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.

zaphod yes, its a bit sad how quickly we go from lets understand this, to lets fiddle with this.

I agree we may have a limited window to get our collective shit together and I doubt discovering you can make people believe in god by feeding them X, showing them Y and playing Z to them in the womb is going to be a stabilizing influence in the world....

cvbn point to anywhere on this thread that I have said I believe theists to be inferior? Anywhere at all! When you cant, please FTFO, and take your personal attacks with you.

Okay, in that case you have access to a very large number of people with whom you're able to speak your mind.

It is a question of whether or not you think you are morally obligated to step out of your comfort zone, not always speak your mind and thus include more diversity in your friendship group.

NEWS ALERT

Person admits she finds it slightly easier to get on with people who think more like she does.

BURN HER

almond I am never sure on that point. I am currently being yelled at by someone who very strongly believes I shouldn't even have asked the apparently atheism proselytising question of whether or not any one else finds it uncomfortable to discover others have very different faith to them.

It doesn't make me feel like I should speak to anyone outside my bubble tbh.

On the other hand I spent an hour chatting to evangelising christians the other day (they stopped me in the street not the other way around) and we spent an awesome time working out how the presence of absence of god in our lives impacted our recovery from trauma. So I see it has value, just danger also.

You do seem to have a real problem with people who a) disagree with you and b) explain why.

If you're like this in real life, which one must assume you are, I'm not surprised that you have 'issues' over mixing with people from a different religious viewpoint to you.

You do come across as seriously narrow-minded and unable to tolerate dissent. You claim to be a scientist yet believe that members of religions are all identical in their views and it is logical to approach them as if they were an identical, unchanging unit, ignoring the fact that religions vary hugely across time and place, and within that, every individual's relationship with their faith varies across time too.

I met someone under very difficult circumstances. We became rapidly very close. She is lovely. I then found out that she is strongly Christian. I haven't seen her for several years, although I think we'd just click back into being best of friends. I find any strong religious preference very hard to understand.

I live in a very religious (not Christian) area. The religious adherents appear to abide by the 'pick 'n' mix' type of their religion. They have erected a series of wires, which apparently allows them to completely ignore the religious dictates of their Holy Day. They're supposed to walk to their religious building, so drive then park round the corner and walk the last 50 yards. They adhere very strongly to certain aspects of their religion but ignore others. On a form one had to complete, they have put their religion as their nationality. When queried, they claimed this was an infringement of their rights as someone of that religion.

I was brought up Catholic, hated it, decided I no longer wanted to belong to that religion. My DM insisted, I rebelled. She then went on to dump some of her beliefs and began to believe in radio waves, Papal conspiracies, other odd ideas. She too is of the 'pick 'n' mix' variety, claims to be 'non-religious' but has chosen the hymns for her funeral, which she wants to be secular. I think she is

It's a divisive subject: dare I (after several glasses of wine) compare it to selling Younique/other currently trendy FB related sales pyramid)? Swear by it or otherwise, I don't discuss it or try to persuade others in person.

You claim to be a scientist yet believe that members of religions are all identical in their views and it is logical to approach them as if they were an identical, unchanging unit, once you've found that non-existent proof that I believe people of faith to be inferior, you can move right on to finding evidence to prove the above entirely false accusation too.

Or you can just keep stating made up bullshit....

I don't get how you can think that all religious people are identical in some indefinable way that you have, or could even conceivably have, a problem with. That just seems so bizarre to me.

Do you think Malala and the head of ISIS are basically the same, a bit suspect, because they both happen to be religious? You can't see that their views might differ by like a million miles?

I know it is difficult to have a discussion on here when someone else is accusing you of things.

You have started an interesting thread.

My stance on it would be not that you have to value a religious perspective, but that you can form a friendship with someone and just never talk about some topics with that individual.

Of course there are some topics that are so important to us that we cannot maintain a friendship with someone who doesn't share that perspective because we can't avoid talking about it in every relationship. But you seem to have many big topics that you can just opt to discuss. I pretty much never have anything to say about atheism that would bother a religious person, so am finding that interesting about your posts.

I don;t have a problem with people who disagree with me, so much as I have a problem with people who make up shit about me in order to deride me for it.

You can take that and shove it frankly.

Sorry, I meant many big topics that you feel you can't avoid discussing.

And it's not 'made up bullshit' - it's the premise of your whole thread. That religious people are 'other'.

I'm not surprised you're now trying to backtrack, because it makes you look a bit unhinged, but you can hardly deny it when MN helpfully posts your OP at the top of every page...

almond I think that it is very likely that religion wouldn't come up that much. I don;t think it will be a big hole to hide. But then it obviously came up once, or I wouldn't know about it!

It doesn't help that we recently had a religion v. science debate tbh. I wasn't any sort of part of it, but it means it is up for discussion at the moment. Hopefully it will pass - because I don;t see a huge amount of progress being made, just the same stuff trotted out on either side and it is only a matter of time before someone crosses a line. We have already had people claim you can't be moral and atheist, and someone else started talking about sky fairies.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to set up a prayer space...and hoping no one reacts badly to the idea

You wrote: 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.

Your words. So now stop denying it.

Why the fuck are you 'upset and unbalanced' by someone else having a different viewpoint from you on something, and something they kept so private you didn't even know about it?

How on earth can you claim this is NOT intolerant? Do you expect everyone round you to be a clone of you?

cvbn you could drive the whole of south america through the gap in between what is indeed clearly posted as my OP and your straw man interpretation of it....but you are right. Anyone actually reading the thread and OP will be highly unlikely to come to your twisted conclusions. So I will determined give no fucks whatsoever what you think about anything let alone people you have never met and have set out to pillory for whatever devious desire it is that motivates you..

I wonder from your description of your childhood whether you were brought up by dominating religious parents, and have therefore wrongly jumped to the conclusion that all religious people are equally dominant.

The reality is that the many billions of us religious people vary hugely, from atheist Jews, who are culturally religious but may be atheist, to evangelical Christians, from those who keep every law to those who keep none, from those who believe everyone who doesn't share their faith is going to hell to those who don't believe such a thing as hell exists.

Don't assume we're all the same!

Morphene - I QUOTED YOUR WORDS.

This is quite priceless. How can quoting your own words be 'a straw man'?

I would find that situation depressing because both sides sound ignorant. But I find it hard to believe that people making those kind of remarks are otherwise sensible in conversations anyway.

My 'devious desire' is to defend myself and other religious people from the patronising guff you post here.

As I said, no idea why you posted on AIBU if what you really wanted was lots of people to agree with you that religious people and atheists should be suspicious of each other.

What a sad world view.

But tell us, OP - why were you 'a little upset and unbalanced' by the discovery that some of your work colleagues were religous?

What precisely bothered you about this? What did you imagine about them that made you feel 'upset and unbalanced'?

Did they try to convert you? Make offensive comments? Or was it, as your OP suggested, just because their views differed from yours and you assumed this would make friendship difficult?

I don't understand, Morphene why you seem to think your words (upset and unbalanced) are being misinterpreted. What other possible meaning could they have given the rest of your op?

"I feel sad and upset because now I know I will have to sensor what I say instead of being able to just relax and let it hang out."
As somebody with extremely minority beliefs (Pagan, Animist and occasional Polytheist) I tend to approach most conversations this way. Apparently my beliefs are equally offensive to both extreme ends of your 'religious spectrum'. I tend to approach the subject with the attitude that "My beliefs have nothing to do with you, and your offense has nothing to do with me" - I'll even say it to your face if I feel like it's needed, but luckily most of the time it isn't needed.

I agree with you that it's fascinating why some people's brains seem to be wired towards faith (it's not belief so much as it is belief without proof) and some people's aren't. Although with all the other ways brains can be wired differently, it's only one variable among many.

It doesn't bother me as long as they are not botherers. I'm somewhere in the middle anyway. Fine with faith, not fine with using it as an excuse to do crap to others.