All I have to say is ad hominem.  (Oh yeah.. I've been married...  fifteen years of early childhood education experience... whoops!)

"You don't know marriage 'till you've been there."

"You don;t know parenting 'till you've been there!"

and all similar bullshit is nothing more than an attempt to avoid criticism, and in some cases to avoid responsibility.

Meh. It's true; you don't know what it's like to be married to a person until you're married to them. You can imagine what it'd be like to be married in general, but that won't be close to what it's like being married to a specific person. But then, even after being married once, you can't imagine what it'd be like to be married to a different specific person.

Once you get to know somebody, you might have a good idea what it'd be like to be married to them, though, even without being married before.

I think what he meant to say was, "You don't know what it's like being married to my wife until you've been married to my wife."

The persistence of this topic continues to amuse me!

To be fair, the OP's statement is too absolute, and therefore you can easily say it's wrong.

I do think that someone who is married can speak better to the issues of single life than an unmarried (as in never been married) person can speak to issues of married life. That doesn't mean a single person is incapable of making correct observations and assertions about married life. But when the same single person starts painting in broad strokes, making absolute assertions with regard to all married people, that's where the problem is.

As we do with arguments against theism, the most responsible (and rational) thing to do is point out the flaws of the absolute agrument.

This is all fine.  If there's a problem with an argument, you should address the problems in the argument.  There's never a reason to resort to an ad hominem.

The reason this topic is still flying around is that you're still sticking to an irrational objection.  (Again, an ad hominem isn't technically an argument.  It's just a fallacy and is worth absolutely zero.)  If we're still arguing about whether theists and atheists should make babies, let's keep arguing about that.  It's a worthwhile topic.  Just don't try to tar me with an ad hominem to make your position look better.  If you've got a good argument, it will stand on its own.  I mean, let's be honest, you don't have any more experience with how to handle children in a theist/atheist marriage than I do.  Your kids aren't old enough to understand any of it, so you have no evidence that your system will work.

I assume we're still talking about the same thing.  Let's look at my broad strokes and absolute arguments.

Emphasis mine.

Two questions.  No absolutes.

No absolutes there.

Do you disagree that religious indoctrination happens young, or that theism is dangerous to young minds?  I think there's enough material on RRS to back up these statements, but if you do disagree, I can document it fully.

Didn't say "must do."  Said "can do."  Not absolute.

Do you disagree that over 90% of people who adhere to a religion in the U.S. adhere to the one they were raised in?  I can back that up. 

Notice the words, "may be."  Not absolute.

It seems fair enough to make the absolute statement that he brought minds into the world and is responsible for them.

That's my whole post.  Not a single absolute.  Would you like to go ahead and admit that A) your ad hom isn't a valid argument and B) You got your panties in a bunch because what I said is threatening to your conception of your own marriage?

If you don't agree with me, that's fine.  We're all adults here, and nobody expects everyone to agree with everyone all the time.  Just don't expect to get let off the hook when you make an emotional response instead of a valid argument.  Atheists have irrational responses, too.  It's part of being human.  If you want to return to the question of atheists and theists making babies and raising them, let's do it, but let's try to leave the emotion out of it, ok?

I really don't see it, sorry.  I've never been married, certainly haven't had any kids, but I have been a kid growing up in a home with happily married parents.  I've been a kid visiting the homes of children with unhappily married parents and divorced parents.  I have married friends and friends with kids and divorced friends with kids.  To say that I can't pick up some amount of understanding of these situations without personally experiencing them--in fact to say that it is opaque to me--is simply arrogant.  Any evidence for the claim is by its very nature anecdotal.  If your situation truly is unique--say, you're married to a bigfoot or your kids mysteriously came out half-human/half ocelot--I'll cede the point that I cannot understand.  But if you're married to a human, then your own opinions about the nature of marriage and child-rearing are just as influenced by your experience of those things as derived from the culture as mine are.  They aren't wrong.  They're just not special.

This is one of those nasty things nobody wants to talk about.  When I was married, I thought my situation was special, and that I would buck the statistics because of how smart I was, and how much in love we were.  Curiously, we divorced for exactly the reasons the stats predicted, at almost exactly the median for length of marriage.

One of the best ways to get a person's logic circuits to start failing is to get them to fall in love.  Over and over, studies have demonstrated that love is nature's way of getting us to make babies even though it isn't always the most logical thing to do.  Both Gierj and Tilberian have given us plenty of evidence of this, talking about people's 'individual' experiences, and how every marriage is unique.  Nobody likes it when they're told that statistically, they are doing something illogical.

In a rather ironic twist, the people best equipped to make statements about marriage are the ones who don't happen to be in love at the time.  I can't find exactly the article I was looking for, but there was one study that showed a marked decrease in reasoning skills in individuals who were "in love" as compared to those who weren't.  In any case, here's one of the papers addressing possible reasons for irrational behavior and beliefs by those in love.

"The scientific definition of love is "having stimulation that one desires" (5). Recent research by two British neurologists concludes that love is linked to certain brain activities. By conducting tests using a magnetic resonance imager, the scientists measured brain activity in 17 people while they were viewing a picture of their loved one, and while they were viewing a photo of a friend of the same sex as their lover. When the individuals see the picture of the person they love, clear activity occurs in four regions of the brain that were not active when the image of the friend was present. The media insula, which is responsible for instinctual feelings, and the anterior cingulate, which acts in response to euphoria-inducing drugs, such as cocaine, are the two areas of the cortex stimulated by pictures of a lover. The striatum, that is activated when we are rewarded and the prefrontal cortex also increase their activity when shown the same picture. Interestingly, the prefrontal cortex is an area within the brain that is often overactive in the brains of the depressed (1). Perhaps this is why people in love often act out of character, like the characters in the movies.

Or maybe the reason people in love act fanatical is because of the decrease in serotonin associated with being in love. While studying obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Donatella Marazziti discovered that levels of serotonin are especially low in people with the disorder. Marazziti hypothesized that people in love often experience feelings and symptoms similar to those with OCD, such as uncontrollable thoughts. She then proceeded to test the level of serotonin in the brains of people in love, and discerned that the level of serotonin within the brain of person in love depletes to the same point as a person with OCD (about 40% less). She also found that people with a low presence of serotonin in the brain are more susceptible to fall in love and engage in sexual activity. Because levels of serotonin cannot be measured within the brain precisely and the sample used for this research was small and mostly female, Marazziti's research is controversial, but noteworthy, nonetheless. Perhaps the idea the idea that love makes people crazy, which is mirrored by Hollywood, has a little truth to it after all (2)."

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Hoegler.html

This sounds pretty absolute within the context of the OP. As written, you make it sound like everyone who gets married fails to answer the big questions before jumping in. Maybe you meant to say "some people...".

True, but an absolute is very much implied.

Yes you are. That's what your two questions implied.

Nope. I don't disagree at all.

Theism can be dangerous to young minds. But I think you'll find many atheists who were raised in a certain religion but never bought into it. That's the difference between weak theism and fundamentalist theism. I would hypothesize that children raised in weak-theistic households (like I was) are more likely to not buy in to religion.

Already debunked.

Along with the mother of his children, yes.

Yeah, there were a couple in there.

Of course the ad hom argument in its strictest sense isn't valid. I think I clarified my position in my earlier post in this thread.

Who's got their panties in a bunch?

Nothing you've said is threatening to my conception of my marriage. My wife and I did have the Big Conversation before we got married, about expectations, kids, religious beliefs...we knew full well what we were getting into. Eight years on and we're still happy.

When did I get all emotional on you, Brother Hamby?  If you want to return to the question of atheists and theists making babies and raising them, let's do it, but let's try to leave the strawman out of it, OK?

Surely experience counts for something, you can't know what strawberries taste like until you've had one!