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EasterJoy
Guest
Your question is a little odd even from the sense of simple anthropology. The evidence seems to show that humans have not lived without religion and culture for 50,000 years! To be even more strict, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was defined for anthropologists by the pioneer anthropologist Edward B. Tylorin in 1871 as: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” IOW, although culture itself exists only in the human mind, it is impossible to believe that any hominid group has ever existed without culture. It is abnormal to live without any interior societal norm.
To be without religion or culture is an unnatural state for a human being, and that is quite apart from the consideration of what state of grace we are in. You may as well ask what the natural state of an ant is, apart from the hill, or that natural state of a bee, apart from the hive. The answer is: Ill and out-of-sorts now, and eventually dead.
As Catholics, we believe that religion is not simply a cultural artifact that we use to organize ourselves into coherent and sustainable groups. We believe our religion is the expression of revealed truth, and that is Truth with a capital “T”.
From the Catechism:
***I. **The life of man - to know and love God
**1 **God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
**2 **So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Strengthened by this mission, the apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.”
**3 *Those who with God’s help have welcomed Christ’s call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ’s faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer.
With regards to marriage, then, it does no good to pretend there is a pattern of life which exists in humans apart from culture. There is no “there” there. You can’t live apart from culture. All you can do is to invent a new culture for yourself to live by. Judging by past efforts by others towards that end, it is hard to conclude that it is anything other than a fool’s errand, whether you are Catholic or not.
