TobyBartels comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

126 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2011 03:17AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1477)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TobyBartels 10 February 2011 07:33:50AM 1 point [-]

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.