An ERE dating site

[Crusader]

I totally understand what you are trying to say. Not really sure what to say that I haven't already said. We can agree to disagree.

Jacob, that book looks interesting, although I am not sure how it relates, if it was directed to me. I've thought very hard about why I am such a strong atheist, and I think I understand it, and how I've evolved as a person (and I have changed my stance on some pretty fundamental political views, for example).

[IlliniDave]

... I think they are wrong, and I think they are intellectually inferior.

I'm certainly not one to to be advising on matters of the heart, but I suspect that what is expressed above could be taken as revealing some underlying traits that even many committed atheists out searching for a mate would find as a turn off/red flag.

[Crusader]

Yup! Which is why my problem is even more complicated than it appears. I am closed minded and judgemental. But no matter how hard I tried to change that, I couldn't, for as long as I can remember and have been looking for a mate (the last 20 years, more than half my life).

[jacob]

Jacob, that book looks interesting, although I am not sure how it relates, if it was directed to me. I've thought very hard about why I am such a strong atheist, and I think I understand it, and how I've evolved as a person (and I have changed my stance on some pretty fundamental political views, for example).

Building relationships with other humans depends on how you frame your own beliefs, other people's beliefs, their beliefs relative to your own framework, or the dynamics between these frameworks. These are four different ways of relating to other people.

It relates in that a resolution might relax the search constraints.

For example, I maintain a list of issues that I strive to stop debating after a certain age at 5 year intervals (search the forum). Philosophy and religion were #1 and #2 for me respectively.

[Crusader]

I believe what you were talking about is

viewtopic.php?p=184797#p184797

I can see the motivation for doing that, and I kind of behave myself in a similar manner when it comes to work and even friends. But, all these issues you've listed: philosophy, religion, politics, investing, climate change, are pretty much what makes you, you. I would want to share my thoughts freely with my life partner and hopefully be on the same page. I would feel so lonely if that wasn't the case. I mean if that is not the point of a life partner, I don't know what is!

[Loner]

@Crusader I’m not chiming in because I want to try to change your mind. I know that I’m unlikely to convince you. But I could have written RJ’s post(s) verbatim, as well as yours, at different moments in my life – it’s borderline uncanny – so I felt like sharing this. Read this post as entertainment (if you do). I don’t know you, and you very well may be right.

When I was 20 – and I’m embarrassed to say this even to strangers on the web – I believed religious people were not only wrong, but stupid. I never, in a million years, would have considered being involved romantically with a person with a faith. More than a decade later, I blush at all this because I now see that attitude as the condescending arrogance of someone who, even though he thought he had given a profound thought about the topic, had not actually taken the time to think open-mindedly about this for even half a minute. Stupid me.

Two things helped me change my mind. First, I met a wonderful, smart woman who, through no proselytising of her own, but only by being, forced me to re-evaluate my (erroneous) priors. She just happened to be Christian, which put me in a tight spot. On one hand, she was smart, creative, empathetic, you name it. But on the other hand, she was religious. Good God. You can imagine how I shifted in my seat when the topic came on. Anyways, it caused some frictions at first, sure, but when you love someone, it’s much easier to give an attentive ear to their beliefs and to investigate a question that you were entirely closed about before (even though you didn't know it). Long story short, I’m now converted and pray every day.

No no, just kidding. I’m still not religious, and will probably never be in any conventional sense, but my certainties are not so strong anymore.

The second thing that helped me change my mind was this forum, funny enough. Many people here are Christian, and many people here are also (my kind of) smart. Imagine. It was cognitive dissonance galore for me when I started lurking many years back. Having never really had any religious person close to me, I had this premade idea of them. Part of this is cultural: where I live, people are kind of anti-religious for historical reasons. So seeing all those smart people, who also belied in God and whatnot, shaked my misplaced convinctions.

Anyhow, time to wrap this up. Even if that woman is not in my life anymore, I see my prior refusal to date faithful women as a mistake, and perhaps you’re doing yourself disservice by pre-emptively nuking out such a big part of the dating pools. Maybe not. Who knows? But I’ve learned that I may not always know what I want as much as I think I do.

[jacob]

@Crusader - Maybe lonely is a matter of degree? Not 0% or 100% due to a search/optimization but something that can be fixed?

See viewtopic.php?p=177670#p177670

You can of course stick to your hard limit, but consider that the way forward is not "through" but "around" or "up".

[Loner]

all these issues you've listed: philosophy, religion, politics, investing, climate change, are pretty much what makes you, you.

Relationships are complicated, and so is identity. I'd say temperament and personal history also make you, you. But anyways, different people have different reasons for wanting to be together, and yours are as valid as anyone else's. I think it'd be foolish to discard some of them from the outset, but if you've given it some thought, maybe you're right. Again, only you can know for yourself, and it may be that being on the same page as your partner on the topic of metaphysics will be what will bring you more happiness. I can't know, and I'd offer that it's difficult to know for oneself for sure if one does not experiment some.

In my case, I've learned that it’s difficult to predict, with any meaningful certainty, what kind of people you enjoy spending time with before meeting them. I think temperament may be somewhat more important than thoughts about politics and such, or at least, I think it is for me, but interpersonal relationships involve so many variables that I think one should be open to serendipity. (All this ties-in with Alphaville’s posts higher-up, on the problems with dating apps, and with which I completely agree.)

In any case, I wish you good luck. Dating is not easy now with Covid.

[Riggerjack]

I am closed minded and judgemental. But no matter how hard I tried to change that, I couldn't, for as long as I can remember

I didn't try to change it, and I am not recommending that you do.

Rather, I am suggesting that other ways of thinking have value. The internet was great for this. It opened up a new world of smart people, thinking of things I never would. Things I often don't agree with (I'm still just as judgemental). But still, an internally consistent worldview is valuable, even when based on obvious untruths. (If only to see how such a balancing act is done.)

Learning to respect others perspectives (even when they are clearly wrong, sometimes especially so) allows for a better understanding of what they understand. My mental models improve, as I better understand the world at large by being able to mentally replicate many more perspectives.

So if I am thinking of an subject, and am trying to understand someone else's perspective, I could be seeing a rectangle, and they a circle.

In this case, I could be dealing with someone who doesn't recognize corners, or who is deeply obsessed with circles, or, we could both be looking at a cylinder.

I will never get hints that my rectangle is possibly a cylinder, if I look at their conclusions, and decide that they don't recognize corners.
......

I'm just fine with being judgemental. It saves time and energy for the things I am willing to contemplate for a while.

But judgement comes with costs, as well. One such cost is how little I learn from the people judged as inferior.

This is a cost I pay myself. I get the self satisfaction of confirming to myself that I am right. And I cheat myself of an opportunity to learn.

And as I age, I find learning opportunities to be far more valuable than mere confirmation that I am right.

[Crusader]

@Jacob:
I've read that post while lurking the forum at least 2 times. I know (weiss) what you mean, but I don't know (kenn) how to actually do it. My relationships were very much focused on "I" in the past, and more specifically how can "I" enrich my experience. Now when I don't have that need from a partner, I feel somewhat lost as to what my needs are in a relationship, but the atheism, for me, seems like a no-brainer.

@Loner:
One lesson that I did learn is that just because someone is politically or religiously close to me, doesn't guarantee that I will like them in a romantic sense. Temperament is definitely more important.

@Riggerjack:
Strange, I don't disagree with anything you've said. Maybe the difference here is that I am talking about a lifelong partner over just some friend that you interact with every now and then and who can teach you a lot about <an area unrelated to religion> or even how they think so that you understand people, and the world, better.

Anyway, thanks everyone for chipping in, I think we are beating a dead horse at this point.

[Alphaville]

i think people are misunderstanding. he's not faithless--he's in fact firm in his belief, and mistrustful of unbelievers, just like any faithful member of a monotheistic religion.

here is an example of a sacred text:

20:2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 20:6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

-

would you tell a believer in this commandment: "nah, it's ok, have other gods, have an open mind, do watcha wanna do, marry a pagan"?

[Loner]

would you tell a believer in this commandment: "nah, it's ok, have other gods, have an open mind, do watcha wanna do, marry a pagan"?

It would not be my place to say such a thing, and I get why a religious organization wouldn't do it (actually, the Dalai Lama is comfortable with it, and wrote/said more or less just that in many instances), but many religious people are, in fact, quite ok with being people with no faith, or a different faith.

[Loner]

he's not faithless--he's in fact firm in his belief, and mistrustful of unbelievers, just like any faithful member of a monotheistic religion.

I agree. I felt exactly like that in the past, hence my long post saying so, but I might have expressed myself incorrectly. But yes, I agree. I just don't think it's the wisest attitude.

[IlliniDave]

Yup! Which is why my problem is even more complicated than it appears. I am closed minded and judgemental. But no matter how hard I tried to change that, I couldn't, for as long as I can remember and have been looking for a mate (the last 20 years, more than half my life).

I've got some hard limits too, so I get that part of it. And for my part I've just accepted that my odds of partnering up are absurdly remote because I have little to offer a potential partner beyond financial support. But I do keep a never say never card in my back pocket because nothing is static--not who I am, not what I want, not what I know, not what I believe (and ditto for everyone and everything else out there). Good luck with finding someone close minded and judgemental enough to meet your standards. It's really not complicated, you've just stacked the odds against yourself.

[Crusader]

@Alphtaville
mistrustful? I have no idea what you are on about. I just think that believers are stupid (in this realm... compartmentalization is a thing, so they might be smart in other domains) and wrong and to me, saying "there are many paths to truths" is condescending. This is how you talk to a child. I am paraphrasing Penn here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpNRw7snmGM

Also, I would never take away anyone's right to practice whatever the hell religion they want.

[Alphaville]

@Alphtaville
mistrustful? I have no idea what you are on about. I just think that believers are stupid (in this realm... compartmentalization is a thing, so they might be smart in other domains) and wrong and to me, saying "there are many paths to truths" is condescending.

right, mistrustful was not the right word, sorry.

i meant that you reject their beliefs and the choices that flow from them.

and that's what i was trying to convey to @loner-- that you're a faithful atheist, not a skeptical one. it's a different stance.

so, trying to tell you that other beliefs are also valid is like telling an orthodox jew that it's okay to eat a ham sandwich or telling a catholic to play fisbee with the host or telling a muslim to draw a cartoon of mohammed. it's not acceptable.

[The_Bowme]

I have largely felt the same way as Crusader for most of my life, starting as an ardent materialist atheist, then sliding into intellectual agnosticism in my early 20s, then fervent agnosticism in my late 20s after reading Becker's The Denial of Death and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. But I still largely considered Christianity to be a fundamentally dumb religion, albeit a socially useful prophylactic against nihilism.

But lately, after finishing Kierkegaard's Either/Or and CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, I have a lot more respect for the religion and have been able to relax some of my Neitzschean snobbery. Christians take some leaps of faith, but I think nearly all positive belief systems do. So now the idea of dating someone genuinely Christian seems like a possibility to me for the first time. But I am still worried that I am taking for granted the gulf that really does exist, and there would be cultural clash that would flare up when we already have a life together.

But then, you date people, not collections of abstractions, so I think my worry is overwrought, and I'm happy to have a bit more flexibility in how I approach this area. There's a lot of cute religious girls on the dating apps after all...

[Jin+Guice]

@RJ and @jacob are throwing out the knowledge here...

It's not inflexibility on the truth, beauty or validity of religion. It's inflexibility on personal belief. Or like:

If you say that there's no truth and who cares, how come you say it like you're right?

It's not an opinion about a belief, but how you relate to others with different beliefs, because inevitably no one will share all of your beliefs. There are values that need to be matched, and religion is a signal of value, but not a value itself.

The idea that an idea could be infallibly correct is the problem. If that's your definition of truth, then anticipate a lifetime alone.

My religion is hoes, which I know atheists can't believe in, so send those religious chicks' numbers my way.

[Alphaville]

My religion is hoes

amen!

[7Wannabe5]

It has been argued that female orgasm is proof of God's existence.