If you had to spend the evening having dinner and chatting with people of a different faith than yours..?

Question

which one would you choose? ....and why?
Also tell me what your spiritual affiliation is.

I'm pagan, I would choose an evening with the Atheists, because we could probably share some wine and laughter!

Answer 1

Someone that's Hindu. It's a religion that I don't know much about and would like to learn. I'm Wiccan.

Answer 2

I'm a pantheist.

I'd probably prefer to have dinner with an atheist or a gnostic. You tend to have more cerebral conversations with these particular groups, if chat rooms are any indication.

For Christians, only the Apologists would I have any interest in having a dinner conversation with - I'd probably feel the strong urge to start tossing eating utensils at the Christians who 1) try and convert you and 2) patronize the heck out of you in doing so, talking down to you as if you were a seven year old child.

Answer 3

I am Christian, and I enjoy meeting with and talking religion with almost anyone. I'm non-denominational Protestant, my friends and family members include other Protestants of many denominations, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists (well one sort-of-Buddhist, mainly she just thinks it "seems like a cool religion"), Wiccans, Deists, Agnostics, and Atheists.

I have a new co-worker who is Hindu, and I am really looking forward to talking religion with him some time. I understand they believe in 300,000 or so gods. I'd like to know how one keeps track of that many gods, what the major ones want or represent, and why they are portrayed so astonishing-looking. I saw a PBS show once about wedding traditions from around the world, and there was a Hindu woman about to be married, praying to their family god who was a cocoanut (no I am not making this up!). I would really love to talk with her and find out, did she mean the cocoanut actually IS the family god, or is it a symbol of the family god, or does it have religious significance as a temple for or gift from the god, or what. It all just seems so different from my own faith that it is completely fascinating. I can't wrap my mind around how one can believe this, and yet I know they are not stupid or foolish or just playing a prank, these are their honest beliefs and they come to them through much thought and consideration just as I do.

BTW, we Christians enjoy sharing wine and good food and laughter as well -- it is not the center of our worlds, but most of us enjoy all of it in moderation, as the Bible specifically permits us to do so. Some pseudo-Christian cults definitely look down on any drink or laughter though, so if your impression has been that Christians cannot laugh or enjoy themselves, you may actually have been dealing with cultists or one of the denominations that is so strict that it is bordering on cultism.

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So a counter-question for you: To me, "Pagan" is a sort of pan-religious term that basically means everything that is NOT "Christian," since that is how the term is used in the Bible and generally in a western historical sense. To me, it is not a specific term. What do you mean specifically by Pagan, what are your beliefs? How did you arrive at them? What do you see in the world that reinforces your beliefs? Inquiring minds want to know!

Answer 4

I'd probably dine with an Atheist, because then we could just agree to disagree. Religions and cults generally fight about stuff, rather than let bygones be bygones. I'm Christian--which is a faith. I don't subscribe to any of the religions underneath Christianity who claim to be Christian because they all make up their own set of rules rather than follow what rules have been laid out for us in the Holy Bible. Other than that, I'd be able to drink without being judged for it by others and just talk about anything.

I often dine with others of different religions and beliefs. We don't generally talk about religion, faith, etc. Usually trivial things and how everyone is fairing and the like.

Answer 5

Well, you wouldn't actually share any wine with me, because I don't like wine.

Now, to your question. I wouldn't mind sharing dinner with someone of a different faith. I actually do, very often. Only we don't talk about religion at the table.

BTW, it's implied in my answer that I'm an unbeliever, right?

Answer 6

I am pagan, i most often share dinner with christians. because a few of them come to my house to play Dungeons and Dragond every weekend,

and i commonly meet with many Native American teachers and spiritualists.

i smoke hookah (Sheesha, or Nargile) with many muslems and talk about just about everything.

if i had to chose a faith that i did not have knowlege of, i would have to go with a Voodoo or Voodun group..simply because the media and books that are avaliable about them are few and far between and they are just about as accurate as anything else that you can find in a new age section at a waldens books.

i think that it would be a great learning experience. and a chance to understand a people that are seldom understood.

Answer 7

I have some very eclectic views on religion -- I don't believe that any one group has all the right answers, so I study different faiths and I choose what feels right to me to believe in. I would choose a varied group of intelligent people from all different faiths so that we could have long discussions on different points of each religion.

Answer 8

I find intelligent conversation with people from any group simulating. The one thing I would rather opt out of, is an evening with most fundamentalists. I find conversations with concrete blocks difficult.

I belong to the great church of I don't know, and to this point neither does anyone else, as far as I can tell.

Go in peace, into the unknown.

Answer 9

Wow, it's hard to choose just one.
It would probably depend on my mood at the time! I think I could learn a lot from Buddhists or Taoists. These are both beautiful and wise religions in my opinion, so I'd go for one of those.
I'm Hindu.

Answer 10

I am a Pagan Witch, and I would love to have dinner with anyone from any religion, so long as they were open minded. I love learning the in's and out's of other paths, and the historic bases behind them all.

Answer 11

Jewish. Because I am very curious about the religion. 'God's chosen people and all that' I just want to know a lot of things that I don't understand. And why so much of the world hate them? Doesn't make sense to me. Israel is smaller than New Jersey for cryin out loud! lol