seebs

I agree, but I think there is a real sampling error; there are certain categories of relationships where a Christian couple is more likely to get the "marriage" label than the typical atheist - and when these "borderline" relationships break up, they skew the statistics.

A more reasonable thing might be to separate out "length of time romantically involved before a break-up", and look at those statistics; I wouldn't be surprised if those statistics showed the break-up rate as fairly flat, but Christians with a tendancy to get married more often an sooner, not necessarily for good reasons.

lpetrich

Radorth:
I'm sorry, but secular morality has already been field-tested and found to be so apathetic as to have effectively slaughtered more people in one 20th century year than Noah's flood. (Which I doubt ever happened).

Such comments suggest a certain lack of mathematical literacy, because there are simply more people to kill in the 20th cy.

He ought to consider the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th cys., and especially the Thirty Years War. Out of ~ 15 million people in Germany, the main battleground, 3 to 5 million people died -- 1/5 to 1/3 of the population!

Now from this atlas of the 20th cy., I find that the 20th cy. was less relatively bloody than the Thirty Years War. But somehow I don't expect the numbers to have much impact on Radorth.

The Soviet Union's population was 164 million in 1937, the Russian Civil War killed 4 million people Stalin's persecutions killed ~20 million people (total: 24 million), giving a ratio of 1/7.

World War II's European theater had about 35 million deaths; compared to a European population of ~450 million people, giving a ratio of 1/13.

Adding World War I's death toll of 15 million people yields 50 million, giving a ration of 1/9.

For China, the 20th-cy death toll is ~ 4 (nat+warlord) + 10 (WWII) + 50 (Mao) = 64 million people out of ~500 million people, giving a ratio of 1/8.

Totalitarianist

Divorce rate higher in Christians? That makes sense. Christians cannot think ahead. Besides, Christians do not really "love" anyone. When they supposedly fall in love with someone, it is actually a response to fear, a response to the thought of hell. They do not experience real love, and hence the divorce rate.

Rhea

No, I don't think that's more reasonable.

Christians claim that secularism is destroying the moral frabic of society as evidenced by divorce rates.

Not end-of-shack-up-rates.

Divorce rates.


So Christians claim divorce is bad, yet Christians tend to behaviors which promote it.

So sticking to divorce is appropriate.

fatherphil

the best way to end divorce is to end marriage.

seebs

I'm not concerned with a stupid and ill-conceived point of rhetoric; I'm just curious as to the effects of religion on relationships.

I do agree that looking at divorce rates highlights the error in the initial claim, but it's such an obviously wrong claim that we hardly need that...

As a secondary point, as I recall, more people go to church regularly in the U.S. today than did 100 years ago.

Hmm.

I'd guess that there are factors which influence the divorce rate, but I don't think I'd call it "secularism". I'm not sure what to call it. Mostly, wishful thinking; people have this fucked-up idea that marriage to The Right Person will be easy and painless, and this false expectation creates all sorts of trouble...

Yellum Notnef

My aunt is responsible for 3 of those Christian divorces (any day now it could be 4). She's Roman Catholic and felt she had to marry all 3 of these guys before having sex or trying to live together.

So of course there was pressure all 3 times to get married as quickly as possible.

The first guy turned out to be an abusive jerk.

The second guy turned out to have a gambling problem AND was and abusive jerk.

The third guy ended up having a penis that was too big to have sex with. This led to fights and finally divorce. There was some other problem with this guy,but I can't remember what it was.

Her current husband (after a 15 year break from men) is a similar situtation.
He's a Catholic who used to be a JW. He also used to weigh over 500 pounds,but a year after his wife died he went to a fancy LA weight loss clinic and lost all that weight within a year.
So nows he's skinny and single and meets my aunt who has been single and alone for 15 years.
They date for a couple weeks and they want to get it on,but sex out of marriage makes Jesus cry so they set a date to get married a few months later. But they couldn't even wait for that and secretly got married just a couple days later.
He then moved in with her,they had sex and have been fighting with each other on a daily basis. The WORST fighting I've ever seen in my life and it's involved the cops,everyone in my family,a black eye on on HIM from HER,screaming that could wake the dead and his shit being thrown out on the lawn SIX times so far.

But they don't want to get a divorce even though they bring it up all the time. Marriage therapy has also been advised numerous times,but she thinks she'll fix it by praying at church every Sunday.

Rhea

heh, heh. Good one. (chuckles) That was well done.


Actually I was thinking that (assuming marriage is desirable as a lifetime commitment) the best way to end divorce is to decouple (if you'll pardon the pun) the commitment of marriage from sex.

IMO once you do that you won't have so many people (of all philosophical outlooks as pressured by society and in particular those specifically pressured by religions) making a commitment based on non-commitment impulses. I imagine most people will still want to include in their commitment the idea of monogamy. But the commitment will be about goals & companionship, not sex.

fatherphil

now one thing, all this talk about sex and marriage flies in the face of a dilemma that i'm sure more than one guy here has encountered. that being a cessation or reduction of the said activity after marriage

7thangel

The truth, those who divorce are atheists. They are only christians by name. No Christians tells its church to divorce.