Would you date someone whose religion is different than your

guess what, everybody! your religion does not define who you are.
you define who you are. the choices you make, the things you think, and the things you say define who you are, not where you hang out on your rest day or what you believe happens after you die.
the biggest *kitten* ever could be a christian or a jew or a muslim or a buddhist or an atheist. on the other hand, the most good person ever could be a christian or a jew or a muslim or a buddhist or an atheist.
to judge people based solely on their religion is wrong. to say you can't be with somebody based solely on their religion is wrong.
if you believe that when you die, you go to heaven, great! if your significant otter believes that when you die, you are reincarnated, fantastic! as long as you're good people and treat each other right, there's no reason you shouldn't be together. if your significant otter is going to berate you as he or she walks out of the door every saturday on his or her way to temple and you're going to be saying what a horrible person they are for not joining you at the mosque on friday, then, no. it's not going to work out.
if you can go to your place of worship on your day of worship and don't feel that they need to be the exact same as you (which is boring, by the way. why would you want to be in a relationship with yourself? that's called bachelorhood.), then great! you can perfectly coexist as a couple.
when kids come into the equation, why not just educate them in both religions you practice as well as encourage them to look into other faiths? don't worry about what your deity thinks of their faith just yet. a two year old doesn't make a very good follower of a religion, anyway. they just tend to cry and run away. when they get to the point where they have looked into different religions, let them make the choice of what religion they believe. if you have been a good parent to them, they will (with some exceptions) be a good person, no matter what beliefs they hold.
why don't you teach your children not to pull the hair out of the cat or throw sand at people, not that people of every other religion are wrong and need to be converted to your specific religion? priorities, people.
if you have a child who thinks that pulling out hair and throwing sand is acceptable and also that everybody else is wrong, they are not going to have a very good childhood or make many friends.

I saw some posts in the old thread about the bible being fact. I was Baptized Catholic went to Catholic school my whole life and did everything Catholics are suppose to. I started to question certain things and began reading books written by religious scholars that actually give a different viewpoint on how "factual" the bible is. Aside from the issue of simply recording his years teaching there are so many different Christian beliefs early-on that what ended-up getting recorded was so biased and slanted to the biases of individual groups. Some Catholics believed Christ was 100% divine, others simply a man, some both divine and man, some believed he was a 2nd god, and the list goes on.

In-short, the bible is so ravaged with errors due nothing getting written for several years (2 to 3 centuries in most cases) after Christ's death (Chinese telephone anybody?), to half-literate scribes making recording errors in the early centuries, to early Christian leaders having their own bias and personal agendas and changing passages to their own liking, to misinterpretations of Greek manuscripts (e.g. Lord versus God - not the same thing but written similarly in Greek) that there is no way anybody can claim the writing as true fact. There is no way to honestly believe what was is written in the New Testament is truly what Christ said. The errors are indeed FACT and there are books published that discuss this. One of the authors I very surprised to see was Evangelical, so he didn't let his personal beliefs bias his research.

Now, I'm not against religion; I think it's great to find something to believe in and have a philosophy to live one's life by. But to state the Bible as fact and worse yet quote Bible verses as some kind of law is a mistake. And to use this information to discriminate against people of different faith is wrong too. If you find somebody in-life that you click with enjoy that person and embrace the relationship and accept each other's difference in belief; marriage is hard enough without holding one to certain religious expectations too.

The main thing to keep in mind is that the Bible is a library, with books written in different genres, including poetry, epics, sayings, parables, etc. So you can't interpret them all in a literary manner. Some reading between the lines is required. Augustine defined several layers in reading and interpreting the Bible, of which the literal was the lowest. The Bible has been read allegorically since the time of Philo of Alexandria who was a contemporary of Jesus. He was a Neo-Platonist who tried to reconcile the Bible to the best philosophy had to offer. Reading and interpreting the Bible can be done in various ways. Academics study ancient scrolls including those of the dissident Gnostic sects found at Nag Hamadi. Others learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew to deepen their understanding. And then there is the man/woman in the pew who reads it so as to know how it speaks to his/her heart. All those ways are valid.

Jews and Catholics and Orthodox don't think that you can read the Bible on its own, without any reference to how those texts have been read in the past. Jews use Midrash. and Catholics and Orthodox, tradition. Sola Scriptura (scripture alone) came in as an innovation of the Protestant Reformation.

The key thing here is that Christians read the Bible very differently, and with sophistication and learning. So you can't generalize. And you certainly can't say Christians believe in an old man in the sky because they never have.

guess what, everybody! your religion does not define who you are.
you define who you are. the choices you make, the things you think, and the things you say define who you are, not where you hang out on your rest day or what you believe happens after you die.
the biggest *kitten* ever could be a christian or a jew or a muslim or a buddhist or an atheist. on the other hand, the most good person ever could be a christian or a jew or a muslim or a buddhist or an atheist.
to judge people based solely on their religion is wrong. to say you can't be with somebody based solely on their religion is wrong.
if you believe that when you die, you go to heaven, great! if your significant otter believes that when you die, you are reincarnated, fantastic! as long as you're good people and treat each other right, there's no reason you shouldn't be together. if your significant otter is going to berate you as he or she walks out of the door every saturday on his or her way to temple and you're going to be saying what a horrible person they are for not joining you at the mosque on friday, then, no. it's not going to work out.
if you can go to your place of worship on your day of worship and don't feel that they need to be the exact same as you (which is boring, by the way. why would you want to be in a relationship with yourself? that's called bachelorhood.), then great! you can perfectly coexist as a couple.
when kids come into the equation, why not just educate them in both religions you practice as well as encourage them to look into other faiths? don't worry about what your deity thinks of their faith just yet. a two year old doesn't make a very good follower of a religion, anyway. they just tend to cry and run away. when they get to the point where they have looked into different religions, let them make the choice of what religion they believe. if you have been a good parent to them, they will (with some exceptions) be a good person, no matter what beliefs they hold.
why don't you teach your children not to pull the hair out of the cat or throw sand at people, not that people of every other religion are wrong and need to be converted to your specific religion? priorities, people.
if you have a child who thinks that pulling out hair and throwing sand is acceptable and also that everybody else is wrong, they are not going to have a very good childhood or make many friends.

Too bad it's not that simple.

For some people religion is just a cultural thing. Something they're born with but that's it. Or maybe they believe in God and title themselves a certain religion but also mix in their own way of doing things. Perhaps they put their own spin on that religion and make it their own. These people are probably more comfortable mixing with other religions.

But for others their religion is their way of life. They believe everything the religion teaches and try their best to follow all of these guidelines for living, as it were.

Things can get complicated when you have one partner who believes in something as a way of life and another who rejects the very same thing.

1) Catholics cannot use birth control. Now, some Catholics choose to use birth control but this goes against what the religion teaches. So what happens when you put a practicing, non-birth control using Catholic with an atheist, Jewish or Buddhist husband who refuses to NOT use birth control? Conflict. That's what. This isn't an issue that's easy to work out. It's not as simple as just compromising. For the Catholic side of the equation using birth control would be acting against his/her conscience and for the non-Catholic side of the equation not using birth control would seem irresponsible.

2) Jehovah's Witnesses CANNOT accept a blood transfusion. So what happens if the child of a JW and Atheist couple needs a transfusion and one parent wants to accept it but the other is dead set against it? What then? Or what if the JW spouse is injured and needs a blood transfusion but can't give consent so the non-JW spouse signs a form to accept a blood transfusion. For you this might seem an easy answer but the JW spouse will feel betrayed, amongst other things... this could tear the relationship apart. It seems so simple, save the life of the one you love but for some people this belief is so deep and so strong that it's way more complicated then that.

I could give so many more examples but I think I've made the point. For those who see their religion as their way of life, marrying someone of a different faith would just lead to a life of conflict. It's just not the best choice.

Whether it's right or wrong isn't the issue. Knowing who YOU are. Knowing who your mate is. And knowing what your relationship deal breakers are is a big deal.

No one should choose a mate based solely on emotion, attraction or anything else so frivolous.

I would suggest that some religions mix better then others though and as I said earlier it will depend how the person approaches their religion. As has been demonstrated on this long thread there are some mixed religion relationships that work and some that don't.

In the end whether a mixed religion relationship will work depends solely on the people involved. This isn't a black and white, one paint brush fits every single person kind of issue.

Know thyself and the rest will fall into place.

And I know myself enough to know I could not lead a happy life with someone who does not share my faith, simply because my particular religion asks a lot of me and I will not compromise on certain key life decisions and I don't believe it's fair to expect my partner to have to bend to my will all the time.

in response to point 1: just did some quick googling, so please, correct me if i'm wrong. but the searches i did have shown to me that there is no religion that forces you to not use birth control. chances are, if you are in the situation where your significant otter wants to use birth control, he or she does not want a child. this is not a religious thing. i don't want a child. i use birth control. when my mother didn't want a child, she used birth control. my mother was catholic at that point and i am an atheist. the common factor here? no children desired. if your significant otter doesn't want children and you do, that's something you should probably talk about before you start having sex, anyway.

in response to point 1: just did some quick googling, so please, correct me if i'm wrong. but the searches i did have shown to me that there is no religion that forces you to not use birth control. chances are, if you are in the situation where your significant otter wants to use birth control, he or she does not want a child. this is not a religious thing. i don't want a child. i use birth control. when my mother didn't want a child, she used birth control. my mother was catholic at that point and i am an atheist. the common factor here? no children desired. if your significant otter doesn't want children and you do, that's something you should probably talk about before you start having sex, anyway.

It is part of Catholic religious doctrine to not use birth control. I was raised Catholic and do not identify with the demonination any longer, but that was a BIG thing to my mom. They use "natural family planning" which is to sit there and count your ovulation days, blah blah blah. Yet my mom was using this method taught at her Catholic mothering classes when she became pregnant with all three of her children.

When I was a teenager, the doctor suggested I go on birth control to regulate periods and help with cramps - my mother flat out refused. When I finally told her a few years ago that I'm on BC, she literally started crying. She was more upset with the BC part than the having sex part. It's a big deal to Catholics.

sorry, got caught up in the negatives! i did mean no religion forces you TO use birth control.

then the parents need to talk to one another, the child, and all available resources to determine what to do. what they need to decide is religion or their child: which is more important to them? if the jw parent is not willing to allow the child to receive a blood transfusion, then the child will probably die and the marriage will possibly dissolve.
i agree that beliefs are something you need to consider and talk about when deciding to get married or have children, but it's not just religious beliefs. will the children be vegetarian or omnivores? will they be steelers fans or packers fans? harvard or yale? i still hold that emotions and attraction are more important than necessarily religion, but obviously if you can't reconcile your beliefs then you should not be in that relationship. every relationship is give and take with both sides making concessions, even when religion is not a part of it.