I am Ganesh, an Indian atheist and I don't eat beef. It's not like that I have a religious reason to do that, but after all those years seeing cows as peaceful animals and playing and growing up with them in a village, I doubt if I ever will be able to eat beef. I wasn't raised very religious, I didn't go to temple everyday and read Gita every evening unlike most muslims who are somewhat serious about their religion, my family has this watered down religion (which has it's advantages).
But yeah, not eating beef is a moral issue I deal with. I mean, I don't care that I don't eat beef, but the fact that I eat pork and chicken but not beef seems to me to be weird. So, is there any religious practice that you guys follow to this day?
edit: I like religious music, religious temples (Churches, Gurudwara's, Temples & Mosques in Iran), religious paintings and art sometimes. I know for a fact that the only art you could produce is those days was indeed religious and the greatest artists needed to make something religious to be funded, that we will never know what those artists would have produced in the absence of religion, but yeah, religious art is good nonetheless.
I went to Catholic catechism as a child and one of the few things I remember was Jesus washing other people's feet. I like the humility of that and it inspires me to want to do acts of service
Me too, this is one of the main things that stuck with me. Honestly, idk how to think of myself except in relation to my service to community, it has really shaped my entire experience of the world.
We washed a person's feet before doing a special religious service project. Essentially like you said, to humble the self and focus on the act and God. Of course the project was really bad in terms of morality but I do think ritual aspects of religion feel nice. As someone said, people are cultural and engaging in acts and symbolism feels good.
I was a Satanist for a bit. I still use Magick to think about leadership and social manipulation. Its pretty useful for me, and it's also funny as hell to think of a boardroom meeting as a ritual circle around an altar of PowerPoint.
But yeah, not eating beef is a moral issue I deal with. I mean, I don't care that I don't eat beef, but the fact that I eat pork and chicken but not beef seems to me to be weird. So, is there any religious practice that you guys follow to this day?
No more half measures walter
go vegan
https://www.slurrp.com/article/why-india-has-the-worlds-lowest-meat-consumption-per-person-1670058643313
Also, I am not having as much effect on the environment by eating meat. I eat once or max twice every month. Not every day like some americans (soap opera americans)
The american expectation is to have meat with every meal. Bacon/sausage with breakfast, ham sandwich with lunch, then a roast or steaks for dinner.
Americans will literally view a plate of food without meat as a snack. Like, its not a meal unless there is meat. Meat is very inexpensive here because soy and corn are heavily subsidized. All animal products are roughly half the price of what they would be without the subsidies.
go vegan
nah I love meat! Can't live without it. I thought I would eat factory manufactured meat, but that sounds like just a bunch of fucking chemicals bunched into one. I thought they would just grow meat like in the lab, but no. Pretty misleading ads out there.
don't worry, we indians eat the lower meat per capita in the world. I don't eat meat once a week, it's more like, once every month
Fyi the Hexbear code says if you don’t want to have this debate you just need to say “disengage” and the person is supposed to respect your boundary.
I don’t know if people know that or not.
Not the person you were replying to, but thanks for the tip. Is this code collated together somewhere?
I sure can. You do not need to eat animals. If you would like to make the ridiculous, extraordinary claim that you do need to eat animals, please provide evidence.
Okay, so we're patronizing then. So what?
Thanks for the tone policing, but you aren't making anything like a point.
It's incredibly unlikely that they "need" meat. I do know that they need to stop killing sentient beings for their taste pleasure.
you don’t know what they need.
You wouldn't believe me if I said I "need" a monster truck to commute to my desk job. There's a vanishingly small number of people who "need" to eat meat, and certainly not someone who says they need it because "I love it". If they had a genuine necessity they would have led with that.
pretty sure most animals are killed for convenience or profit
Way to almost get it.
pretty much no one does that at all, except pests or by accident
No, I didn't "attempt to refute it" because I don't know what the fuck you're saying.
Are you secretly one of our vegan posters trying to be as insufferable as possible to make anti-vegans look bad? If so you're doing an incredible job
All food is just a bunch of chemicals bunched into one.
I know what you mean though, and while, as far as I know, some manufactured meat is actually just grown in a lab, there's a lot of stuff needed to keep cell cultures alive outside of a body that I wouldn't really want to eat or have around my food, so it'll be something to watch out for when it's widely available.
Still morally and environmentally better though, in most cases.
I wasn't raised very religious.
I do think some of the stuff from the Christian Bible would be great if people followed it.
- pray in private, not where people can see you
- help other people. Like, go read the good Samaritan again. It's not long. That dude goes way the fuck out of his way to help someone he's never met. And some people do some fucking intense mental backflips to justify "no it's a metaphor man you don't have to like actually go near a poor person
- you'll be judged by how you treat the least among you. Yeah, anyone can be nice to their friends, or suck up to wealthy. But how you treat the poor and vulnerable? That's telling.
Part of what makes the religious right in the US so infuriating is they spend so much time being mad about gay people and comparably no time on poverty.
Every mega church should be condemned as heretical and repurposed as housing or something for the needy.
I am religious now, but I always swore I'd never walk into a church after growing up in a very Roman Catholic area for exactly this reason. That was the only Christianity that I knew - hating on LGBTQ people, refusing women bodily autonomy, just general hypocrisy with the whole "love your neighbor" thing. Spent some time as a Zen Buddhist, but then felt the call to go to church, so I did some reading and found the Episcopal Church. Went once, got invited to chat by the priest and took him up on it during the week after my second Sunday. Straight-up told him that I'm a bisexual woman who values my rights to leave an abusive marriage and to choose what goes on with my body. His response blew me away: "I don't have a problem with any of that - and I don't think Jesus does either."
That was back in 2012. They'll get rid of me when they put me I the ground (after a requiem mass, of course). The love and care I've witnessed in this denomination just wasn't possible under the RCC teachings that I always saw as a kid. The more I go along, the more I'm convinced that you can't honestly be on the political right and truly follow the teachings of Jesus.
Sorry if this is a little rambly. It's 3:30 and I'm trying to stay awake while I feed my baby.
I haven't believed in Catholicism for over 10 years and I still believe I deserve to be tortured so badly it's beyond human comprehension for eternity.
Exmormon here, going on 20 years now. Don't miss pretty much anything from it except some of the music. Ignore the Republican-looking motherfuckers here and enjoy this: https://youtu.be/WwYm_mKQ3Gs
The Osmonds were Mormons weren't they, which I guess makes this banger a Mormon choon:
https://youtu.be/iXcj8dFOd1E?feature=shared
Yep! Imagine Dragons is also kind of Mormon, but has very much butt heads with the church on their LGBTQ stance.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/iXcj8dFOd1E?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
As an atheist that was raised as an evangelical Christian, probably using the Lord's name in vain interestingly enough. Like going "thank God/Jesus" when something good happens, "oh God/lord" when shit hits the fan, and using Christ's name as a swear word. I know it's supposed to a sin in the Christian religion, but it's the one thing I still do.
I really like churches, they are a good way to find a strong community. It can be really hard as an adult in a new area to meet people, and a church can basically solve that for you. I'm in a very religious area too where they desperately want me to go to one.
Also I've kind of understood "praying" now. I meditate a lot, and the goal to focus on your inner breath and be one with the present moment. Praying is kind of the opposite, instead of focusing on your inner self, you're focusing on something greater outside of you, like trying to connect your body to the universe. It's like trying to imagine you're part of something greater and it's kind of comforting.
I recognize that Churches are often community centers and do a lot of good work
I went to old school, pre second Vatican council Latin masses. On our knees on other days in dusty, stone walled rooms, heads down, everyone quietly counting rosary beads. Had to wear veil over head to enter church because women's bare heads weren't fit for the eyes of god. Large cathedrals, Latin chanting bouncing echoes off walls. Hunky jesus nailed to cross behind gaudy altar, his loincloth sculpted so teasingly low.
No longer believe in god, but damn, the theatrical pomp was next class, probably influenced work I do as an artist, and why I like bdsm so much.
I was born and raised atheist/agnostic, never set foot in a church before 18 besides weddings. Still am, never doubted it. Maybe I believe in like Spinoza's god or something but definitely no Abrahamic God.
Something I've learned is that among many other things, a certain holy quality to persecution has definitely permeated the western consciousness and it 100% has me second guessing myself often. The christliness of being persecuted, made a martyr, and suffering for your cause carries a moral quality that I have absolutely not freed myself from, even though there's nothing automatically morally good or bad in suffering and being made a victim for fighting for a cause.
There are plenty of virtues that are generally seen as good outside of religious sentiment associated with suffering for a cause. Tenacity is usually an appealing quality.
What an interesting question!
I was raised Protestant by an exmo and a lapsed catholic. I still like some of the music, and I think a lot of Christian mythology is really interesting. Jesus occupies a “cool dude” role in my belief system, but he’s not the main focus.
I was a pretty devout practicing pagan for a while after leaving Christianity.
Now I just kinda do my own thing, loosely cribbed from the parts of Christianity that I like and some chaos magic stuff and some kemeticism and whatever else seems cool. I kinda focus on nonduality and go from there.
I really enjoy the idea of ritualistic worship, but that attraction feels like the kind of chemical attraction in my brain that would have taken place whether I was raised in a church or not.
I'd say monogamy, but that isn't strictly religious. Sex outside of relationships ig (ik it's not marriage but still).
That's interesting because I only became a vegan long after I became an atheist and I think if it happened the other way around there wouldn't have been such a delay seeing as so many Catholic religious feasts in my culture have an entire roasted animal as a centerpiece. That would have definitely forced me to confront my religion. It's weird too because we are taught that we are stewards of animals and to take advantage of them in such ways seems contradictory to the faith.
Something that has stuck with me though is religious music, especially the stuff with darker vibes. Music targeted at a religious demographic with religious messaging like Christian rock is not what I'm taking about, just the classics that we used to sing in church and choir. I also enjoy religious precessions, I don't see them as cultish rituals as I think a lot of atheists do. There is something meditative about processes like the giving and receiving of communion.
