re: Sociology

i'm doing my homework. It's a lot of reading that isn't very in depth. It's easy to read, just not extremely informative. Last week i didn't have a book and managed to get 12 out of 20 questions right (i did read from the first chapter of an old edition and one of the articles as it had been printed in a book twenty years ago). Two things about this chapter have stuck out at me so far:

1) The book claims that hunter-gatherers was what families were until 10,000 years ago, when families suddenly started settling down and planting crops. This is the usual caveman bunk that has no verifiable basis in written history. So, the Bible claims that Adam and Eve settled down and started planting crops around 10,000 years ago. This was written about later, by Moses, but it's a story that was passed down by the family. However, this oral history that was later written down somehow holds less credence to the "experts" than their own unverifiable theories about pre-ancient history. Why is that? Why are they so quick to deny historical documents? Do they think Moses had this great idea, "Hey, I'll lie to everyone and see how many people believe me!"

2) According to the book a form of common law marriage was the norm from the early colonial days to the mid-1800s... That is to say, people said they were married (they didn't go to a church or courthouse, they just moved in together) and everyone accepted that they were married. If the man wanted to go west and was tired of his family he could leave her, find a new woman out west, and start a new family. The author compares this to present day cohabitation. This is vastly different from any concept of family that i have been taught in the past. People just decided they were married so everyone said they were? I'm not sure whether to be legalistic about it (how dare they not be married in a church!) or say good for them.... i mean, think about it, who performed the ceremony for Adam and Eve? Does a marriage have to be a ceremony or wedding, does it have to be witnessed? Don't let the million dollar wedding industry hear, or the u.s. government, but i've always felt that marriage was between a man, a woman, and God, period. But the church and the government always have to try to stick their fingers into our lives, don't they?

Yesterday i read a new term online--churchianity--which i believe begs some looking into. More on that later, back to the books for me.