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Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:43 pm
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Has you being atheist affected your friendship with somebody, or even your love life? - Or even, do YOU think it's possible to marry somebody who thinks like this? vvv
For me, it never has until a couple of months ago. I was seeing this guy for about a year. He always knew I was Atheist, and he never actually told me what religion he was, because he said he didn't care. He never questioned me and respected what I believed in. We stopped talking about 2 months a while ago, and recently started again. All of a sudden he told me he was serious about his religion - Jehovah's Witness. He said he didn't care before, but somehow he chose to start taking it seriously now. Suddenly he starts questioning me, asking why I was Atheist. The FIRST time I told him why all he could say is "Oh." He got extremely mad at me when I told him not to get upset and remember he's taking his OWN religion seriously, NOT my beliefs. The second time it got brought up because he was talking about how he just got back from his meeting with his friends at his church, and somehow the question about marriage came up. I asked him, if he's "allowed" to marry somebody who doesn't believe in that. He got mad, once again, and told me he IS allowed to, but he most likely wouldn't do it. And started telling me "I already feel sad when I see couples in church holding hands and being together in front of God, but when I'm actually a married man too, and I STILL can't do that... No thanks." Got very upset when I told him, if WE ever got married his religion and me being Atheist would completely ruin our relationship. He asked me, again, why I didn't believe in God. After explaining to him that I already answered him, then answering for a second time he all of a sudden gets completely nasty with me, telling me how it was stupid, how that WASN'T a reason, how it couldn't possibly be a reason because I didn't believe in ANYTHING. Also asked me if I believed in reincarnation, and when I said no he said I was stupid and wasting my life because I didn't believe in anything. Later that day we had another conversation, and he found out that a couple of months ago 2 Jehovah's Witnesses actually came to my house giving me stuff to read, and I never read them. He told me "I had a chance, but I chose not to take it, because I was so stubborn, and basically denied the help of God." and tried to read me verses from the Bible, which I told him he was just wasting his time with, aaaand he hung up on me.
That was the only huge thing I have dealt with about my beliefs, and it really upset me, because I cared about the guy a LOT!
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Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 7:43 am
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Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:44 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 6:00 am
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 3:38 pm
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Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 8:42 am
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Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:28 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 6:21 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:32 pm
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Oh, that's dreadful! It's really unfortunate that he took such a turn like that. I sincerely hope he doesn't wind up being seriously hurt by them. I had a friend in high school whose family was Jehovah's Witnesses, and he was rather horribly abused - sexually, it turned out - and he even needed deprogramming, not just therapy, when he was finally able to escape from them.
Religion seems to come up a lot in my relationships, unfortunately. The last one I had saw the end of my days as the lip-service pagan I had been. I always had been a rather tepid one, secretly feeling quite foolish and ashamed of myself every time I did anything "pagan-ish." But, my last boyfriend considered me a "True Believer," and intoned in a mysterious, mystical-sounding voice that he had "seen" it in me so strongly, that I practically radiated it. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing in his face. His Third Eye apparently needs glasses or something, because I knew he was way off base. Actually, his saying that felt like I'd been kicked in the teeth, a little later on.
As far as friends go, I think it's been rather hard for them to really comprehend what it actually means. They are otherwise generally accepting and supportive. Most of them are pagan, but there's a couple of Christians and a few Buddhists, too. Weirdly, I think it's the pagans that are having the toughest time of it. There's one trying to convince me that casting healing spells for my step-mother would actually have an effect on her declining health from all the "positive energy." Since she's over 1000 miles away, this seem highly unlikely, at best. In truth, I never believed such things truly would have any effect, but that the act of casting them can at least make the caster feel like they're doing something positive to help in a situation where they otherwise cannot. About now, some are trying to convince me about the power of healing in prayer, say there have been studies, and, oddly enough there have been. However, the only measurable outcome there's been has been if the sick person prays for themselves. The effect is also about the same for Buddhist meditation or a placebo. To me, it says something about the mind-body connection, but nothing about divine intervention. But, I suppose that if a person seeks to find proof of their beliefs in the supernatural, they'll find it readily enough, even if they don't really examine it very closely to see if it even fits tolerably well.
I briefly had a boyfriend some time back who once described himself as a Wibblian or something strange like that. Believes devoutly in the god he'd made up, Wibble, who wants you to live well and be happy. Declared tht all gods are actually Wibble. This guy also lambasted me rather harshly for buying a Rush album, because he didn't like how overtly atheistic the lead singer had become, and told me to "be careful" about listening to Rush's music. I was pretty offended by that. I like Rush. At that point, I just hung up on him and never bothered with the jackass again. I'd absolutely had it with his treatment of me, and that was the last straw. I think if I ever bother with the dating thing again, it won't be very fulfilling if he's not an atheist too. Or at least agnostic, freethinker, humanist or something along those lines. My experience has been that the alternative's disastrous.
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Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:10 pm
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Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 6:17 pm
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 3:11 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 5:09 pm
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Ah, I feel like the lucky one. =D
My friends are all accepting of what I believe, and my quest for faith has caused a revolution in my school - people come up to me and thank them for getting them to question their faith, even if they arrived at the conclusion that their faith was justified (this is aside from the usual crazies and morons, which are always present).
Romantically, being an atheist never changed anything, except that a few months after I decided what I believed, my boyfriend (a devout christian, who my parents would have murdered me for going out with until after they met him), and I split up because we decided that the gap between what we think is just too big. We agreed that when our fundamental views of the universe are different, we couldn't make it work. We have quite wonderful tempers, you see. >.< It wasn't a big production, or anything, and it was us, not or faith that couldn't work. The faith just made it a heck of a lot harder.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:53 pm
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Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 3:43 pm
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