the stuff that was more physically apt to run away from space, like a bat into hell, did.
Here’s where it gets weird (ahem… yeah, here). If I’m right, then iron doesn’t really sink. It floats to the “top” and water and air sink into space. At least, as far as the density of the surrounding space will allow.
So… To recap. Space is stuff. To exist in close proximity to matter, space must give way to it. In so doing, it forms a spherically shaped pocket of gradually decreasing space density, the center being the least space-dense, becoming the place to which matter (itself and other bits) naturally “gravitates”. Each tiny piece of matter has it’s own pocket. The more pieces of matter share their pockets, the bigger the combined pocket necessarily becomes (bigger things need less space). Denser (traditionally denser) matter floats past less dense matter to the center of the nearest available pocket, where space is the least dense, while less dense matter, being more space-dense, sinks as far as it can into denser space.
In short, gravity is space pressure working to achieve equilibrium.
Sounds good to me! I wonder what an actual physicist would say about my armchair attempt at solving one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.
I want more money. I’ll call your money “our” money! Now, I can have more!
I want marriage benefits. I’ll call marriage “the union of any two people”, so me and my golf buddy can participate.
I don’t want to kill babies, but I don’t want the baby inside me. I’ll just call some babies “not babies yet”. Killing those things can’t be wrong.
I don’t want to have to judge anyone as wrong. I’ll call terrorists “freedom fighters”.
I want more diversity (I dunno. Just ’cause). I’ll call preferential treatment for certain people “fairness” and what is truly an even playing field “racism”. Hooray for diversity!
Ah, that’s better. Redefinition makes things I want so much easier to deal with!
Science has a pretty good grasp on the timeline of the universe.
The big bang happened about 14 billion years ago. The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Life on earth began about 3.5 billion years ago. Let’s assume this is all pretty close to accurate.
At the time Earth formed, the universe was less than 10 billion years old. When life began, the universe was less than 11 billion years old.
About 3 billion years from now, the sun will have gotten too hot for life on Earth to exist. The universe will be about 17 billion years old.
2 billion years after the end of life on Earth, physicists say that time itself will cease to be able to exist. The universe will have been born and died within 20 billion years.
We talk about what seems like a long time as tiny blips on the cosmological timeline. But, life on Earth, by the time time has had its time, will have taken up fully 35% of all time.
This is amazing to me.
Some are not amazed. They say that the universe’s beginning, and life were inevitable simply because they have happened. And the end will be as well. What a strange way to view the world.
It’s as if it’s inevitable that an arrow hit a bulls eye because the wind was blowing to the right and gravity acts on matter the way it does, which both happily compensated for the archer’s leftward and upward aim.
Why is it so out of the realm of possibility that this universe, which has just enough time to support life for a great portion of its existence, which began with just the right stuff to hold itself together for any time at all, which has given life the time, space, and elements needed to exist for as long as it has and will, was designed to do so?
A universe comes into existence and is at first uninhabitable. Just as one planet becomes able to support life, it does. And just after it’s unable to, the clock stops ticking.
Why must we accept this as coincidence?
I’m no environmentalist. But I love monarch butterflies. I live in north Texas, right in the path of their migration from Mexico.
Recently, I read a report that estimates that their population in Mexico has dropped by 60%. Being ever so skeptical of such statistics, I wonder if it’s really gotten that bad for the monarch.
But, just in case… Especially if you live in the monarch butterfly’s migration path, do a little something for the little guys. Plant some milkweed.
They love it. They lay their eggs on it. When they hatch, they eat only milkweed until they form their cocoon on it.
There are resources on the web. One site will send you free milkweed seeds. They also sell small milkweed plants.
So, do the little guys (and yourself) a favor. Help them out and enjoy the show.
Thanks!
Doesn’t the argument for same sex marriage boil down to this: “I want it, so government must give it to me”?
Is there no consideration given to the reason government should be involved in such a personal matter?
Why should society care if two people really like each other? Why should society care if anyone feels a certain way about anything?
For instance, is it government’s role to be involved in any way in my choice of golf buddies? What if I really really enjoy my golf buddy’s company, so much so that I promise to play golf with him for the rest of my natural life, forsaking all other available golf partners? Should that be considered a legal marriage?
What if I meet my golf buddy when we’re both 18 and decide that our golfing relationship is so important to us that we decide to move in together so that we will be at each other’s beck and call for a quick nine (or 18, if you know what I mean)? Shouldn’t we be afforded the same marriage benefits as a couple of gay men who merely enjoy sex?
Well, shouldn’t we?
And if not, why not?
Gay marriage is in the news and in the Supreme Court. It is being argued that marriage should be between “any two people”.
My question to gay marriage advocates is this: Why limit it to two people?
I’ve argued that marriage is for one man and one woman (two people) because that’s exactly how many of what type of people it takes to make babies. In fact, it’s this ability that makes the institution and family law surrounding the institution necessary.
Gay marriage proponents say it’s not about children or reproduction at all. It’s about loving relationships that are just as “real” as heterosexual loving relationships.
I have no reason to doubt that two people of the same sex can have the same amorous feelings for each other that a person can for a member of the opposite sex. If I have to take their word for it, then surely those who would say that three women or five men can have the same feelings must be taken at their word, too.
It’s just as easy for me to imagine that more than two people can have “the same” type of relationship as any two people.
So, again, why “any two people”?
My readers may not be evolution experts, but I’d like anyone who happens to believe in it (as the alternative to creation) to take a shot at this one.
How would evolution explain butterflies?
What could possibly have happened to produce an animal that locks itself away in a cocoon and come out as a winged flying creature?
I understand that it’s all about millions of years of random tweaks, and such. But, how or why would a being wrap itself up in the first place? And would the first generations of caterpillars to have done so immediately come out with wings? What purpose is served by wrapping oneself up like that in the first place?
What was caterpillar life like before the advent of wings? How did they survive? How did they reproduce?
Would the first generations have stored up enough nutrients even to have survived their time in the cocoon, let alone what would be necessary to make such a marvelous transformation, AFTER having expended energy making the cocoon?
And what glitch caused caterpillars to be able to produce the material cocoons are made of, let alone the ability to form it around themselves at all?
Did the first winged butterfly have the retractible “tongue” necessary to drink nectar, or were there butterflies with caterpillar mouths, either in the beginning or at all? And how did they know to seek out flowers once they had this new mouth appendage?
How many butterflies could have been lucky enough to have stumbled upon flower nectar after they gained flight AND the retractible tongue? Enough to continue living as a species? How many would it take? At least one male and one female, right?
One might be inclined to chalk it all up to “the wonders of evolution”. But butterflies exist, and how they came to be should be able to be scientifically proven. Right?
Never mind. Don’t answer. I’m calling it.
Butterflies are proof of creation!
I read a Yahoo article today about opposition to same sex marriage based on the idea that marriage is the societal mechanism that encourages stable families among those who are able to reproduce: heterosexual couples.
Inasmuch as such a mechanism regards the needs of children to be taken care of by the people (two people) who produce them, marriage is really about sexual intercourse. Specifically, heterosexual intercourse. In fact, it is about the chance that heterosexual intercourse will produce children, even if it is not the intended result of the act.
I wrote a piece a while back on this subject. In it, I addressed an argument some who were quoted in the Yahoo article made: that marriage is not at all about procreation and that allowing same sex marriage would not affect the decision of a heterosexual couple to marry when an unexpected pregnancy occurred.
My argument is that the redefinition of marriage, if accepted en masse, would necessarily change heterosexuals’ view of the role marriage plays in their lives. For, if marriage is for “any two people”, then it cannot be about procreation at all.
So, having been collectively engaged in this debate for decades, has it changed in people’s minds? Apparently, in some, it has, as evidenced by the language used in countering the procreation argument. Even in today’s article, we see the evidence: “The brief also argued that preventing gay couples from marrying would not help or hurt the quest to encourage straight couples to marry WHEN they have children”.
This use of the word “when” seems to ignore the very real world occurrence of accidental pregnancies (the very subject at hand), as if procreation is always a well-planned choice. Not only that, but it shows that they’ve already forgotten (or chosen not to concede) the way marriage actually works to protect children who may be accidentally conceived.
The fact is that marriage is not to be entered into WHEN a couple has children. It’s supposed to be entered into BEFORE children are even a possibility. We used to know this. Premarital sex was considered taboo, not because of the sex act, but because of the likely product of the act. It was considered to be what it actually is: a reckless thing to do, because of the risk of accidental pregnancy, putting children in what usually is a bad situation.
When marriage is used correctly, a couple will have chosen to commit to each other, having considered carefully the other person with whom they intend to spend the rest of their lives… Oh, and with whom they intend to have sex. THEN, if they accidentally produce a child, the family will already have been established. It’s supposed to be proactive. And for the purpose of proactively providing that environment, it is uniquely beneficial for those who might very well produce children accidentally.
It’s not that marriage happens to be good for children. It’s that it is intended to be good for children. Planned for, yes. Unplanned, especially.
Prediction: Same sex marriage supporters who choose to comment here will either mention all aspects of legal marriage (property, inheritance, hospital visits, shared benefits, etc.) while ignoring the reason these aspects exist (familial duties, including those to one’s offspring), OR they will say that I’m completely wrong about procreation being even at all a reason for marriage to exist as a societal mechanism. Ignore or deny. Either way, they must break the link between marriage and procreation. It’s the only way same sex marriage “works”.
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