to ask how you feel when someone is at the opposite end of the faith spectrum?

[Morphene]

I've recently discovered two separate people I have been getting closer to (professional/friendship wise) are at the other end of the faith scale from me. I have actually felt a little upset and unbalanced by it.

IABU? I mean I know I am, but do other people get this? Does it make a difference if you are the one with or without faith?

I am sure I will still get on just fine with them, but I feel a little sadness that in this important respect we are very far from each others wavelength.

whatever personal ideas someone has, as long as they dont think they need to force those ideas on others in any way, i reckon they could still be a good person to hang out with!!

Well said, Batghee.

The real divide is not between the religious and atheists, it's between the smug/superior 'who wont accept any ideas but the one they have chosen' and ordinary people.

The OP is an extremist in the sense you quoted, as they are not happy for others to have any beliefs other than theirs.

Unless you are a nihilist!

Zaphod see I don't think there is an element of choice in this at all.

I didn't choose not to believe. I didn't weight up the evidence for and against and make a decision. I just check inside to see if I believe and I don't.

This is, I think, every bit as irrational as believing. I think it is hard coded in, in a way that only a major physical or psychological trauma is likely to over turn.

Obviously if you do believe, then you get to pick what sort of religion/spirituality suits you, but the fact of faith in something bigger than yourself isn't a choice.

cvbn are you reading anything I am writing? How can I be clearer?

I have friends with faith, I respect them. I do not try to convert them.

Is that clear enough?

Morphene - if I started a thread as a religious person to 'ask if other people felt the same way I do. If other people felt vaguely uncomfortable to discover their friends have different religious views to them.' and meant that I as a religious person felt uncomfortable around atheists, all the atheists on here would go mad with fury at how intolerant those religious types are, always thinking they're superior, etc!

And with justification - had I done anything like that. Because it is a rather obviously smug, intolerant viewpoint.

That you can't see that shows your complete blindness to your own behaviour. It doesn't make it excusable.

What cvbn said at 00:35

Am amazed that anyone would struggle to get on with a person that they like in every other way, simply because they go to Church.
I know several people I'm quite friendly with who go to things that I cant quite understand why they go. We either agree to disagree or have interesting discussions about it. Not sure if it sounds more childish, or just plain bigoted to say 'I can't be friends with you becuse you do something i don't like'. How very strange.

I was primarily interested to find out if it goes both ways. If my friends would be equally perturbed at my lack of faith. Apparently they are likely to be slightly less worried, but not entirely spotless in the prejudice department (on account of being human).

I'm really not responsible for anyone else turning the debate to faith bashing.

back well if I had said any of those things then that would indeed be a good point....

Morphene - which bit of 'you started a thread specially to talk about how you feel uncomfortable being friends with religious people' do you not get?

How can you argue that is a tolerant viewpoint?

Withdrawing your friendship because someone is a member of a different religion and only for that reason is the definition of intolerant.

In my world, people are people, whatever their race or religion or background. I don't pre-judge whole categories of millions or billions of people on my perception of what kind of people they are likely to be.

what I actually said, was we continue to get on just fine, I am perfectly happy to have friends of faith, but I do feel little less free around them than I would feel around people I knew where atheist.

but you keep knocking up those straw men....sooner or later it will become magically true that 'I can't be friends with people who believe in god'

withdrawing friendship wtf? are you still incapable of reading that I have friends with deep religious beliefs?

seriously.

okay forget it. you are right. I have no friends with religious beliefs because I am that massively intolerant. I can't believe I didn't notice that before you pointed it out!

ps. please feel free to jog on now you've won dear.

Morphene, I suppose it comes down to what you value in a friendship, what makes friendship worthwhile for you.

What matters to you in a friendship?

I don't want to get off the point, but if you combine conservatives and brexiteers, that is most of the population. I am sure you don't hate them really.

I dont think the OP is coming across as extremist?! Shes just had a slightly negative reaction that she is questioning. If she was an extremist she wouldnt be on a forum talking about it she would have just written this person off as a friend.

It is difficult when someone sees something you dont. Belief is a very strange thing but it effects everyone.

If you look at it on a lower level: there was a post on here recently about someone who had had a house guest who had left a towel on the bed. Some people were genuinely outraged by this, thinking it was the height of rudeness and some people were nonplussed as to why anyone would be bothered in the slightest.
Both attitudes are ingrained and not logical. One makes no more real sense than the other but is emotionally important for the people involved. Hopefully reasonable people would be able to see that their own reaction doesnt mean that everyone feels that way and that even though they cant see why or understand the other persons reaction that it is none the less real to them.

Now im one of the couldnt care less about the towel people and if i encountered one of the people that got very upset about it i might have a moment of 'really??!!' I wouldnt naturally understand and id naturally feel quite alienated from them.
Im not an extremist, i wouldnt turn against them. Having a natural reaction to someones outlook differring from yours is not extremism. It is always slightly strange to meet an attitude you cant understand even if its not completely out of line with your moral values. Extremism is where you deny someone the right to have a differring belief.

I don't hate them no....although give cvbn another few posts and I'm sure I will be not only hating them but assaulting them in broad daylight.

I would feel less free to speak my mind around someone who was in favour of Brexit, I guess I would indeed be worried about conflict (as someone hinted earlier).

Ah, 'jog on'. Clearly you find it as hard to brook disagreement on a MN thread as you do in real life. And no, I won't 'jog on'. If you don't want your opinions challenged, can I suggest that posting offensve crap aimed at the majority of the world's population on AIBU is not the best place to start!

I find it hard to think of members of any religion that don't vary hugely, in both their levels of belief and their suitability to be friends ie nice people. Catholics include child-abusing priests and the amazing, saintly people who saved my father's life. Muslims include ISIS and one of my child's best friends. etc etc etc. Bar Quakers (never yet met a horrible one), I think probably most religions include the broad spectrum of people with different values, as do atheists. There are amazing atheists and intolerant, small-minded ones like the OP.

I certainly am questioning a slight negative reaction. I am definitely not proud of it - a feeling and response that several other atheists have indicated on this thread.

So the deal is to mitigate for the prejudice....which is all any of us can hope to do in life really.

Isn't that going to happen in all friendships though? That there will be large areas that you can't state your opinion without worry of offence or conflict?

cvbn you realise your own small minded prejudices are hanging out too don't you?

morphene - from a purely scientific angle, " is faith hard -wired " is of course a very interesting question! I'm personally less inclined to look in that direction due to personal experiences, possible alienation from my fellow humankind, and the formulation of the belief that too much meddling with nature is not helping humanity much. Unfortunately it's starting to look like it might be a bit too late for humanity!

batghee - you are a better person than me.

I have only so much patience with someone who starts a thread that insinuates there is something wrong with religious people and the OP knows better.

almond no - I have full on ivory tower bubble syndrome. I am actually surrounded by people with a very narrow portion of the human spectrum. Almost everyone I know has a PhD, more than half of them are professors, they are spectacularly male and white, nobody voted brexit, nobody votes conservative, everyone is bleeding heart liberal.

The only way in which diversity is seriously expressed is via religion....so I guess it ends up having a disproportionate effect.

cvbn you realise your own small minded prejudices are hanging out too don't you?

What, the desire to not be patronised by an atheist who is convinced they are superior to me because they don't believe in a deity?

Only in your werdly inverted logic does that make me the prejudiced or small-minded one here.

I have no problem at all with atheists or members of any other religion. I have a problem with narrow-minded bigots bigots of any or no religion who think they have a right to tell others what to believe.