What Is Technology Marriage All about - Research Paper Example

The Religious Aspects of the Technology Marriage Technological progress has influenced and affected, both positively and negatively, all the spheres of activity and life aspects of modern people. Positive results are significant: efficiency increase, automation, replacing of human labor by mechanisms, as well as negative: environment pollution, health problems and loss of considerable part of job offers which have previously been occupied by human beings. The technology has also affected such a delicate and complicated sphere of human life as marriage. This is one of the primary, if not the first, aspects of human relationships which determine all the further course of life, and today it has become possible to meet a partner without leaving home. There are, however, drawbacks of this way of meeting, including those from religious perspective, which will be considered in this paper. The Religious Aspects of the Technology Marriage Introduction Internet has become an overwhelming source of any kind of information and it is capable of satisfaction of any requirements of the users. It offers such a wide range of the topics covered, resources available, and the ways the certain data are searched that it is possible to obtain any kind of knowledge and perform certain activities, for example, online shopping, that it has become unnecessary to go outside. There has also been introduced such an unusual way of meeting marriage partners as online meeting, which is, obviously, an easy way for this purpose, but, as any other thing, it also has its strengths and weaknesses, from the religious point of view as well, which will be given below in this paper. Hypothesis The hypothesis of the research paper is that online marriage websites provide an easy access for the partners meeting, but there are some religious points of concern in this regard. Methods The methods for researching the subject matter of this paper are investigation of the marriage websites and their characteristics, such as success, efficiency, references, and religious opinions about their activity. Results The investigation on the subject matter of the paper has been based upon four marriage websites which will be given below and has given the following results. There are marriage websites designed especially for religious people. The first one is www.christianmingle.com which will be analyzed. As it is obvious from its name, the website is designed for the Christian singles to meet and state relations with the same Christian singles. As per the website’s presentation, the relationships that it helps to build are not limited to just a romance, but also facilitate and encourage marriage relations establishing according to the Bible and the Christian tradition. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). The site provides ergonomic interface and provides a simple registration process; another benefit is creating a profile with the possibility to control how much information about oneself can be shared and who to interact with. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). This website stresses on its being focused on the singles meeting the same individuals who share the same views and values which is, apparently, a very important aspect of any relationship, including marriage. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). The site provides instant messaging which has become increasingly popular from the user’s perspective – it has become to send a message in several clicks, which is simpler and promotes time economy. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). The following sentence is the best summing up of the website’s activity: “This is an ideal destination for Christian men and women to find friends, dates, and even soul mates, all within the faith.” (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). It is reported that the site is helpful in terms of relationships building, and such statements are provided in the section “Success Stories”. One of such stories is the story of Alina and Matt, people from San Jose. Both have been recommended to register on the website by their parents and they report that they are content with the outcome of this measure. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). As it has already been mentioned above, the site is looking primarily for the single people of Christian faith who are truly believers and value Christian traditions. This category of people is also the target of the website, and it looks, obviously, for spiritual people who are determined to find partners for their relations. The main analysis focus of the website is the individual’s views and values which, as a rule, coincide with the definition of good from the Christian point of view. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). The website demonstrates significant statistics of its success in terms of relationships building: there are numerous success stories beginning from the year 2003, and their quantity makes several hundreds. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). An important success factor is that there are couples from the other countries: there is a couple which comes from Germany. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). The success of the website is enforced by the awards it has won: Christian Award Editor’s Top Pick (2012), Christian Award Dating Site Reviews Editor’s Top Prick (2014). (Dating Site Reviews, 2015). The number of users, 8 million people as of 2013, 154,000 of which are subscribers paid, is another proof of the overall efficiency of the website. (Dating Site Reviews, 2015). There is also a church opinion about this website. Jay Dennis, a Baptist Church Senior Pastor, states that the website helps the singles to meet their destiny which has been determined by God. The Pastor’s opinion “Give God an opportunity to work through Christian Mingle.” may serve as a positive reference from the religious perspective. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015). Another website for the same purpose, www.catholicmatch.com, provides an opportunity for the “faith focused dating” (www.catholicmatch.com, 2015). The similarity to the above mentioned website is the focus on religious people who want to find their partners, and the difference is that this site is designed for Catholics. The site also focuses on Catholics who consider their faith to be valuable, and the different thing is that this website provides details which give the applicant the opportunity to define the faith in a specific way. (www.catholicmatch.com, 2015). “CatholicMatchs tech team is constantly developing new ways to highlight and remove potential threats from people who are just not representing Catholic values to actual internet scammers.”, which the advantage of this site and another thing that makes it different from the first one. (www.catholicmatch.com, 2015). This website also has the section which explains its success and provides examples of real couples. The thing that complements the list of differences is that there is a notice in the bottom of the site “CatholicMatch is under the patronage of St. Raphael the Archangel...”; there is also CatholicMatch Institute focused on marriage of the single Catholics. (www.catholicmatch.com, 2015). The church also expresses approving opinions about the mission of the website and its results. www.match.com, another website for online marriages, is a website which is available for anyone and does not stress the religious views and values of its users and subscribers. It is available for millions of single people who are determined to find their partners. The site provides filtration of its content, the same way the two above mentioned ones do, that is, content which contains such explicit things as racism and sexual harassment are not permitted on the website. (www.match.com, 2014). The profile creation is also relatively simple and ergonomic which, however, can be referred to as productive and counterproductive: some people appreciate its way of information presentation, some want something to be invisible for the others. The site also provides its description of successful marriages in the correspondent section. (www.match.com, 2014). It is unknown whether this site has been approved or appreciated by the clergy because it does not provide such references in its sections. (www.match.com, 2014). www.eharmony.com, the last website considered, positions itself as a “#1 Trusted Relationship-Minded Dating Site”. (www.eharmony.com, 2015). This website is also available for anyone without a strict emphasis on religious aspect of the individual. The site is also different from the three above mentioned in terms of its philosophy: according to the experience and outcome of the findings of its founder, the marriages that are built by compatible people are happy and satisfying, whereas those between the incompatible individuals often lead to divorce. (www.eharmony.com, 2015). This fact is proved in practice, and this is a kind of a scientific approach to the reasons and the outcome of the online dating service creation: “438 people get married everyday as a result of eHarmonys compatibility matching.” (www.eharmony.com, 2015). The difference in terms of the website’s success presentation is that it does this in a different way by means of provision of different sub-categories, such as “Singles with children”, “International”, “Canada”. (www.eharmony.com, 2015). This website also proves its efficiency by presentation of the photographs of the couples that have married due to this website. (www.eharmony.com, 2015). Discussion The online dating services have emerged due to merging of the two desires of a human being: a natural desire to meet a partner to live with and an increasingly popular desire to simplify all the things and processes and making them easier. The success stories that are available on all the four above mentioned websites prove their efficiency and necessity for those using such a way of a partner meeting. There are, however, opinions that such websites are used by people who fail to do this in a real life and who are referred to as not successful members of society. This opinion is counteracted by the reasonable statement of Stacey Goldstein, one of the experienced users of such websites, that this is a quite normal and widely spread way of a partner finding for busy and normal people and that the websites offer both positive and negative options the same way the real life situations do. (Goldstein, 2013). There are also religious opinions, also positive and negative, about online dating services. This issue is an object of numerous debates within the Christian community and everyone can add something which is beneficial or good or bad for him or her, which, obviously, will not give a clear answer of its religious sense. The benefits from the online dating services that are visible and practically obvious are their determination at helping the singles meeting each other and, in case of the two of the above mentioned religion-focused websites, promotion of Christian values within the community of the website’s users. As it is reported by the endorsements on those religious websites, their activity fits the prescriptions of the Bible in terms of family creation and giving birth to children. (www.christianmingle.com, 2015; www.catholicmatch.com, 2015). Jennel Williams Paris states that the Christians should use such websites, especially in case if the local social situation does not offer possibilities for meeting the partner nearby. (Paris, 2011). The users also see the benefit from such a perspective that it will be easier for them to educate and bring up their children with the partner who shares the same values and, potentially, wants the children to have the same ones. (Huang, 2013). It is also reported that God as the main matchmaker helps the Christians online as well, that is why believers tend to use such services with the focus on the partner’s religious views. (The Huffington Post, 2012). Jim Daly reasonably states the things that cannot be referred to as positive and that are potentially far from the idea of the concept of the partner meeting contained in the Bible and religious tradition. According to his statement, “the seemingly endless list[s] of online profiles creates a superficial consumer mentality that undermines the sacrificial nature of Christ-centered love.” (Daly, 2013).There are also ideas that online searching is not the place which is designed for God’s sending the partner, but those places are traditional work, blind date or church. (Daly, 2013). Daly also gives some recommendations that can be useful for those using online dating services to make the process close to the real life experience which is crucial for establishing of a stable and reliable relationship. It is, for example, recommended that the online searchers meet in reality after establishing contact on the website. This will help to get acquainted with the person closer and receive necessary information to full extent. (Daly, 2013). Conclusion The results of the research have demonstrated the benefits and the drawbacks of the online dating services based on four websites for the purpose of relations establishing, two of which hare religious and the two others are not. The benefits of all the websites are that they help people meet with each other easier and more convenient, especially when there is no time for real-life meeting and the schedule is busy. The religion does not provide a clear identification of the online dating services as good or bad, however, there are religious views and concerns on this topic. Some religious people and church officials report that online meeting is not the thing which fits the common traditions of the partner meeting and that too many options available on the websites is not the idea of the partner meeting as it is designed by God and Bible. At the same time, the success of the couples which have met due to the above mentioned sites evidences that this practice has its right for existence. This means that the hypothesis of the research has been proved: the online dating services can be beneficial, but there are some religious points of concern on this matter. References Daly, J. (2013). Is Online Dating Biblical? http://www.christianpost.com/news/is-online-dating-biblical-97096/ Dating Site Reviews. (2015). Christian Mingle Information, Statistics, Facts and History. http://www.datingsitesreviews.com/staticpages/index.php?page=Christian-Mingle-Statistics-Facts-History#ref-ODS-Christian-Mingle-2015-1 Goldstein, S. (2013). Thinking About Using Match.com? http://psychcentral.com/lib/thinking-about-using-matchcom/ Huang, C. (2013). Why More Religious Singles Are Searching for Love Online. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/why-singles-are-going-to-religious-online-dating-in-a-fractured-dating-market/ Paris, J. (2011). Is Online Dating for Christians? http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/october/online-dating-christians.html The Huffington Post. (2012). Online Dating Gets Religion: Spiritual Profile Crucial To Many Seeking Romance. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/religious-romance-require_n_1270558.html www.catholicmatch.com. (2015). Online dating service. www.catholicmatch.com. www.christianmingle.com. (2015). Online dating service. www.christianmingle.com. www.eharmony.com. 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