I’m not a conflict hunting person, and many of you might say that i should be “accepted for who I am”, yet I’m content with the fact that my being atheist does not define me. I’m a happy, humorous, fun, intelligent, easy-going guy. Regardless of religion (or lack thereof), I’m still myself.

I hope you all enjoy your time with your family, and don’t dwell on the crap that makes religion so useless anyway; conflict.

We had to come to terms with the religious differences between us fairly early on in the relationship. She’s pretty religious and at the beginning it was difficult for her to really see us going anywhere. It wasn’t that she didn’t think I was a good guy or anything like that, it was more that she knew the difficulties of having a relationship where one person is very religious on a personal level (as in, she doesn’t go around trying to convert or anything) and the other is, well, not religious at all. Part of the reason why things still work out is we’re very respectful of each other’s beliefs. I don’t berate her religion (or religions in general) and she doesn’t insult me or harass me for my lack thereof.

Since we’ve been together so long we’ve had to come to terms with respect to various differences and if/when we get married and have kids how things will proceed. We’ve negotiated if the kids would go to church (they would, I wouldn’t, but my lack of going is not an excuse for them not to go) and how we’d support each other.

I think one of the reasons we work well together is because we’re both adults and met later in our mid 20′s, so we weren’t stupid teenagers or moronic freshmen (we couldn’t have dated earlier in our lives). She knows I have no interest in going to church (she’s sad about it, but doesn’t really have a problem with it) and I’ve no interest in trying to get her to recant her beliefs.

We did hide the fact from her parents for a very long time though since they’re way more religious than she is, but they finally accepted my position, although her father was very disappointed that I wasn’t a christian.

Relationships can work out well between those who have faith and those who don’t as long both people are willing to compromise and be adults.

Well, you love your parents for different reasons, and in different ways, than you love your mate.

You don’t get to choose your parents, for one thing. Plus you’ve almost certainly known them longer than you’ve known anybody, and in a unique, unreplicable way. And unless they were abusive or something, you owe them big time. So you put up with stuff from your parents that you wouldn’t put up with from even casual acquaintances, much less life partners. You can find another mate if things aren’t working; you can’t find other parents.

But… well, speaking for myself, my partner is by far the most important other person in my life. Blood family is important, of course, but it doesn’t even come close. I share more with her, and trust her more, and am closer to her, than I have been with anyone in my life. She’s my partner in life. I don’t want a partner in life who I’m rolling my eyes about behind their back, whose opinions and core values I put up with for the sake of peace and quiet. (Except for the whole inexplicable early-’80s pop music fetish… but then, she puts up with my Sinatra fetish, so that’s fair.) I want a partner in life whose core values I share, and whose opinions I respect — even when I disagree with them.

And we did/do get to choose each other.

So (a) you can be selective about your mate, and (b) your mate is probably more important to you… or at least, important in a different way.

I realize this was a typo, Kevin — but I love it. I am totally going to steal it.

But I’ve gotten used to thinking that most people I’ll be interested in won’t have the same level of “enthusiasm” about atheism that I do. There’s going to have to be compromise somewhere.

Ditto on that….

I think it is easier to be an atheist or agnostic female when it comes to dating, I’ve found there to be many men and not as many women, that are atheist or agnostic.

When I realized that I wanted to have children and a family, I stopped dating people who are not atheist or agnostic . . . because of the “how to raise the kids” issue. While I think religion does have some valuable things to teach, I think it can all be done without religion. I’d also begun ‘cringing’ when guys I’d go out on dates with suggested my sign had any relevance to our relationship or life, or a comment about how something sounds like the devil’s talk etc . . . I don’t mind the colloquialisms of “oh god” . . . or, GD, but the internal cringing I experience when dates talk about their religious beliefs, means I can’t date them. Friends, sure no problem.

I’m agnostic/atheist. Essentially, I don’t claim to know, but I also don’t believe, nor have evidence for doing so and I’m very comfortable in my not-knowing.

On the other hand, my best friend is Muslim, her husband is Mormon and their kids are very cute Morslims. They try and combine the best aspects of each religion to teach their children.

I could not be married to someone with that mind set.

I’ve been chipping away at my girl friend’s theism slowly but surly for the past two years. As an engineering student she was already very sceptically aggressive to nonsense like astrology so all I did was put all her religious clams in the same pot and I think it has worked.
Two years ago she said something like this: “Well people have proves for god’s existence and proves for his nonexistences so…”
Two weeks ago she said something like this in response to her mother claiming that physicists are the most religious: “As the person here who has done the most physics, I can easily say that the claims of religion and physics are not compatible…”