Girls, myself, and religion apparently can't mix

Originally Posted by Guardian

I don't want to break up with her! I'm sick and tired of this happening to me, all for nothing. These women are all beautiful inside and out, and aside from religion, nothing should have kept us apart. In every case, they all had to choose between me or God and I still don't know why to this day. Why do they have to make this choice!? I'm not Satan in human form, and I'm not evil in the least. In fact, I have a strong set of morals, maybe stronger than some religious people I know. The thing is I would NEVER degrade anyone, much less a mate, because of their religion. Why can't we just not bring up the subject while we're together?

I imagine if you're strictly religious and your partner isn't, at some point in the future you're going to have kids, and it'll be a pretty huge decision on how you're going to be raising them.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Bernard Black

I recall a distant Irish relative of mine who was living in Ireland when things were still pretty damn heated between the Catholics and the Protestants. She was catholic and the man she married protestant (also a side note on the kids; they alternated between sects for each child, so that's one way of solving it). Admittedly they are both branches of Christianity but being so separated at the time, my point is that you can have conflicting religious views and make things work.

I imagine neither of them were very deeply religious if they believed there really wasn't too much of a difference between their two groups. My parents are of different religions (dad's Jewish mom's some sort of Christian one) and neither of them is very much into it, so they didn't feel compromising on their faiths was a huge deal (and pretty much left my brother and myself to be brought up without any sort of religion which I'm pretty fine with).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

Besides. Christians have it built into their religion that they have to peddle their god on the sidewalks, what with the whole evangelism thing. How else would they bulk up in numbers.

Most Christians I know in real life don't go around preaching to others about how they're so great and I'm so terrible because I don't agree with them. Most tend to go by the guidelines of leading by example and showing how faith in God can help lead to a higher quality life.

Edit: And what's naive about greykind's comment? If I believed in an afterlife and all of that jazz, I imagine I'd want the person I felt the deepest connection with in this world to be around with me in the next.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Guardian

Is this why she dumped me? Because IF there is a heaven, she absolutely has to see me there for her to have a happy life on mortal Earth? Sounds more self-convoluted to me than really having anything to do with actually believing in God.

Well, if you felt deep down in your heart that your partner was going to be spending eternity burning in hell because of their beliefs, I imagine it would be hard not to either want to convert them or to break the relationship off due to that giant negative cloud hanging over the relationship for you.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Aren't they exercising their free will by following those rules instead of disobeying them?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well, they know what the rules say, and they know what temptation is. So if they choose to follow the rules, then umm, they're choosing something. I don't see why following a set of rules uses any less free will than doing whatever. If anything, I figure it takes a stronger sense of will in order to follow a certain set of rules strictly than just doing whatever feels right at the moment since you have to exert your will over your impulses.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?