Religion and dating

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I am a Lutheran myself, but I don't require any potential partners to be Lutheran.

I've found that there's more to it than just what a person's beliefs are. People will usually agree or identify with one of the various belief systems like Christianity, Atheism, Judaism, etc., but that doesn't tell the whole story. People have varying degrees of tolerance for disagreement in these matters and varying degrees of involvement in their personal convictions. There are really 3 factors of importance when speaking of religion in relationships. First is the beliefs themselves, which comprises the basic structure of their world view. In this sense, even atheists have a faith. They may believe in science or just believe whatever they can see and measure, but they obviously must take some things on faith, even if it's nothing more than the objective reality of the universe. Second, is the intensity of these beliefs. The higher the intensity of belief, the more influence their faith has on their lives, and by extension, the greater impact it's going to have on the people around them. Thirdly, there is tolerance, which is the degree to which someone can accept those that don't share some or all of their basic beliefs. Usually, this varies in indirect proportion to their intensity, but not always. Some people can believe very strongly, but still tolerate those with different convictions. My brother is not a terribly religious person and never has been and he's dating a devout Catholic, but they seem to do OK. Some people, inexplicably, can be casual about their own beliefs and remarkably intolerant as well.

I think in relationships, it's hard to make it work with someone whose worldview is radically different, like an atheist dating a Christian or a Hindu dating a Muslim. Atheists in general are non-spiritual and are probably better served looking for people with any set of beliefs but with high tolerance and low intensity. The other factors can be a problem as well. I'm a Christian but the evangelical types that talk about their relationship with God every other sentence are kind of a put-off. I don't think it's bad and in some ways I admire them, but it's just not for me. Intolerant people create problems in any number of ways, and not just about religion. My personal preference is for someone who is either a low intensity Christian with decent tolerance or a spiritualist (believes in some metaphysical things but not an organized religion) with any intensity and high tolerance. That's just me though. I think I could get along with most anyone other than the militantly religious (and yes there are militant atheists too).

Organized religion is a whole different animal. That, I think, is what most people that call themselves Atheists or Agnostics object to. They see how throughout history, the church has been used, much like the state, as an instrument of control so that a small group of elites can control a large mass of humanity. Organized religion has a whole set of problems of its own which really have nothing to do with an individual's personal beliefs. It also tends to be somewhat polarizing, because people either want to be in a church/religion community or they don't, so that's where the tug of wars over how to raise kids and what not get started. I personally wouldn't mind going to church on Sundays and listen to some old time gospel music or even sing myself, and have some time to devote to thinking about the spiritual, and what's right and wrong, and how to treat our fellow human beings decently. However, it rarely ends there. I've found that inevitably I'm pressured to get more involved than I want to be, and do more socializing than I want to do, and as an aspie, that's the dealbreaker, and it's why I don't.

I got married to a born-again-christian, and I've always been an atheist. There were a few problems to start with. For some reason she thought it might be possible to convert me, so she put pressure on me to go to her church, and she was quite disappointed when I tried and then rejected it. Seemed to boil down to spending hours and hours sitting there listening to some priest or other doing a top-down propaganda job, which I found unbearable.

We went through a phase where we'd quite upset each other arguing about whether there was a god or not, until I saw what was going on and stopped fuelling it. At the end of the day she's entitled to believe whatever she likes, it's only the practical effects on our relationship that concern me, and there weren't many of those. To some extent it was a worry that her church might try to compete with me for her loyalty, and that she might use the church's edicts as excuses to fly in the face of my wishes. So I made it clear that I'd see her as being completely responsible for her own behaviour towards me, even if she believed that god had told her to do this or that.

But her church didn't really cause me much grief. There were a few occasions when she'd suddenly "need" to go down the church for several hours, sometimes without having any clear idea of when she'd be back, and once or twice she'd have to walk alone in some rather dangerous streets late at night....they have a lot of very intense prayer sessions and they're always asking for their flock to go off on bible study weeks etc......but rather than attack the church for presiding over that, I chose to see it as no different from any other distraction that affects relationships. I didn't fall into the trap of trying to order her to give it up, I just gave my opinion that she ought to show our relationship a bit more consideration when she got involved in these outside pursuits.

Money was a slight concern - as an atheist I don't want my money spending on religious pursuits.....but at the time, my wife needed my financial support, and I knew she was donating bits of cash to the church, which compromised my position. Rather than having a nasty scene about it, I figured it probably wasn't enough money to be important, so I let it go. Even so, I felt cheated. I don't trust those priests.....maybe they really do good with the money people give them, but it doesn't look very accountable to me, and even the secular charities seem to have trouble in keeping their donations from falling into the pockets of the undeserving. We should probably have set up a financial scheme between us in which each of us had pocket money that we could spend on whatever we wanted without fear of scrutiny.

The only other thing I've noticed is that she's never shown me any empathy about the bad things that went down between me and my parents when I was a child, in fact she would jump to their defense when I wasn't attacking them but just trying to work through what had happened to me back then. She never said this, but I got the impression that she'd taken up the "honour thy father and mother" commandment rather strongly....unfortunately if you do that too much, you can invaildate another's traumatic experiences at the hands of parents. I was disappointed......I'd always hoped that somebody as close as a wife would want to know what I'd been through and how it had shaped my character.

I really don't know much about the born-again people. I know that her eldest son has got himself into a hard place by buying into their system. He's married a girl who is steeped in her church, and it seems that he agreed to get involved with that.......but she's doing church stuff practically all the time, and eventually his patience gave way. Now he's mad at her for not following him home and giving up the church activities so she can still be with him.....I guess he's experiencing the pain of a partner choosing something else as more important than he is. Sure, he was silly to promise to be a big part of the church before he'd really tried it, but he's quite young and I think the church was irresponsible to extract such a promise in the first place. They set themselves up as competent "pastoral governors" but their only qualification seems to be their belief that they're closer to god than the rest of us.

I suppose one good thing that's come from her christianity is that she has a fairly Abrahamic view of sexuality and fidelity, so she's unlikely to flirt with other men or to start wearing revealing clothes. In that respect, she's very wholesome. It's a shame that secular people so often try to be too sexually "liberated."

I doubt many Christian/Muslim women would be interested in being with a guy like me so that's unlikely to happen!

I am atheist myself but wouldn't care whether my girlfriend was or not

haha, one time a while ago I received a pm on okcupid from a girl asking me why I am atheist and other few other questions.


so I replied:

bla bla bla .....

As for my atheism , this is a long story, I am starting to think that I should remove it from my
profile because this what usually the first thing the ladies ask about it here and usually are holding bad stigma and negative stereotypes against atheists.

How I became an atheist is a very long story.
But what I can tell you now that that atheism doesn't define me, no label does. The only difference that I lack the belief in a creator while you don't, I have my ethics, my concerns and emotions like everyone else. I have my goals in life, my dreams and my demons like any human.

I have the feeling that you're not asking this question out of ill-intention, but many did this before with ill-intention , so sorry for sounding so wary like this.

As for my avatar , well , I like this squirrel character from Ice Age movie, he's funny .....and he inspires me determinism !


**greeting the waves of the sea**

I think it's more the complete clashing of opinions on our entire being. I wouldn't date an athiest, as I have to spiritually connect with a partner.

Are you a panthiest?