this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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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.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (12 children)

In a way, I try to live my life so that if some kind of higher power existed, they'd think I am a good person. Not as a gambit to get into heaven or whatever, I don't believe in that. But trying to imagine an objective arbiter of morality makes it easier to take myself out of the equation, which means I'm more likely to treat others as I want to be treated.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I refuse to believe that a being incalculable in power and knowledge, omnipotent, able to see both the past and the future, is somehow, according to what religious people want you to believe, burdened by what we humans experience as emotions or morality.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I think a grand being would definitely possess things like emotions or morality - some mechanisms of wisdom and good judgement. What I've always balked at is the idea that a grand being would have more ego-driven and self-serving human behaviours like jealousy, intolerance of people who are different, revenge, hatred, predudice, etc. Any idea of "God hates [fill in the blank]" has always been laughable to me. I think a grand being would definitely be morally superior to most humans

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