In-person groups too, not just talking about online advocacy?
In that case, I wonder if it might not be worth it to date in the wider pool, with the aim of finding a woman who is open to deconverting. Generally it’s a bad idea to enter a relationship hoping to change the other person, but religion has long been a sort of special case: a lot of LTRs do involve one party or the other converting or at least modifying their religious views.
Otherwise, the numbers on this are just really daunting for atheist men.
I have a dear friend who loves rationality, reads Methods rabidly, quotes ‘That which can be destroyed...’ at the top of her FB profile… and still identifies as Christian. She’s young and has had the kind of sheltered upbringing that makes it possible to actually believe your religion without lots of doublethink.
I expect to have her deconverted within a year or two—I’d have managed by now if we weren’t half a state apart.
In that case, I wonder if it might not be worth it to date in the wider pool, with the aim of finding a woman who is open to deconverting. Generally it’s a bad idea to enter a relationship hoping to change the other person, but religion has long been a sort of special case: a lot of LTRs do involve one party or the other converting or at least modifying their religious views.
This strikes me as a very high risk strategy, and probably a low reward one as well. Deconversion tends to take a long time, and even gentle attempts could strain a new relationship. Going by my own experience observing religious deconversions, it’s likely to take months at the lower end, which you could have spent looking for someone else, and there’s a high probability that it simply wouldn’t work out, in which case your time investment is wasted.
The numbers for atheist men aren’t very good, it’s true, but keep in mind that a rationally minded intellectual is filtering rather strongly for atheists simply by looking for partners they’re compatible with.
I recently began dating an old friend with conservative Christian religious beliefs. Obviously, I don’t have the rationalists-only filter that DA has, and I don’t want to deconvert her. (Her personal relationship with Jesus—that is, the mental feelings that she’s constructed around the idea of Christ—are important to her, and I don’t want to destroy that.) Nevertheless, here’s what’s happened:
In conversation with me, she quickly clarified some nagging doubts about the inclusiveness (and other characteristics) of her old, conservative church. She’s started attending a Congregationalist church instead. (For those unfamiliar with Christian denominations in North America, this is as liberal as you can get and still be explicitly Christian). For a while, she even considered attending the Unitarian Universalist church, since I would be willing to join it with her, but in the end she decided that it didn’t fit.
When we started, I expected the relationship to founder on religious differences, but I agreed to give it a shot anyway. And I seem to have affected her religion instead. I’m not sure what this proves, even when restricted to the one example, but it’s been a surprising few months for me.
In my view the ideology matters surprisingly little. Do not make the mistake of choosing your partner for having the right convictions.
Emphasis added to point out the non sequitur.
Also, my “atheist qualifier” is intended to prevent me from choosing a partner with the wrong convictions, not to encourage me to choose one simply for having the right convictions.
If that’s not something you care about in a relationship, by all means don’t concern yourself with it. But if you feel like you have to decide not to care about your partner’s convictions, then it’s a significant issue, and one that’s likely to surface in the future however you try to suppress it.
I meet many people were their religion has little or no practical influence on their daily lives. If you limit your partner search to the LW/similar cluster you might find it problematic to get a suitable partner. And even then ideological similarities are no guarantee for a happy relationship.
Might be interesting to poll what people look for.
Of course ideological similarities aren’t a guarantee of a happy relationship; for me and for many others, they’re necessary, but I know of nobody for whom they’re sufficient.
Dating a person with religious beliefs which do not have a practical influence on their lives, I have tremendous difficulty respecting them. This is not a hypothetical matter, it’s a mistake I’ve learned to avoid. I know people for whom it does not seem to be an issue, but anyone for whom it is is better off taking it seriously than following advice to exercise tolerance.
That sounds like a fair idea for discussion post. I’ll make one later today, unless you feel like doing it first.
In that case, I wonder if it might not be worth it to date in the wider pool, with the aim of finding a woman who is open to deconverting. Generally it’s a bad idea to enter a relationship hoping to change the other person, but religion has long been a sort of special case: a lot of LTRs do involve one party or the other converting or at least modifying their religious views.
That sounds like an exhausting process without a way to judge openness to atheism quickly. It seems like converting from one religion to another would be less jarring than dropping religion altogether, so I’m not sure how much better the numbers would actually become. Also, that sort of pressure seems like it could make the initial uphill climb of a relationship (getting to know the other person) into cliff-scaling.
That sounds like an exhausting process without a way to judge openness to atheism quickly.
I think you could suss it out on the first date. You might have to use some trial-and-error—and conversations with other atheist men—in order to come up with the perfect line that raises the question without coming off as overly aggressive, but you can get a pretty good picture of how committed a woman is to her religion just by asking her.
The general advice to people with specific requirements (I admit I’m getting this from Dan Savage’s advice to people with particular sexual fetishes) is to disclose early, but to present it as a bonus rather than an onerous hurdle that must be overcome by potential prospects. So instead of “Just so you know, I have a foot fetish, so being with me means you’re gonna have to be into that” the foot guy would say something like “Your shoes are super hot. I kind of have a thing for feet. Do you like footrubs?”
Following that formula, I think the thing to avoid would be lines like “Just so you know, I don’t date religious wackos.” Maybe something like “I’m an atheist, so I’m always looking for ways to celebrate earthly life on Sunday mornings. Do you like strawberries and mimosas?” That’s just a stab at a formulation that could start the conversation without killing any romantic momentum you’ve got going at that point.
At the least, that advice presents a reasonably positive strategy, which is appreciated. My attempts to be realistic about this issue are certainly prone to drifting into the sort of pessimism that comes from spending my entire undergraduate career single.
Your situation is harder than the norm, it’s true, but it’s not impossible. There are atheist women out there, and you’ll meet them if you’re diligent about being social. It may just take you a little longer. I wish you luck!
But then you don’t actually have to really make real plans for Sunday mornings… just ask if they’re available then and see what they say when turning you down. “Sorry, I’d prefer the afternoon” is different to “Well, if you’d like you can come along to my church group” :)
Not necessarily. There are a fair number of Christians who strongly self-identify as Christian but don’t go to church that regularly (in the US at least there are some very weird patterns. People claim in surveys to be going to church much more frequently than church attendance rates suggest.) This also won’t rule out other common religious groups, such as semi-religious Jews.
In-person groups too, not just talking about online advocacy?
In that case, I wonder if it might not be worth it to date in the wider pool, with the aim of finding a woman who is open to deconverting. Generally it’s a bad idea to enter a relationship hoping to change the other person, but religion has long been a sort of special case: a lot of LTRs do involve one party or the other converting or at least modifying their religious views.
Otherwise, the numbers on this are just really daunting for atheist men.
I have a dear friend who loves rationality, reads Methods rabidly, quotes ‘That which can be destroyed...’ at the top of her FB profile… and still identifies as Christian. She’s young and has had the kind of sheltered upbringing that makes it possible to actually believe your religion without lots of doublethink.
I expect to have her deconverted within a year or two—I’d have managed by now if we weren’t half a state apart.
I would be interested to know how she responded to, for example, Chapter 39 “Pretending to be Wise, Pt 1”.
I wonder if sending her to this site would help at all?
I suppose I could if I were in a hurry—honestly rather do the job myself in this case.
That seems a little selfish to me.
This strikes me as a very high risk strategy, and probably a low reward one as well. Deconversion tends to take a long time, and even gentle attempts could strain a new relationship. Going by my own experience observing religious deconversions, it’s likely to take months at the lower end, which you could have spent looking for someone else, and there’s a high probability that it simply wouldn’t work out, in which case your time investment is wasted.
The numbers for atheist men aren’t very good, it’s true, but keep in mind that a rationally minded intellectual is filtering rather strongly for atheists simply by looking for partners they’re compatible with.
I recently began dating an old friend with conservative Christian religious beliefs. Obviously, I don’t have the rationalists-only filter that DA has, and I don’t want to deconvert her. (Her personal relationship with Jesus—that is, the mental feelings that she’s constructed around the idea of Christ—are important to her, and I don’t want to destroy that.) Nevertheless, here’s what’s happened:
In conversation with me, she quickly clarified some nagging doubts about the inclusiveness (and other characteristics) of her old, conservative church. She’s started attending a Congregationalist church instead. (For those unfamiliar with Christian denominations in North America, this is as liberal as you can get and still be explicitly Christian). For a while, she even considered attending the Unitarian Universalist church, since I would be willing to join it with her, but in the end she decided that it didn’t fit.
When we started, I expected the relationship to founder on religious differences, but I agreed to give it a shot anyway. And I seem to have affected her religion instead. I’m not sure what this proves, even when restricted to the one example, but it’s been a surprising few months for me.
In my view the ideology matters surprisingly little. Do not make the mistake of choosing your partner for having the right convictions.
Emphasis added to point out the non sequitur.
Also, my “atheist qualifier” is intended to prevent me from choosing a partner with the wrong convictions, not to encourage me to choose one simply for having the right convictions.
If that’s not something you care about in a relationship, by all means don’t concern yourself with it. But if you feel like you have to decide not to care about your partner’s convictions, then it’s a significant issue, and one that’s likely to surface in the future however you try to suppress it.
I meet many people were their religion has little or no practical influence on their daily lives. If you limit your partner search to the LW/similar cluster you might find it problematic to get a suitable partner. And even then ideological similarities are no guarantee for a happy relationship.
Might be interesting to poll what people look for.
Of course ideological similarities aren’t a guarantee of a happy relationship; for me and for many others, they’re necessary, but I know of nobody for whom they’re sufficient.
Dating a person with religious beliefs which do not have a practical influence on their lives, I have tremendous difficulty respecting them. This is not a hypothetical matter, it’s a mistake I’ve learned to avoid. I know people for whom it does not seem to be an issue, but anyone for whom it is is better off taking it seriously than following advice to exercise tolerance.
That sounds like a fair idea for discussion post. I’ll make one later today, unless you feel like doing it first.
Poll made. It’s been downvoted to −1, but hopefully the topic will not turn out to be that unwelcome on net.
That sounds like an exhausting process without a way to judge openness to atheism quickly. It seems like converting from one religion to another would be less jarring than dropping religion altogether, so I’m not sure how much better the numbers would actually become. Also, that sort of pressure seems like it could make the initial uphill climb of a relationship (getting to know the other person) into cliff-scaling.
I think you could suss it out on the first date. You might have to use some trial-and-error—and conversations with other atheist men—in order to come up with the perfect line that raises the question without coming off as overly aggressive, but you can get a pretty good picture of how committed a woman is to her religion just by asking her.
The general advice to people with specific requirements (I admit I’m getting this from Dan Savage’s advice to people with particular sexual fetishes) is to disclose early, but to present it as a bonus rather than an onerous hurdle that must be overcome by potential prospects. So instead of “Just so you know, I have a foot fetish, so being with me means you’re gonna have to be into that” the foot guy would say something like “Your shoes are super hot. I kind of have a thing for feet. Do you like footrubs?”
Following that formula, I think the thing to avoid would be lines like “Just so you know, I don’t date religious wackos.” Maybe something like “I’m an atheist, so I’m always looking for ways to celebrate earthly life on Sunday mornings. Do you like strawberries and mimosas?” That’s just a stab at a formulation that could start the conversation without killing any romantic momentum you’ve got going at that point.
At the least, that advice presents a reasonably positive strategy, which is appreciated. My attempts to be realistic about this issue are certainly prone to drifting into the sort of pessimism that comes from spending my entire undergraduate career single.
Your situation is harder than the norm, it’s true, but it’s not impossible. There are atheist women out there, and you’ll meet them if you’re diligent about being social. It may just take you a little longer. I wish you luck!
Actually just the simple act of trying to book dates on a Sunday morning could give you a quick decision of Christian-or-not.
Or awake-in-the-morning or not.
True :)
But then you don’t actually have to really make real plans for Sunday mornings… just ask if they’re available then and see what they say when turning you down. “Sorry, I’d prefer the afternoon” is different to “Well, if you’d like you can come along to my church group” :)
Not necessarily. There are a fair number of Christians who strongly self-identify as Christian but don’t go to church that regularly (in the US at least there are some very weird patterns. People claim in surveys to be going to church much more frequently than church attendance rates suggest.) This also won’t rule out other common religious groups, such as semi-religious Jews.
Oh certainly—it’s not universal, but more of a first-level filter.