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 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.
Christmas is very pagan.
Not the genital mutilation, though, that’s Jewish. I never understood why Christians do it. Didn’t Jesus fulfill the law and the prophets? Plus there was a spat over adults converting, but not getting circumcized that was settled on the side of “not required”. I may be remembering it wrong.
It’s an American thing. Australians mostly see it as mutilation; It isn’t religion, it is yanks.
Uh oh, my bias is showing again, lol.
The religious reason for Christianity is actually more complex than a Jewish holdover. It stems from the belief that circumcision will disincentivize masturbation, which is considered a sin by the Catholic Church.
Uh, what? Most Catholics aren’t circumcised, that’s an American thing.
Masturbation is the sin from the church. The American thing is to have babies circumcised to prevent masturbation
Very on-brand. I’ll have to look it up.
didn’t the christians get that from a pagan ritual or something? Even muslims are guilty of things like this, I would go on to talk about this if I had someone incharge of my security lol
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I think it’s more that when the church couldn’t stop people from celebrating it, they decided to turn it into a Christian thing instead.
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.
I use biology. Being grateful and kind just has an evolutionary advantage
Approaching kindness or generosity from a biological point of view seems (to me) to lead to The Prisoners’ Dilemma. Everyone is better off if we are all generous, but if I can’t trust others to be generous, I’m better off being selfish.
IMHO, religion is an evolutionary adaptation to “solve” this problem. It might have worked in small communities, but not in our global society.
I’m rambling…
It sounds like you might really enjoy an episode of Radiolab, The Good Show, on this very topic, the evolution of altruism. Indeed, digging into it leads them to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. One of the segments covers a competition organized by a computer scientist around an iterative cooperate/defect game. Entrants tried to come up with an algorithm that would maximize the benefit to the ‘player’ in repeated rounds against the computer. I won’t spoil it by revealing which algorithm won, but I’ll say it’s really fascinating.
It does, but the question is: how can we be grateful and kind in the right way? Being grateful and kind to a robber stealing things from your neighbours house is most likely wrong. Being grateful and kind to a single mother stealing food for her child is most likely right. Trying to see things from an objective point of view is a good way for me to do the right things in the right way.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
- Marcus Aurelius
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.
Why?
I don’t know why your comment was downvoted when I got to it. It’s a perfectly valid question. To claim in incomprehensible being wouldn’t do any given thing is just as objectively baseless as claiming that they would do that thing.
How a being of inordinate power and knowledge even exists would ‘feel’ or ‘think’ is indeed incomprehensible to us. It’s hubris to believe an entity with the power to create a universe could look down, at a single point in time, at a single place in the universe, and think “I’m really angry that creature masturbated” or “That woman showed her face in public, well she’s dead to me now”.
And that’s exactly what religion wants us to believe. That we’re somehow special in the universe, and there’s some grand entity that watches over every single little thing we do throughout the blip of our lives in the eternity of the cosmos. It’s honestly fucking bonkers.
I think the concept of such an entity being incomprehensible is baked into the idea of religion, or at least Christianity, which is the only religion that I have any actual experience with.
How can you be so sure this entity doesn’t look at every individual and each of their actions and make a judgement on them? The concept of omnipotence and omniscience are themselves incomprehensible to us.
The idea that we don’t know God’s motives is part of why people follow blindly, despite the pain and joy of existence
How a being of inordinate power and knowledge even exists would ‘feel’ or ‘think’ is indeed incomprehensible to us.
How do you know?
It’s hubris to believe an entity with the power to create a universe could look down, at a single point in time, at a single place in the universe, and think “I’m really angry that creature masturbated” or “That woman showed her face in public, well she’s dead to me now”.
Sure, but does that mean the same being can’t judge A as better than B? That it can’t for example see one person pushing over old people, and another person helping them back up, and say “the person helping them back up is morally better than the person pushing them over”?
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
I enjoy blaspheming. (God dammit, Jesus fucking Christ, etc)
I try to pry it out of my lexicon but can’t do it, especially when I’m mad which of course is most likely when I blaspheme.
Totally agree! “God” just has that ring to it. I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet
One of my favourites is “Christ on a bike!” because it’s so hilarious.
I use Christ on a cracker. No clue if I heard it somewhere or if it just came out of my mouth one day.
I like “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!”
“Jesus christ on a stick!”
“Jesus H Christ” always made me smirk not sure why. Like Christ was his last name or something.
Now that you say it, I think I do that too.
Christmas because I have good memories of it and I like the idea of a holiday that by and large, brings my extended family together. And I like buying or creating personalized gifts for those close to me and vice versa.
My ex’s family was ethnically but not religiously jewish and they still did hannukah which was interesting and being included in that meant a lot to me.
edit, deleted the post, reply from the inbox or else it will throw an error at ya. I have 191 unread notifs and I don’t want more, so deleted the post
I was going to say nothing, but based on other answers here, it seems Christmas is being held as religious. I personally feel all religious connotations have been thoroughly washed away from xmas over the years, and it’s simply a holiday like any other now. I still love the lights and decorations it brings out, the whole family coming together, and the food.
The way I view religious holidays is, if it provides an excuse for feasting, drinking or fucking, then let’s celebrate. I don’t care that someone else believes that were feasting for Jesus hanging out or Ostara bringing us a bountiful harvest. I’m just here for the food.
As for other religions left overs, I would say that a lot of my core morals were originally taught to me as part of Christianity. While “thou shalt not kill” is pretty universal and is defensible outside the framework of religion, it it’s where I originally was taught that.
And it wasn’t Christian to begin with.
… Keep Yule in Yuletide Keep Saturn in Saturnalia …
They appropriated August 15th too and who knows what else. The trinity reminds me of the Etruscan one. It’s all a copypasta.
Your wrong. It’s literally the Christ Mass, come on now. People don’t put fucking mangers up all over the place for nothing.
Uhm historically speaking its yule… a whole week spent eating, drinking, celebrating and toasting to the departure of last year, and wellcoming the new
I still say “Oh my God”
I still say “bless you”
For someone that became an atheist twenty years ago, I have hypocritically requested that the Big Man damn hundreds of things nearly every day.
We need a good offhanded atheist curse to express frustration.
Other options: Shit!/Aw shit!- These work, but not in many professional spaces.
Jesus! Jesus Christ!- Getting biblical again, though this curse seems to make things fall off of the shelf more slowly, increasing your chance of catching them before they hit the ground.
Fuck me! /Fuck sakes!/ Fucker!- Effective, but nsfw.
Crap!- Works, but you sound like a middle aged soccer mom expressing her frustration.
Jeez/shoot/sheesh!- Go back to middle school, little one.
I NEVER said “oh my god” as a Christian as it was considered taking the lord’s name in vain, so saying it now is my act of freedom and rebellion.
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.
The High Priests of the Egregore! The High Priests of the Egregore!
I recognize that Churches are often community centers and do a lot of good work
I say “bless you” when somebody sneezes.
Same. Just out of courtesy.
In Norway I use either Prosit, or the German word Gesundheit, for that courtesy.
Try “HOLD KJEFT!” instead.
Same, it just feels more polite than ‘fuck you’.
I say God Damn it when I’m mad.
I say “stop sneezing!”
Yes that my local, now long deceased Priest didn’t want my father to be buried at his graveyard, because he committed suicide and that is a sin. Made me a staunch atheist.
Feeling guilty for existing.
*Jesus has entered the chat
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.
100%! Cathedrals and Temples especially are some of the most amazing pieces of architecture. You can’t walk in to a historic European cathedral with the ceiling reaching to the sky and stained glass windows and not feel something.
Both are meditation, vipassanā vs. jhāna, though that encompasses a flurry of potential objects/concepts/qualia of focus.
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.
That sounds roughly like the fifth jhāna, infinite space. I just can’t resist to comment here that our intelligence, mammal intelligence in general, is largely based on repurposed/expanded spatial awareness circuitry. That we use terms like “mind map” is anything but coincidental.
Is that why we are able to visualize? Or at least most of us?
Kinda… yes and no? Visualisations aren’t necessarily spatial, as in representing a map of a space. Random example I get a different erm quality for the qualia for “fish tank” and “interaction of fishes in a tank”, only the latter has that space-like quality the other is a mere image representation of an idea. It cannot have, as a singular object there’s nothing to set it in relation to.
But back to practice: Close your eyes, and consider where you are. You’re probably still “seeing” the room around you in your mind’s eye, and could navigate to, say, the door reasonably accurately (and the inaccuracy is due to lack of practice, blind folks excel at that kind of stuff). Navigation through terrain you’re not directly seeing (whether that be because of closed eyes or a forest obscuring it) is the original function of the circuitry and other uses of it have a similar quality to it.
What is almost certain is that that circuitry is the reason why we have a very hard time visualising anything higher-dimensional than 3d space: It’s just not in its feature set because little warm-blooded critters living alongside dinosaurs had no use for it.
I think there is a lot of beautiful wisdom in the bible that sticks with me, but usually it only comes out when I (way more often that I’d like) hear someone who claims to be Christian acting in a way that is completely antithetical to what is in the bible.
Hundreds of years ago, Christianity inspired some truly incredible music. Bach’s BWV 63 (especially the Gardiner recording) is a miracle.
Contemporary Christian music, though, is probably the falling domino that ultimately led to the realization that my Christianity was just tribalism. Modern American Christian “culture” has no redeeming value, other than its lucrative redemption for fiat currency.
I do love visiting cathedrals, though.
