Atheists on Marriage

[Crow]

What are peoples views on marriage?

My own thoughts on the subject.
I have never felt the desire to be married or go through a ceremony to declare my love for somebody but neither have a truly loved another person that i want to spend the rest of my life with, so that opinion hasn't been challenged as of yet. I do know however that if i did eventually get married i would only have the service in a legal fashion rather than in a religious ceremony regardless of the other persons beliefs, as for me to get married in the first place they would have to respect my own beliefs and to get married would be me accepting there wishes for marriage that i currently don't think is necessary for a long and meaningful relationship.

Friend's of mine are going to be married soon(ish), he is atheist and she is agnostic but they like the idea of getting married in a small quaint church, they have been going every Sunday for the last month and will be doing so for the next two months until the wedding so they can use the location. what do others think of this? I personally find it quite offensive to people that believe in the faith and know for a fact that they are not converting, they want to use the pretty location (which it is) and see it as a necessary chore, I personally wouldn't have had any problem with them using the church if they were honest about why they want to use it.

Some questions?
• Have any of those that are married experienced any negativity towards your marriage because of your atheism?
• Have you been married in a religious fashion whilst being atheist? if so how did you find the experience?
• What do theists think of atheists and marriage in general?

[fester30]

I won't be able to answer all of your questions, as I was Christian when I got married.  I love marriage, because of who I am married to.  She's still Christian, but is fine with my views.  It helps that she's really only Christian because she doesn't want to accept the idea of no heaven.  She wants to believe in good things in life and in the world and the only way it makes sense to her at this point is if there's a god, and that's fine.  I think she's really more of a Deist, really.

As a former Christian, I would not personally have had a problem with atheists going to a church for a few months just to use it for their wedding, never intending to convert.  I stopped going to church because they are too exclusive, when I believed they should have been all-inclusive.  Just because someone is gay or atheist or even Satanist doesn't mean they should be barred from church.  For Christians who want to save souls for god and show their compassion and charity, it sends the wrong message to kick people out or keep people out because they aren't the same kind of sinner the church accepts.

I know some theists (coughcoughcoughO'REILLYcoughcough) feel that marriage is a religious institution and should be reserved for the religious, and that for non-religious or homosexuals it should be called civil unions.  This is simply a gigantic cauldron filled to the brim with rotting, FESTERING excrement!  We all know that no religion can say they hold the patent on marriage.  I guess words really do mean a lot to people who stand in the tides going in and out marveling at how awesome God is to create the tides like that.  You just can't explain that.

As for you... if you don't believe marriage is for you then don't do it.  There's nothing to say you have to.  I divorced once before I met my current wife, and it's a horrible freaking headache if you have to go through that.  You can't always be absolutely certain in life about relationships, but do your best to make sure the marriage makes you happier and more fulfilled, otherwise don't sign any legal papers regarding it.  I think the legal system is what ruins marriage.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I'm married and I got married in a church. At the time, I had the vaguest belief in God that you could imagine and my husband was vehemently atheist and had been for years.

We got married in the church for three reasons:

1) We were both raised Catholic and we knew it would mean a lot to our families - my Dad, especially, is devoutly Catholic. He's so old school he still fasts every Sunday before he goes to church. He still wishes the sermons were in Latin. He's uber-Catholic. I love him and I wanted to make him happy.

2) We had the opportunity to get married in the same church that my parents got married in and I liked the sentimentality of that. Growing up, I always saw a picture of my Mom and my Dad on their wedding day on the church steps with their wedding party and we were able to re-create that picture when we got married. That was pretty neat.

3) We knew for a fact that the priest who would perform the ceremony was a "liberal" priest. I attended a few sermons where he openly preached accepting homosexuality and being "Christ-like" through love of your fellow man. He was very "warm and fuzzy" and not "hell and damnation", which was the best we could have hoped for, really.

All in all, I'm still on the fence about how I feel about having a church wedding. We did have a few of our friends (who know us) come up afterwards and ask "uhhh, what was up with all the Jesus stuff?" and we explained that it was mostly a tradition thing. If I had my time back, I'm not sure if I would do it the same way all over again (I'm definitely "more" atheist now than I was when we were getting married.) To be honest, the deciding factor was really probably my Dad. If my Dad hadn't been alive, I can't imagine that the other factors would have been enough to nudge us into doing it.

Now we have an infant son and we are absolutely NOT getting him baptized, so I'm just waiting for the questions about that to pop up. Ugh.

[Tank]

My wife and I are both atheists and always have been. We were both born in '59 and were married in '80. We had a civil service at Camberwell registry office. We both wanted to get married, so we did    

I think a ceremony is something that some people like and some don't, it's all down to personal choice in my opinion.

[proudfootz]

I am married but I don't care much one way or the other if other people want to - that is I don't think it's *required* for couples who want to share their lives together.

OTOH I do think that so long as there *is* such a thing as marriage it is a right that everyone should be able to exercise.

[PrometheusRumiHuxley]

I think that socially right now church marriages hold a lot of symbolism for people. Personally, I would probably not want to in a church, unless it had been converted to a museum. *wink*.

But it makes sense to me that someone would want that and I support it. Aside from just their own personal perspectives, someone may wish to because it will bring a lot of joy to their family, or prevent causing a social distress which may be more than it would be worth at the time. Hopefully there will be a strong secular marriage tradition soon which still maintains a sense of depth and romance deep in the culture, but I think it will be awhile yet.

[AreEl]

What do theists think of atheists and marriage in general?

What do I think of atheists? Nothing, actually. Atheists are like the general population in that some are young, some are old; some are stupid, some are smart...some are rich, some are poor...some are educated, some are not...some are angry, some are happy, and so on.

What do I think of marriage? It is a life-time commitment between a man and a woman. That's it. Your marriage will be easier if you both share a worldview: an atheist with an atheist, a Hindu with a Hindu, and so on. It is a very bad idea to knowingly go into a marriage when one is an atheist and the other is a Christian. (It is more than a bad idea! it just proves that both are wishy-washy on something so fundamental. I would question one's commitment to atheism and the the other's commitment to Christ.)