Would you become romantically involved with someone with vastly different religious views?
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I had a gf who considered herself Christian. Not someone who talked about it a lot, but I guess she has some belief. I have a fairly negative view of organized religion in general. She really wanted to start going to church and I was um, wow, sounds horrible. She looked around found a church with surprisingly cool people - not at all bible thumpers, or full of pretentious nonsense, hell and brimstone, none of that. They support LGBTQ, operated a homeless shelter, gave sermons about pro-abortion rights and astronomy. I was pleasantly surprised. Still I ended up determining that I didn't want to wake up at 7:30 each Sunday to go there. I figured out that she viewed church more as a social club and some sort of tradition from her family.
If it was someone drastically different, like talking constantly about reading the bible and telling me I had to convert and basing half their life around it, absolutely not. I not only am not interested myself but I think it would illustrate some negative aspects of their personality that I don't want to be around. I had a gf who owned a retail store and people would come in and tell her ridiculous stories about Jesus healing people when they were missionaries in Africa. Later she'd tell me and ask "Do you think that was true? Jesus really DID THAT?" and I'd have to be um... no. That lady sounds like a liar or a psycho, sorry. Not great for a relationship. It turned out it was just some feel-good thing for her. She didn't read the bible or really know anything about scripture. Just thinking "magic jesus loves me" made her feel good. I'm only really vaguely religious but still I can't respect that.
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I am atheist and my wife is Buddhist. While not exactly true, I view Buddhism more as a philosophy and it is more palatable in that regard. My tolerance for people practicing religion is also fairly high as long as they don't try and "convert me".
As a result, I have been to plenty of ceremonies for things over the years and it doesn't bother me. Of course, I don't believe in any of that "magic" but there is usually loads of good food that comes attached, depending. (Also, there is a high probability of after-hours gambling and drinking which was cool when I did that stuff, at least with the Asian crowd I roll with.)
+20 years married into a Buddhist family, if you were wondering about that.
Am also atheist, I have an extreme...distaste for religion in general. There are some that I find easier to mesh with, very dependent on the person in particular. But I have some long married friends with vastly different religious views and they work out somehow.
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
as long as they aren't going to force me into said religion I would be fine with it, if I dated anyway.
I would try to support them and all but, I'm agnostic
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Where do you draw the line? That's what I'm curious about
I don't. Believe whatever you want to believe. My wife thinks bigfoot, ancient aliens, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, demons, angels, etc exist. I think that statically aliens have to exist but the rest are bunk. It doesn't affect me if she believes those things.
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
Most likely not. Depends how serious they are about it and how big of an factor it plays in their daily lives. Belief in god, to me, is an indication that a person is not capable of thinking rationally. At least not to the extent that I'm expecting from a parther. I don't want to be with someone who can't be reasoned with.
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Am also atheist, I have an extreme...distaste for religion in general. There are some that I find easier to mesh with, very dependent on the person in particular. But I have some long married friends with vastly different religious views and they work out somehow.
Oh, I get it. My distaste for religion runs deep as well. However, in my own direct experience, I have not seen any overt religious-driven nasty behavior in my years around Buddhism. (Not to say that it doesn't exist, but I haven't seen it.)
For the record, I grew up in an extreme Southern Baptist area, and still hold the belief that all those fuckers are all pure evil.
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Oh, I get it. My distaste for religion runs deep as well. However, in my own direct experience, I have not seen any overt religious-driven nasty behavior in my years around Buddhism. (Not to say that it doesn't exist, but I haven't seen it.)
For the record, I grew up in an extreme Southern Baptist area, and still hold the belief that all those fuckers are all pure evil.
Buddhism seems like one of the easier ones to mesh with, yeah. Thank you for your response, I appreciate it very much!
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Hard to say for sure really.
I can respect someone's religious views as long as they aren't trying to push them on me. That's to say; not trying to make me believe the same or insist that I have to follow the rules of their chosen religion.
As far as my own views go; I don't follow any particular religion. I don't necessarily believe there isn't some form of god, but I don't follow/believe in any specific deity either. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't; but there have been hundreds of thousands of gods/goddesses/deities/religious figures throughout human history. Who's to say you've chosen the correct one, along with the correct set of (sometimes oddly specific) rules and regulations to go along with it?
You want commandments to follow? Here's one:
"Don't be an asshole"
Everything else kind of just falls into place around that. As long as we can respect each other and our differences; yeah, romance is certainly possible.
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
Not anyone who is actively/strongly religious of any kind. Philosophical/spiritual beliefs is fine with me but anyone who is drinking the Kool-Aid is either delusional or dumb (and probably stubborn/hard to reason with). I was raised Catholic (even went to Catholic school from elementary up to finishing HS) but would consider myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist now
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
Muslim here and nope. Setting aside that it's forbidden in Islam, I'd have to get them on board with so many things they might as well convert.
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
I could maybe see myself with a pagan, but it depends on how much woo they believe in.
Luckily, a wonderful atheist woman found me and we've been married going on 10 years now.
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Muslim here and nope. Setting aside that it's forbidden in Islam, I'd have to get them on board with so many things they might as well convert.
Do you live in a country where Muslim religion is assumed or do you have to ask their religion right off? That seems rough
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
I don't date/wed a religion, or a god. Only a person.
That being said, there would still be the obvious limit that I would have to like (and be liked by) the person which, as far as I'm concerned, would most probably exclude some of the more... extreme religious beliefs.
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Do you live in a country where Muslim religion is assumed or do you have to ask their religion right off? That seems rough
I'm an immigrant in a country where save for a small foreign diaspora Muslims basically don't exist, so while I'm choosing to leave this stuff for future me to figure out, if I ever do choose to find someone it'll be rough going.
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I'm an immigrant in a country where save for a small foreign diaspora Muslims basically don't exist, so while I'm choosing to leave this stuff for future me to figure out, if I ever do choose to find someone it'll be rough going.
Ouch. That does seem complicated. I wish you luck!
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm an atheist. I dated a woman once who believed in spirits. I think she experienced night terrors among other things and interpreted them as supernatural phenomena. It didn't cause problems then but I was a lot younger and I think now I'm less tolerant of that sort of thing. But who knows - I was crazy about her so maybe if I meet a woman I'm crazy about like that again then I'll tolerate anything.
More recently I've dated people who believe in a vague sort of life after death but never someone who practiced any religion. I think I would immediately rule out practicing religious people if I were going through a list (as when dating online) but if I met someone in person, really liked her, and then found out she was religious then I'm not sure what I would do. It would definitely be off-putting.
The problem for me isn't the lifestyle differences but rather my impression that religious people are missing the point about the basic nature of existence, when it really should be obvious. It makes me feel like I'm patronizing them, because to be frank I don't tend to think of them as my intellectual equals. (And I know that makes me sound like a pompous jerk.)
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I wouldn't get involved with someone deeply religious. I'd consider someone religious if they were sufficiently wishy-washy about it, though, e.g. people who are christian and believe in it at least enough to not call themselves atheists or agnostics but don't really DO anything christian.
Would you turn someone down for believing in heaven/hell/etc alone?
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
There's already several comments saying "depends on the beliefs and how important they are," and obviously there's that.
I'll add that there are beliefs people don't immediately think of when talking about religion. There's religious humanism, which is a secular religion based around behaving ethically which also has a bunch of traditions similar to spiritually-based religions, minus the spirituality. Adherents (can) attend church and hear sermons on ways to be a better person, etc.
I'm not a religious humanist but they sound like they're probably decent enough people. They're quite different to my generic fediverse atheist/irreligious views, in the sense that I don't have any desire to attend congregations of people who identify as religiously ethical, but I don't harbor any strong objections to their beliefs.
Personally, I understand it more as something that might be nice for people who have left spiritual religion but still want the trappings of a place to go and be with a community of like-minded people, but that's not my experience. Ultimately, that's probably about as far as I'd be comfortable, where we have roughly equivalent spiritual views but highly divergent religious views.
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Title. Interested to see the response from different religions
Edit: Stating your religion would be appreciated. Lack of religion counts for the purpose of this question. Also let's not downvote people for differing religions, all voices are welcome here. If no; why?
I'll chime in myself here. Am an atheist, have dated hard core Christian women, Wiccans, and atheists. I've found that religion didn't actively impact the relationship until it spilled over into daily life that my partner required I take part in. I actually really enjoyed religious history conversations with my more moderate partners. It started to break down when it was "shut up no debate this is how it is" and those are the relationships that ended badly.
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There's already several comments saying "depends on the beliefs and how important they are," and obviously there's that.
I'll add that there are beliefs people don't immediately think of when talking about religion. There's religious humanism, which is a secular religion based around behaving ethically which also has a bunch of traditions similar to spiritually-based religions, minus the spirituality. Adherents (can) attend church and hear sermons on ways to be a better person, etc.
I'm not a religious humanist but they sound like they're probably decent enough people. They're quite different to my generic fediverse atheist/irreligious views, in the sense that I don't have any desire to attend congregations of people who identify as religiously ethical, but I don't harbor any strong objections to their beliefs.
Personally, I understand it more as something that might be nice for people who have left spiritual religion but still want the trappings of a place to go and be with a community of like-minded people, but that's not my experience. Ultimately, that's probably about as far as I'd be comfortable, where we have roughly equivalent spiritual views but highly divergent religious views.
Thank you for this insight! I had no idea myself
