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.

  • purahna
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      The basis of that isn’t Christianity, it is morality that existed before Christianity which Christianity adopted. Nietzsche referred to it as “slave morality” - the idea is that by redefining the behaviours of subjugated people as virtuous rather than compelled, it gives them power and agency

      • purahna
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        1 year ago

        You might be right, but regardless of the origin, the belief was popularized in the West because of Christianity. Unless you’re suggesting that Nietzsche is merely pointing out an intrinsic feature of all human morality, but I don’t know his work well enough to decide either way on that.

        • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          It’s a bit like saying that Easter is a Christian holiday, when everyone knows it’s a rebranded general fertility-themed holiday. Christianity didn’t really popularise the morality, they just made it about them.