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 still act respectful in churches and other “sacred” places, not out of any fear of the Magic Sky Wizard, but simply because other people respect them and it seems like a useful thing to encourage, even if I don’t agree with the underlying reasoning. Having a place which most of society agrees should be a quiet, comforting sanctuary is not the worst thing at all, even if the comfort is derived from extreme wishful thinking.
Also, Christmas. Christmas music is great. A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of the best holiday albums ever, though we always skip “Hark the Herald Angel Sings” 'cause it’s such a tonal shift compared to the rest of the album.
Yeah except that those places are hives of child abuse, homophobia, and science denial.
I don’t care how quiet and serene they are while plotting their next acts of bigotry.
dont forget the ubiquitous misogyny!
This is really great. I too try to give sacred places as much respect as I can, simply because I know that matters a lot to folks and helps keep the peace. Atheists could gain a lot from the concept of sacred ground and regular communing, even if not from the same obligation.
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.
Was chatting with a young (17-ish) atheist guy recently who misremembered this as “isn’t there a bit in the bible where Christian licks a prostitute’s feet?” which truly left me with so many things I wanted to say that I could bareky say anything without laughing so much, but I managed to get out “did you think Jesus was called Christian??”
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 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.
No.
I love this answer.
Atheism is not a religion. We don’t fight or argue with religious people since we don’t care. We don’t bring up atheism with other people as a topic to discuss since we simply don’t care.
I am not sure if this is the right comparison, but we don’t really care if the earthworm feels that it wants to take a shit. Or what it feels for a worm when taking a shit. I simply don’t care. Same about the religions.
I still celebrate Christmas - though in more of a yule way than anything resembling christianity. What I think of as the spirit of christmas is…friends/family getting together in winter and sharing what they have.
And, of course, my circumcision…still got that.
I still use common colloquialisms without paying much mind to them. “thank God, oh my god, Jesus christ” etc. Kinda hard to get rid of those, but it’s no biggie, really.
What I will say, is that while I do identify as an atheist in the sense of not believing in established religions or cults, I do consider that I am able to believe in more than what reality presents. I’ve always said I’m an agnostic atheist, but as of late, I’ve been feeling like it’s rather OK and even necessary to wonder about reality and existence a lot more than what science allows itself to. For example, if you take even a moment to ponder about what physics and the quantum realm means about reality, you’ll feel like something else is definitely going on, like we’re obviously not seeing the full picture and there’s a good chance we never will, and that the picture were missing is unparalleled in its majesty. To just think that we seem to be just a combination of countless fields fluctuating together to form reality, but at the end of the day you could just say we’re the expression of different waves going through different mediums juxtaposed on each other. A combination of planes crashing in on each other in a multidimensional membrane, a universe that could be just one possibility out of a mostly dead multiverse, where even our universe seems to be mostly dead, yet here we stand. It’s hard to wrap your mind around it, or even begin to grasp it all. Definitely makes you feel like there’s more to it than just chance, hell, chance sounds like an implausible explanation for all of this.
I think I mostly take issue with “matter of fact” stances, where people will claim things are a specific way because their faith or textbook says so. No. Just, experience life, question it, question your beliefs, but also question life itself, don’t settle for just “big bang and chance and meaninglessness” as science is just a tool, don’t settle for just “God willed it all and demands these things of us”, we’re not here for that long, let’s ponder on it all while we can, and enjoy the life that were lucky (or unlucky) to be able to experience for one moment in eternity of nothingness, or an eternity of eternities of different existences. Who knows what were doing here, where we go from here, where do we come from? It’s ok to acknowledge that the answer to those questions is “nobody on this earth knows, and maybe we’ll never know”. Let’s cope together, let’s smile together, let’s live and ponder together.
I went to a Methodist boarding school, but I was never religious. I was well read at a young age, and I had a pretty good idea about my belief system.
I still say “Oh my God”
I’d say I’m agnostic, but my parents also didn’t force religion on me, my dad is Catholic, and my mom is Thai Buddhist, and I view the Buddhist ideology to strive for to be satisfied without material as an honorable goal. I feel as if I believe that attaining that mindset really is nirvana, and I don’t think you need to be particularly religious to think that’s possible.
The idea of an after life. I like the idea of seeing pets and people I love again. But do I stricky believe that? No. I look at it as a vague inconsiquential thought that brings comfort. It doesn’t change how I live my life or my atheist beliefs.
Yeah choosing to abstain from eating certain animals for moral reasons (dogs/cats/cows/horses) and not others (pigs/chickens/fish) is definitely weird. Though the majority of people in western society fall into this category, you just moved one more animal across the boundary due to normalization. If you were brought up with pigs, chickens, and fish you’d probably abstain from those too.
The real question to ask though is despite normalization, what’s actually the right thing to do? Is it actually okay that some people eat dogs, cats, and cows? Or is it wrong to do this?
People should put more effort into reconciling this dissonance, because slaughter and oppression is not a matter we should leave up to the normalization of society to decide. Society has countless times normalized immoral things.
This absolutely. Rather than think it strange that you don’t eat cows, you should think it strange that you eat any sentient being at all. If something feels pain and runs away, it’s a strong sign that we should not use and abuse them, especially when our needs can be met without doing so.
Sometimes I listen to Gregorian chants.
About cows - there was a YTer who sucessfully connected atheism to veganism (but then didn’t). I think veganism and atheism have a lot in common structurally.
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Would you mind translating that into laypeople’s language?
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I was just about to take to seriously and then I read your username :'(
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nah buddy, it was a joke. btw, Idk about unhealthy fats, it contains some well needed stuff to you know?
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I am sorry, I though you don’t eat meat. I am sorry, I misread it. my fault. But yeah, you are doing good. I am pretty sure you are missing nothing. Fish especially is very good apprently
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Not really. I try very hard not to let myself fall prey to so-called “cultural religion.” I don’t celebrate any religious holidays like Christmas. I try to be as aware as possible of the religious influences in my daily life and avoid them. It’s not easy, though! Religion has infested so many facets of every culture, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate.
Western culture is (as is every other culture) indeed infused with religion. There are lots of good things that come from it. Are we to throw them away because they are “tainted” by some religious element in their origin or development?
We’ve ended up in a very culturally poor place because in moving away from religion we throw so much out. Babies with bath water, as it were.
We’ve moved to a rationalist mentality without a good understanding of how man is an inherently cultural animal. And culture until recently was very hard to separate from religious aspects.
Note that I am an atheist myself, not brought up religious, and I don’t have answers to how to resolve this awkward place we have gotten to. But I’m quite sure that avoiding cultural elements simply because there is a religious taint is not helpful. Are we to throw away all of Bach’s music?
I would never suggest doing away with Bach’s or any other sacred music or art. They can and should be appreciated in their proper historical context.
I don’t think it’s at all fair to say we have ended up in a “culturally poor” place. People are still producing all kinds of cultural contributions without religion. If anything, it is capitalism that has commodified culture causing some of the decline we see today.
I agree that capitalism is a big part of the decline. And I am not saying we need to embrace religion to embrace culture, or that lack of religion is the cause of a decline in culture. I am saying that all our cultural heritage, tends to have influences from religion, and that this is not a reason to reject it. You don’t have to take the religious elements, just don’t throw out the whole thing because a cultural aspect of a practice or an artifact has elements in its history you find unsavory.
Enjoy the music of Bach and you don’t even need to care about the “proper historical context.” Enjoy Christmas and ignore the Christian elements, if you like, or view then as a quaint part of its rich history (as Christians did the pagan elements). All cultural threads have always changed throughout history as people have adapted them to their current worldviews and needs. Hand-wringing about historical accuracy and taints from aspects of history we don’t like is a modern disease.
As to being in a culturally poor place, the difficulty with that discussion is that the word “culture” covers a lot of ground. We are rich with certain types of culture (yes all the kinds that can be sold to us). We are poor in other kinds, particularly kinds that build community. Capitalism favors the short term, the trend of the day, and that which divides us into manipulatable markets.
I have had some seriously bizarre cases of deja vu. Like, recalling dreams I had years before that exactly predicted a place I would be in in the future. It has happened five or six times. It does make me question things such as consciousness and my place in the universe. It also makes me wonder if my brain is broken.
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