iwpoe wrote:

....society does not decide, plan, or act except metaphorically.

But the metaphor in this case is crucial to the issue at hand, not ignorable. Because if the metaphor were "merely" a metaphor, i.e. unreal and ignorable, then "couple" is also an unreal and ignorable metaphor, because it involves something beyond the individual. As a consequence you have removed from yourself the power to say anything relevant to marriage.

iwpoe wrote:

"Society" presumably cares about a lot of things- eating for instance -but it doesn't seem to follow that it needs to institute by statute a singular institution of "fixed status" for the proper facilitation of eating.

Maybe in your logic it "doesn't follow" that society should institute a fixed status for the proper facilitation of eating, but the real world does not operate according to your logic. In the real world, society *does* establish institutions that facilitate eating. For example, society takes care that restaurants offer proper food, not junk or poison. Feeding junk or poison to people is punishable.

This is how societies operate in real world. Can you show how according to your logic this is not an inherent value in societies?

Mark wrote:

While the above two respones may be legitimate, I'm not sure they'd be very satisfying to those not already committed to theism. I think an approach that attempts to meet the objection rather than dismiss it is more helpful.

"More helpful" meaning convincing to the atheist? Some people can never be convinced, while others are too easily convinced. On some views, when an argument presented during a discussion makes one change one's mind, that mind is way too easily changed and the theism in that mind is not proper theism. Real theism is seeing things as a theist sees things and being descriptive about it, not necessarily walking around converting other people.

iwpoe wrote:

Not at all. I don't deny that families *are* but it simply doesn't follow from the existence of families that, *I* as a member have an intrinsic obligation to continue my family. Your argument as I'm hearing it amounts to little more than:

1. Gay marriage precludes reproduction.
2. We are obliged to reproduce.
.:  Gay marriage is prohibited.

Number 2 is much more nuanced. "We" doesn't mean "absolutely everybody". It means "society". "Society" doesn't mean "absolutely everybody" either. There are more functions to society than mere reproduction. Reproduction has its place along with education, culture, etc. which should all work together.

If society doesn't want to die off, it should give reproduction a certain fixed status. When marriage is defined so that gay marriages are allowed, then this looks past the biological fact how reproduction occurs in real life. Sure, gay marriages don't prohibit heterosexual marriages, but gay marriages give the signal that the society has stopped giving the relevant attention to its own biological (and hence to long-term social) regeneration. It's self-destructive behaviour from society.

When you (both of you) are as individualistic and atomistic as you are, your questions about intrinsic value of marriage should not have arised. Marriage is a couple, but a couple does not exist for you. Only individual does.

So, when you ask about the intrinsic value of marriage, you are asking abot the intrinsic value of something that does not exist for you. Obviously, I cannot answer such a question to your satisfaction, because you don't acknowledge the intrinsic value of anything beyond individual in the first place.

DanielCC wrote:

But the argument does not require the existence of beings with free will (the rabbit example for instance) so even if the appeal to free will does work in the case of humans there’s still more work to be done.

If the appeal to free will works for humans, it works for everybody, because rabbits don't argue about free will and evil. Such problems do not exist for rabbits.

For me personally it has also been very difficult to understand how the 'problem of evil' is a problem in the first place. For instance, the 'problem' assumes that Creator has duties towards creatures, not the other way round. It assumes that Creator's duty is to make creatures feel good. Wrong assumption.