Date-heism

A number of you have alluded to the fact that you’re a single atheist and it’s tough for you to meet other like-minded individuals.

I want to try something. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe not. Let me know what you think.

There are some atheist dating sites on the Internet that never really took off or hit a critical mass of registered users. Secularity.com once had potential, but it folded (the site now links to Meetup). eHarmony obviously doesn’t like you. Craigslist is a crapshoot. A generic site like Match.com might be your best bet but it doesn’t let you say much about your atheism other than the label itself.

But a lot of you read this site…

So I’m proposing that, if you’d like, you can send me the following pieces of information:

Name (just first name is fine)
Age
MySpace/Facebook/blog links (only if you want to share these)
Email address (that’ll stay private)
Location
A little bit about yourself (a paragraph or two)
A little bit about what you’re looking for (a paragraph or two)

And once I hear from you, we’ll see about pictures.

If there’s enough response, maybe I can post a couple of these a week. Anyone interested in the “Featured Atheist” (FA) could contact me. ~~I would pass along your info to the FA, and if he/she wants to make contact with you, so be it.~~ There will be enough contact information in the bio so that I don’t have to play middleman.

Is that worth trying?

Am I forgetting anything important?

[tags]atheist, atheism, dating, relationship[/tags]

Richard Wade

Hemant, are you going to avail yourself of these prospects?

……Or was that the whole point of your clever plan?

You sly dog. 😉
Stephen

I’m just desperate enough to try this.
Siamang

Yeah, Hemant… how do we know you’re not gonna take your pick and then post the one’s you’ve passed over?

😉

And good luck with this.

WHEW, glad I’m not in the dating scene!
Renacier

First you stop going to church, then you start telling jokes about fundies, next thing you know…BAM! Cyber-pimping!

Truly, atheism is a slippery slope to depravity….
NYCatheist

It’s a trap!

🙂 Sorry for the internet nerd meme comment.

Anyway, it sounds like a good idea to me. If there are any atheists in the NYC area you should come to the atheist meetup we have here every month. There’s also a group that meets every Friday night. Although it is still male dominated (good for you females out there!) I’m usually surprised by the number of attractive females that participate too.
vjack

I have to admit that I’ve never thought seriously about online dating. I suppose some have been successful with it and I’m probably just being old-fashioned, but I tend to be skeptical of it. Isn’t location going to be the most important thing?
David

Most girls i meet are just cultural Christians that have doubts too and can easily be converted to atheism (I barely meet any religious ones). But I’m in Montreal, the city with the highest students per capita (too much sin). is it really different in the States?
Mriana

I’d be surprised if there was a man in my area and my age that is a non-theist. We’re talking the Bible Belt and I don’t expect to be moving out of here for a couple more years. 🙁 After picking the wrong guy twice I’m in no hurry to find another, but then again… maybe I’d have better luck if someone picked him for me. 😆 Who knows.
Saint Gasoline

I’ve had good experiences meeting atheists on OKCupid, and most of the people on the site are intelligent, liberal, and definitely not fundies. And if you don’t like dating, they at least have a ton of quizzes you can take.

Another good place to go is Meetup.com. Most major cities have atheist, freethinker, or agnostic meetups. In St. Louis, our atheist meetup has about 100 or so members, although only about twenty or so regularly attend the meetups. (I’ve never been to one, of course, but that’s just because I feel too damned busy.)
NYCatheist

Saint Gasoline’s comment made me think I should clarify the “meetup” I mentioned in my comment above is through meetup.com. The NYC group has over 600 members at the moment, and sometimes we get over 40 people to a monthly meetup, but the average is 20-30. Just search for “atheist” at meetup.com specifying NYC to find it.

You’d think there would be more in “godless” NYC, but I suspect for that very reason the many atheists here feel apathetic to joining a group. Also, their schedules are probably packed full already with exciting and glamorous NYC events. 😉
ellen

I met my atheist husband on match.com in 1998. I wasn’t an atheist at the time but a very liberal theist. I found online dating the only way to go.

People in NYC should consider looking for “jews” since most seem to be secular.
Mriana

The meetup.com here has a Humanist group, atheist, agnostic, etc and they all have very few members- around 2 to 7 members. In roughly a little more than a year’s time, they have only had one meetup. That’s it. So, basically the meetups for non-theists here are defunct. I haven’t found it to be a good way to meet fellow non-theists.
Simon

I’d like to make a suggestion.

If this takes off, and there are Friendly Atheist couples. The first child has to be called Hermant.
Stephen

Another good place to go is Meetup.com.

I went and checked it out. Found two large atheism groups in my city; my city’s population is ~3 million, so no surprises there. I might check one or both out soon.

Funny, barely on topic anecdote – also on meetup.com, I searched for “hedonism” as a joke. It actually is a category, and it turns out that the sixth largest group in the nation is in my Bible Belt hometown of 50,000, and it calls itself a “polyamory group.” I have no clue how that’s possible. I bet my mom would flip if she knew such a group was hiding in the seedy underbelly of an otherwise innocuous town.
Mriana

Simon said,

January 6, 2008 at 11:48 am

I’d like to make a suggestion.

If this takes off, and there are Friendly Atheist couples. The first child has to be called Hermant.

Oh dear! What about those of us who can’t have anymore kids and don’t want anymore anyway?
Cat’s Staff

I thought of this a while back, but haven’t had a chance to write it up anywhere. Rather then reinvent the wheel, piggyback on an existing success. OkCupid is a big/free/well done dating site. They have a nice feature in their profiles that lets you make links of words you put brackets around. So if I put I like [[movies]], [[pizza]], and reading [[friendlyatheist.com]]…the words/phrases with brackets will become links that when clicked will create a list of everyone else on the site with that interest. We can use that to create a group. There are already a lot of people of use the term Jesus. Rather then using the term atheist, it could be something that not only attracts atheists, but also people who are willing to date atheists. I thought of using a phrase like [[friendly freethinker]], but there are already over a thousand people using the word atheist, so maybe there is no need to make a new category. You could put atheist, humanist, and freethinker in your profile, just to have all the bases covered. Even if you don’t identify yourself as an humanist, would you be interested in having one find you?
Susan

Hemant,
It sounds like a great idea to me. There are occaisional atheist meet-ups about an hour from me, but either or the location or time has never worked for me, and the members tend to be very young. I’m also stuck in the Bible Belt for about another 18 months and would enjoy meeting others. I tried Match.com years ago, met a nice agnostic. Didn’t work out, but he’s still a good friend.
Susan

Hemant,
It sounds like a good idea to me. There are occasional atheist meet-ups about an hour from me, but either or the location or time has never worked for me, and the members tend to be very young. I’m also stuck in the Bible Belt for about another 18 months and would enjoy meeting others non-theists (Jews welcome). I tried Match.com years ago, met a nice agnostic. Didn’t work out, but he’s still a good friend.
Jeff

Hemant,

If you did want to have the dating “lookup service” on the Friendly Atheist site, there might be some plug-in you could install that would simply let people register with the sole privilege of typing in their own personal profile. The plug-in would need to let everyone see the list of registered users. Then people could put in their profile whether they are “looking” and a little about themselves. That way, you wouldn’t have to manage anything except for the initial plug-in installation.
Hemant Mehta

If you did want to have the dating “lookup service” on the Friendly Atheist site, there might be some plug-in you could install that would simply let people register with the sole privilege of typing in their own personal profile.

That would be nice, but I don’t know of any… if anyone has suggestions, please let me know!
ProudSinner

Hemant,
You’ve forgotten sex and sexuality. It’s nice to be able to find that info quickly.

Mriana said,
Oh dear! What about those of us who can’t have anymore kids and don’t want anymore anyway?

There’s pets, plants, and computers to name, too!
Mriana

ProudSinner said,

January 6, 2008 at 8:20 pm

Mriana said,
Oh dear! What about those of us who can’t have anymore kids and don’t want anymore anyway?

There’s pets, plants, and computers to name, too!

Fair enough, but I’m not sure how a cat would appreciate the name Hemant, esp if she is a girl. 😆 I generally keeps the girls because the boys like to spray- sometimes even when nutured.
ProudSinner

Mriana said,
January 6, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Fair enough, but I’m not sure how a cat would appreciate the name Hemant, esp if she is a girl. 😆 I generally keeps the girls because the boys like to spray- sometimes even when nutured.

I dunno, my mom named her newest cat Little Girl, and i don’t think he minds that much. 😉
Jen

Hermant! Just when we convinced the theists that atheism is about something more, you go and tell them what atheism is really about: getting some.
Lexi

You may also want to try http://www.sifter.org, which is another atheist community, as well as if there are any godless sinners in LA http://www.hikethegeek.com is a nice place to exercise and meet with people who don’t believe in fairies.
Lexi

oops sifter.org no comma
Nick

This post really made me feel a lot better about myself. I’ve been very miserable and lonely for about the past 6 months. My beloved Aimee stopped talking to me. We were perfect together and I don’t know what happened. My self-esteem has been on a long downward spiral this whole time and it’s too the point now that I occasionally skip dinner and cry myself to sleep. The recent post “Why Are So Many Atheist Men Single?” brought a lot of emotions back to the surface. I’ve been terrified of putting my profile back up on any dating sight for a long time now, but after reading these posts and comments from people I can relate to I feel like I might be able to. Having my profile posted here, or finding others in a blog I read regularly sounds like something I could do.

Thanks everybody
ben

Do it! If I were single, I’d join.
Jim c.

I live in Carrollton Texas, deep in the heart of the bible belt. I’m 55 years old and looking for a woman within five yeas in age.
Jim.