I don’t want to start another God/atheism trainwreck, but because I’ve been doing a little dating lately, and finding out early whether I and my dates are just delaying our in-person trainwrecks, I’ve been gently inquiring as to their belief systems, and I’ve also been asking myself “Hey, what’s the BFD? Why is it so important to you that she shares your commitment to a Godless universe. Why can’t you just let her believe in whatever nonsense she prefers? Does it cost you something if she believes in God? Etc.”
And I realize what it is. I find it troubling and unsettling that the person I’m with believes in something that’s fundamentally irrational, which means to me that we could be getting along fine, her believing in Jesus Christ in a rowboat, and me believing in whatever bullshit I call my own belief system, and she could just up and inform me out of nowhere “You know that whole getting married/being in love/ enjoying your company thing we’ve been going on about? That’s over. No special reason. The universe just called out to me and say ‘Screw that,’ so I’m leaving you” and I have no way to voice my complaint because I’ve accepted that this person believes in an essentially irrational existence from the get go.
Now could I tell her the same thing? Yes and no. I might up and leave her at some point , for no reason at all, but I’d at least feel obligated to try and explain my feelings or lack of same. My commitment to her as a person I respect would outweigh any commitment I felt to other principles, so I would feel I needed to explain to her, as best I could , in rational terms, my current thinking.
Cold comfort? Maybe so. But I feel getting involved with a religious person is accepting from the start that I am never going to be the being to whom she owes the most consideration. I could always get “I just don’t feel like it any more.” So it’s a non-starter.
Well, not everyone who is religious is totally over the top about it. My wife is Catholic, but not devoutly so. She believes, but isn’t fanatical about it. In fact we’ve only gone to church a handful of times in 10 years.
My kids attend catholic school and I have no problem with that. My kids know I’m not catholic but have no idea that I’m actually an (gasp) atheist. Of course my wife knows but she respectfully allows me to have my own opinion and vice versa.
I could not have married a fanatical religious person, but there is a middle ground.
You might want to make some distinctions about degrees here – not everyone who believes there’s something going on in the universe other than the immediate sensory here-and-now necessarily believes that whatever that something might be issues orders, arbitrary or otherwise.
So – probably skip those who identify themselves by a specific tradition – but “spiritual but not religious” is actually meaningful, in some cases.
That IS the box I’ve checked–“spiritual but not religious”–but there’s still some scariness there.
“Would you mind telling me why you’ve hired a moving van to take your things out of the three-story home we’ve glued together from matchsticks over the past nine years?”
“Oh, it’s just karma. My yin isn’t yanging quite right up against your chakra, is all.”
Agree mostly with twickster. The important thing is that you can respect her beliefs and she can respect hers. You aren’t going to respect someone who has Jesus Christ as the center of the universe - but there is a lot of room between “here and now is all there is” and “Praise Jesus, he helped me pick out my new coat!”
But I’d watch the tradition thing to - a world of difference between “I hang at a Unitarian Church on occational Sundays” and “I spend two weeks every year at a Pentacostal retreat.” I’ve met my share of “social” Catholics, secular Jews, and people who don’t want Grandma to know they aren’t Baptist so still go to church.
And plenty of people break up with you because they “just don’t feel like it anymore” regardless of their belief system. What BETTER reason is there to break up with someone (assuming there aren’t children involved and you don’t have a multi year committment, etc.) Not sure if I could respect someone who - at the root of it all - there rationalization didn’t basically come down to “I don’t feel like it anymore.”
I’m with **Leaffan **here in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” school of thought. But the key is that both sides must be committed to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And somebody hyper-religious implicitly isn’t. I’m living proof the atheist-non-atheist coupling can work, absent fanaticism on one side or the other.
And anyway, my secret theory is that many people who call themselves believers don’t, deep down, really believe that stuff anyway. They’re crypto-atheists, as it were.
Agreed. I just want to be tossed a bone that doesn’t consist of nonsense syllables. A woman may as well bark like a dog as tell me mumbo-jumbo, and I know I would consider it disrespectful in the extreme to just say "“kay, bub-bye now. Take care” on my way out the door.
I mean, I’ve been bullshitted plenty (most notoriously by a gf a decade ago who gave me a lot of crap about our communications problems, that I really didn’t see happening, only to learn that she’d already hooked up with an ex-bf whom she married shortly). But at least,even with her, I got to consider whether I’d done anything that I might correct, or if she’d misunderstood something about me, etc. With a religious person, I’m like “What, you expected her to make sense when her whole vision of the planet is contra-logical? Dude!”
And if I could hijack my own OP for a moment–am I using “chakra” right? I’ve heard it, but it whizzed right past my brain. Is this a new-agey buzzword?
I think you are mistaken about the correlation between belief/lack of belief in God and behaving rationally/irrationally (and/or behaving predictably/unpredictably). If the latter is what you’re really concerned about, then it’s what you ought to be finding out about the person, rather than just drawing unwarranted conclusions from whether or not they claim to believe in God.
You are a strange person - because I’m not terribly religion (I’m an emotional Deist and only vaguely practicing Unitarian) - and I think most people - even the atheists I know (including my husband) don’t make sense 100% of the time - especialy when it comes to matters of the heart. You are looking for something I don’t believe exists. When this atheist looks at you and says “I don’t feel like it anymore and I don’t think you need an explaination - there really isn’t one other than I don’t think I’ll be happy here long term” then how are you going to explain that.
I can say, “Wow–she was just totally upfront about lack of concern for my feelings and was a completely bitch following her own self-centered agenda, whatever it was, and good riddance.”
I am not trying to start the trainwreck, but I feel that if you said “something that I believe is fundamentally irrational” it might go over better. Just my $0.02
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As far as your OP, I fully agree that syncing up one’s beliefs (particularly religious/social/child rearing) are vitally important to the success and longevity of relationships.
I have several friends that do pre-marital/intra-marital counseling, and one of the greatest stressors on relationships is religious and/or child issues.
I think this is even more true for people who are causually religious, because they often don’t care about certain issues until later in a relationship.
For example, imagine that a nominal Catholic and a nominal Jew date and marry. Neither has a strong impulse to go to church/synagogue, particpate in religious training, etc. Then they have a son. All of a sudden you get:
Will the child be circumcised? If so, in the hospital or through a bris?
Will he be bar-mitzvahed?
Go to sunday school?
Take communion?
So I say all that to say that I fully agree that finding out early whether there is a show-stopper in a relationship is a good thing. I don’t know that religious people are more likely to just up and jet on you; but if you believe that to be true then by all means make sure you avoid them.
I think so. Chakras are part of one of the meditative type things - Hinduism is what Wikipedia says, and I’m more familiar from yoga. But I think you’re using OK.
Well, a non-religious person can up and leave you for a reason she would find rational and you would find ridiculous. Ending relationships at the beginning because they might end badly isn’t a great idea. Why even bother dating if you think she’s eventually going to go away?
A. But it’s not like attraction is rational, either. There are a lot of non-religious statements a person could make that you can’t fruitfully argue with, e.g., “I just don’t feel atracted to you any more.”
B. You seem only to be attributing negative effects to “irrationality.” How about the part where she doesn’t know why, but you *are *attractive?
My partner and I differ on the question of higher power and, for that matter, superstitions. I don’t see it as making any functional difference in our relationship.
It’s not about up and jetting–anyone could do that. Its about “up and jetting for reasons that make zero sense to me.” If I’m with another atheist, at least we both agree at the outset that making rational sense is a worthy goal, so if we part on unsatisfyingly irrational terms, I can console myself that she violated her own principles in embracing irrationality. With a religious person, I’m more like “Well, what did you expect?”
A. And if I get stuff like, “I guess I just want someone with thick lustrous hair, is all. Sorry” my consolation is “Wow, how superficial can you get? Good luck, sweetheart, with that.”
Uh-huh. And you would find it really disrespectful if a religious person said something similar about atheists, wouldn’t you? “Deep down, they know there’s a God. They just don’t want to admit it.”
By all means, don’t date a person with religious beliefs if you think they’re all stupid and irrational. That’s hardly a good foundation for a relationship.