There’s tension between us. He’s not happy when I make fun of Christians or diss the Pope, and if he tells me there’s no atheist in the foxhole then all hell breaks lose.

I do appreciate rationality and I consider myself a very rational person. In fact, my boyfriend says I’m probably the most rational person he knows. The down side is I think with rationality and don’t understand people’s emotional, uncalculated responses.

I tolerate his religiosity because he doesn’t base his values on religion. Religion is a reasonably small part of his life. He doesn’t pray out loud any time. While he reads the Bible and considers it a good source of morality (lol?) he also acknowledges it’s filled with violence and evil. He acknowledges his god is not perfect. He even points out Yahweh never said he was the ONLY god. He just said he’s the only god Jews should pray to.

If someone doesn’t force his religion upon me and doesn’t base his values on religion, then I’m totally okay with him being religious. He can believe in 50 gods and it won’t bother me.

Sometimes I question why he even bother to stay a Catholic if he doesn’t agree with the pope most of the time, but meh, rationality shuts off when it comes to things indoctrinated into you when you’re small.

His mother is a bible thumping Baptist who drummed the fear of God into her children and he’s done pretty well all things considered. I do believe that other than a few people who jump the fence in adulthood, most people are victims of their childhood indoctrination. Children are different in how they interpret the indoctrination, of course. He says he always took what his mother said with a pinch of salt, but some of it got in, nonetheless!

He’s even got his mother to understand that I don’t eat babies (haha). She did, however, end the big discussion with an “I’ll pray for her”! Which I don’t mind. She’s a very sweet person and I’d pray for her, too, if I were… you know… afraid she might go to Hell. At least she wants to save my soul. She’s a really good shot (seriously, she is a prize-winning targetwoman) and I’m glad she’d rather pray for me than aim at me from a bell tower!

My first husband (who died) was an apostate moderate Muslim with some residual generic spiritual beliefs (which I just don’t share). We got along just fine, though! He died of cancer very young and I’m pretty sure his whole religious community thought it was punishment for leaving his religion and marrying a headstrong atheist heathen!

In my experience the chasm between belief systems hasn’t been too large (I don’t think I’d be able to respect an evangelical anything!), but it’s not difficult to get along with someone who is a believer. Particularly if their evangelical parents live in a different city!

GZ

Unfortunately, not being prepared to separate myself from basically everyone I know, I’d have to be classified as “them”. Hemant would probably be “them” too, because, you know, he started a website about being an atheist who’s friendly toward Christians.

Actually, I have a better idea. We could call it “tolerance”.

I can fully understand why someone would say that they’re incompatible with religious partners for relationship purposes, but stating that it’s because you “can’t respect them” seems just downright bigoted.

My experience, and it sounds like Jesse’s too, is that they wonder if you can actually respect them if you don’t respect their religion. For the record, I think the answer is yes, although I sometimes have to try to convince my religious girlfriend that’s true. (And honestly, I would respect her even more if she decided, due to rational argument, to leave religion.)

I was very open about my lack of faith from the beginning, and it wasn’t a problem. I know one of the guys she dated in college was from a very restrictive Christian household. So, go figure.

This holiday season, she’s playing in the handbell choir on invitation of one of her co-workers at one of the Methodist churches in the area. But, she also regularly attends the twice-a-month atheist association meetings with me.

The overall feeling that I get is that she likes Churchy stuff, but doesn’t really buy into most of the mumbo-jumbo.

Also, it can be social suicide to be an open atheist in the deep south–so this may be a consideration.

Also, are you talking the past, present or future? Presumably the present, you’re hoping she’s not dating another even if they are Atheist if you’re in a serious relationship and if it’s casual, why in heck would you give a darn. Future would only mean if you two broke up so, again, why would it matter? Past is past and may or may not be what they’d do now so, again, it doesn’t matter.

If it helps, I once married a Christian.
Wouldn’t date anyone other than another nonbeliever now.