Thank god I didn't marry a religious nut bag.

[boston bean]

What a bunch of dreadful peeps. Anti vaccine. Anti anything that makes life better for people.

Never mind fucking oppressive.

If I did by some total fluke we wouldn’t be married today.

[LakeArenal]

1. Now one of the street corner saviors has been downloading child porn.

WWJD?

[walkingman]

2. Same here - I could not stomach it on a daily basis.

[frogmarch]

3. There's not a functioning brain cell

among them.

[Solly Mack]

4. I married a fellow atheist.

I dated people who did the weekly worship thing but never a religious wackadoodle. Scary people.

[boston bean]

5. My husband and I are agnostic with a healthy dose of skepticism.

[Solly Mack]

6. I went to HS with a guy who wanted to be a preacher. Preacher, not minister, he said.

Hellfire and brimstone all the way. Barefoot and pregnant women, death to LGBTQ - the whole nine yards.

He was constantly "preaching" to students in class.

We laughed but I always got the feeling he would make the news one day for something bad.

He did and it was - multiple rapes.

[boston bean]

11. Ugh ugh ugh. But I don't doubt it.

[demigoddess]

12. religion is basically misogyny. So are rapes.

[Solly Mack]

13. He was caught a few years back. Seems it had been going on for years. Was told about it by a friend

who still lives in the area. He did become a preacher, of sorts, and he preyed on his flock.

I wasn't surprised considering all the things he claimed to believe way back in the day.

Sickened, just not surprised.

[paleotn]

17. Never fails.

[LizBeth]

7. Worse would be marrying a regular ole conservative to have him decades later, buy into today

Republican. I can't even imagine.

[Collimator]

8. I Was Married To A Deeply Religious Man.

And my change in belief was the primary driver of our divorce--Not the fact that he, himself, was/is religious.

Living in that close relationship with him, I never had cause to doubt his basic decency, though I did, on occasion, note a few instances of hypocrisy. But then again, the same could be said for me.

We have not been in regular touch since our divorce, but I have seen one or two Twitter posts that indicate that he hasn't changed his own beliefs. I remember one tweet in which he wrote something like, "Say what you will about Trump, but he gets things done." It was clear to me that his basic decency prevented him from expressing a ringing endorsement of Trump, even though he had sipped enough of the Kool-aid to actually believe Trump was an effective leader.

Whatever it was that led him to the belief system in the first place is still working in his psyche to keep him there. But I will never be able to think of him as a "nutbag". I have heard him talk about the "remarkable consistency between all the books of the Bible"--when an in-depth scholarly examination or even a close, emotionally detached read of its contents would indicate otherwise.

Another point he often made is that the life lived here on earth is essentially insignificant. Eternity in the afterlife is all that really matters. That's the reason that I was the one who had to initiate the divorce. We were not at all happy together towards the end. But he would have been perfectly happy to be perfectly miserable for the rest of his life, because nothing in this world compares to eternity with Jesus.

The man identifies as a Christian first and lists his political affiliation as Republican. But I don't think that he really worships Republican Jesus. I also think that he may be more unhappy now than he was doing the tail end of our marriage. The extremist thinking that is altering the DNA of the evangelical community to which he feels some connection is causing it to blatantly disregard some of the more admirable tenets of Christianity. Anyone with an essentially decent core will be shifting in discomfort right now.

Most folks have heard the parable (not Biblical) about the frog in the pot of water on the stove. In my Campus Life Youth For Christ days, we were told the story of the frog who doesn't sense the increasing heat until he is too late to escape being boiled alive, and we were told that the unbelievers of the world were that frog.

Today, the frog is actually a large cross-section of religious Americans. The water of hatred is heating up and those specific positive aspects of their faith are being evaporated into the air. It is possible that there will be an Armageddon of their own making. I know that Jesus isn't coming back on a charging horse to save anybody. If the human race survives its own stupidity, Christianity may go the way of the Olympian Gods. I'm just hoping that it doesn't take down America with it.

[ret5hd]

15. I 100 percent don't believe he truly believes...

In all likelihood I have never met him. So, ret5hd, how can you be so sure about a persons beliefs, yet you have never met this person???

Well, somewhere in those red-letter parts of the Bible, jesus himself told everyone how to get to heaven.

You relay to us that getting into heaven is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to him. Many thousands profess to believe the same thing. Yet, essentially NONE of them do what jesus himself told them to do to insure such an outcome to their eternal salvation:

Sell everything you have, give all your money to the poor, and travel the earth preaching the word.

Now, thank god (I know, I know) I don’t believe all that stuff, but if I REALLY TRULY HONESTLY believed that would GUARANTEE my place in eternal paradise...well, my eBay page would sure have some good deals for ya’.

[Collimator]

21. Simple Answer:

(If you're talking about my ex) He's human. And his reading of the Bible is that he just needed to accept Jesus's Blood Price for his sins, yadda, blah, etc, and his name is written in God's "Nice List" so he's going to heaven.

He also lives his life by most traditional moral codes, prays and reads the Bible, attends services every Sunday and tithes the Biblically mandated ten per cent.

Jesus said a lot of stuff. There are also red-letter parts about hating your parents as well as core Ten Commandment stuff about honoring your parents. People have been balancing the ideals of that First Century Church against the realities of life here on earth for a long time.

I accept your own cynicism about religion, but there are sincere believers. Some of them are lovely people, and some of them are sincere in their hatred, unfortunately. And there are also calculating frauds who are raking in the money.

In my day I have met good people of sincere faith and good people of no faith. I have also encountered an atheist who is a pathological liar. (Someone else's revelation, not mine, but I was warned before I lost too much money to that situation.)

If I can't convince you that my ex really believes in his interpretation of Bible-based faith so be it. I probably never convinced anyone to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior either. I guess that I am just not that persuasive a person. But I sure did torture myself pretty effectively for quite a few years. And, boy, did I miss out on a lot of sex!

[shrike3]

27. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. I know many believers who are lovely people.

And have met more than a few jerks. I have also met more than a few atheists who were jerks.

I am glad you got yourself into a better situation.

[Collimator]

30. It Certainly Wasn't All Bad. . .

. . .If you are referring to my marriage. And I do still hold many of the former associates from my believing past in high regard. Though honestly, it would break my heart, (but not necessarily surprise me), to hear that some of them slipped into the Trumpist cult.

As for any negative experiences with atheists, there seems to be the usual ratio of decent folk to jerks. I've encountered similar ratios here at DU. And, a couple of times I may have even been a jerk, but I do at least try to face that tendency and correct for it.

The brief friendship with the pathological liar ended up costing me $50 in cab fare. It could have been a lot worse. I was in a very vulnerable state of mind then and was susceptible to the offers of friendship and practical assistance that she extended to me. If I had had any money at the time, she might have conned me out of it.

But, hey, who needs predatory religionists or atheists to take your money when family can always be counted on to sniff out vulnerability? One of the reasons that I was so broke at the time is that my brother and his GF had a couple of crises and borrowed over $5000 with promises to pay it back. The word, "borrowed" should be in quotes in that earlier sentence.

[shrike3]

31. Sounds like you ended up in a good place. Good for you.

Yes, I was referring to your marriage. btw, one of the strangest phenomena I've seen in local progressive circles are atheists who get into heated arguments with each other. I'm a believer, but they get along fine with me. They just don't get along with each other. But all of them are from fundie backgrounds. I wonder if the black and white thinking is genetic or a hold-over from the culture. It is entertaining, in a way. It's like watching monks argue over how many angels can dance on a pin.

Let me just say I get where you're coming from re family.

[MoonRiver]

9. Agree! I am fortunately married to a solid lib!

[JI7]

10. I find most of them tend to be shitty perverted men and miserable women

that are married to them . They want others to be as miserable as they are.

[shrike3]

26. I know some very joyful Christians. There's a strong current of joy in the black church.

[JI7]

28. I'm not talking about Christians or even religious people in general

I'm talking about the right wing moralizing idiots like the Duggars .

[shrike3]

29. Fair enough. The Duggars certainly are indefensible.

[AdrianTheIndependent]

14. Dreadful indeed

The other day heard one of them say we should all go back to how it was in 1674

[Celerity]

16. Yet there are multiple posters on here implying WE are being intolerant bigots by not giving

them the benefit of of the doubt over their deeply held 'religious' and cultural beliefs that lead them to refuse to vax, mask, etc.

[DanieRains]

18. I Am Not A Christian

I am a follower of Christian.

The opposite.

[Imallin4Joe]

19. Wise. You'll never regret it. recced nt

[lambchopp59]

20. I'm so sorry to burst the fantasy bubble of the sky spook subservient

It must be hard to let go of Ghod images along with Santy Claws and the Easter Bunny.
Worse yet to utilize fearmongering constructs to whip the easily duped into doing really stupid shit.
Jeebus is coming and he's going to be HUNGRY!!!

[shanti]

22. I made that mistake once

and never did it again.

[BigmanPigman]

23. That is on my own check list...

If the potential love interest was either a GQP, religious or didn't like dogs they were automatically off my list.

[Evolve Dammit]

24. My siblings are/ were unreachable. Jesus and God directed/discussed with them. One is dead, will

never know of what cause (God's will stuff; medical reality is not discussed). The other is so bizarre, there is no possible relationship. As destructive to the family as the current wedge of political radicalization. The GOP is truly insane at this point. And the evangelical base comprises a large part of that.

[shrike3]

25. I'm religious, and married to a non-religious man. It has never been a problem.

All it takes is mutual respect.

I used to follow a blog by an atheist married to a devout Catholic. When she died, tragically, he worked with her pastor to devise the kind of funeral liturgy she would have wanted. He didn't believe a word of it, but thought it the best way to honor her. What a mensch.