Avoiding Spirits in the Dating WorldPosted on 01/17/2011
I’m not often tactful or gracious in my criticism of a new female acquaintance’s beliefs. When I’m with women I’d like to know better (in the Biblical sense), I drop hints not to bring up the subject of religion, because I lose all but sex-object interest in associating with known idiots.
But I’ve also found that I can respect believers for so many other positive traits, like compassion, forgiveness, kindness, selflessness, generosity, willingness to sincerely listen to people and caring enough about their feelings to fake interest, family values, valuing physical fitness (even if the primary motivator for hitting the gym is to maintain the temple of the soul, evidence that a good result can ensue from an invalid rationale), and ability to self-delude to artificially maintain high self-esteem.
A conversation that skirts spirituality without outright lying when a new dating partner brings up the subject of religion or horoscopes or other nonexistent parallel realities might go something like this:
“I prefer just to listen,” I would tell them, holding back my incredulity and outrage at their assertions, although once a fortune cookie sentiment nailed me: “Your principles mean more to you than money or success.” But that’s just coincidence and the degree of applicability is subjective.
“Why just listen?” a woman would ask.
“I am not very knowledgeable about the Bible, so I can’t discuss biblical tenets.”
“What are your feelings about God?”
“I prefer not to talk about my religious beliefs.”
“Why?”
“My views might appear naive. That’s not the kind of impression I want to leave with you.”
“Go ahead. I need to know if we’re spiritually compatible.”
“I believe there’s more evidence of divinity in a daisy than a cathedral. I also believe that spiritual issues are personal, so please let’s talk about things that aren’t so heavy, okay?”
“Playas” must postpone the inevitable until after they get laid, knowing that when women yell, “Oh, God!” during sex, they’ve just forgotten our name.
When a bedroom romp is out of the question, I push away:
“Your belief system and my knowledge makes us socially incompatible.”
“What’s the difference how we came to our beliefs?” the believer asks.
“Your beliefs took about an hour to set, but my knowledge comes from decades of study.”
“But scientists don’t know all the answers.”
“I accept that. All answers aren’t known, but I don’t start favoring spiritual answers in the absence of scientific answers.”
“So, you don’t respect me because of my religious beliefs?”
“Mostly, yes, but idealistically, I feel that reason may eventually sway everyone, so there is hope for you."
Eventually, if people are sticking around in my life, having gotten there because I couldn’t resist the exoticism and mystery of their behavior, I argue with them about the nature of believing. I shouldn’t need to defend the self-evident, or what’s already examined so much more eloquently and persuasively by more educated authors and thinkers that new-age thinkers don’t have the inclination to study so that they can maintain and nurture their broken belief schemas.
I don’t care if I influence too many other people, though I’ll try to if I foresee future opportunities to benefit from my influence. Mostly, people believe whatever they want, regardless of overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence and logic. I believe in many things that aren’t objects than can be held. I believe in emotions, whose evidence is clear from feelings and, outwardly, from various reactionary expressions which can be read clearly with little misinterpretation.
I’m one of these scientific, prove-it-to-me kind of guys, but some proofs of existence are universally inherent in our subjective personal experiences, though not of the same specific nature of existence for any given person. Conversely, I don’t have to personally experience things to believe that they exist or have existed or don’t exist. Our minds are capable of inference, generalization, logic and associations, in addition to storing experience. They’re also capable of delusion and misinterpretation.