How do you react to disagreement on religious (or other) beliefs?

[Whore of God]

How do you react to disagreement on religious (or other) beliefs when it involves friends or family?

Or just beliefs in general.

Say you have a friend with strikingly differing beliefs than you on controversial topics, and your friend casually mentions his opinion on these topics from time to time.

Do you tell him/her your opinion even if you know it might cause tension in the relationship, or do you change/avoid the subject for the sake of foregoing unnecessary conflict?

[Rolloffle]

Depends who's right.

If you believe every word of this book:


You should tell him you're right. If you don't, you should read the Bible.

[fallinghouse]

Outside of the internet, I just nod and change the subject.

[AngryFemme]

I think it depends on the other person. Some people are genuinely eager to get into civil discussions concerning their beliefs, others not so much. I feel I can pretty well gauge how open a person is regarding such discussion simply by the frequency of them bringing it up.

I'm not usually one to initiate such conversation, but I certainly won't shirk it just to exhibit false PC'ness.

The owner of the company I work for is Catholic. He knows my position regarding the church. We never discussed it at work before, but had a nice (albeit disagreeable) discussion regarding our viewpoints on a plane ride back from a work function. It hasn't strained our professional relationship at all, but perhaps that's just because he was the one who brought it up first. Had I approached him with it, it may have turned out differently.

Overall, I tend to be passive in initiating conversations about it. Once it's been brought up and my opinion solicited on it - I can be fairly aggressive.

Again, it all depends on the person(s) involved. Like fallinghouse said, the internet is where I most actively and unabashedly participate in discussion regarding religion.

[KikoSanchez]

What femme said. I try to avoid it with family members, but my friends like debating when drunk so we can get into it and it won't bother our relationship at all.

[Real.PUA]

Originally Posted by Rolloffle

Depends who's right.

If you believe every word of this book:


You should tell him you're right. If you don't, you should read the Bible.

Word. The best parts of that book are where it condones slavery and gives instructions on how to treat slaves and how slaves should act. Some heathens were like "slavery is wrong" and i was like "nah man it's okay as long as you do it like the bible tells you."

[23]

Originally Posted by Rolloffle

Depends who's right.

If you believe every word of this book:


You should tell him you're right. If you don't, you should read the Bible.

That's the book where the guy told Moses to kill babies and sacrifice animals right?