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.
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.
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
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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.
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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 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.
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 recognize that Churches are often community centers and do a lot of good work
Feeling guilty for existing.
*Jesus has entered the chat
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
Now that you say it, I think I do that too.
I say “bless you” when somebody sneezes.
Same, it just feels more polite than ‘fuck you’.
Same. Just out of courtesy.
In Norway I use either Prosit, or the German word Gesundheit, for that courtesy.
Try “HOLD KJEFT!” instead.
I say “stop sneezing!”
I say God Damn it when I’m mad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I celebrate Christmas for my children so they don’t miss out. Does that count? I’m also very routine. I do the same thing the same way, every day. That might tie in to rituals? Hell if I know.
Rituals don’t have to be religious or related to religion. Daily regular, repeating activities are rituals - even without any link to a religion.
Does your Christmas have a direct relation to Christianity? It can be celebrated as a social and societal construct, possibly with imagery and rituals, with or without actual intention and relation to the religion.
Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced Christmas as a celebration of god and Christ in the direct and factual sense. Thinking back, we had the stories of birth and my mother even tried some singing with us. I don’t think I’ve ever taken the stories for fact though. It’s a setting, a story, a celebratory setup. (But I wonder if that may be back-looking reinterpretation with a changed mindset. It certainly wasn’t something that stuck over time and after early childhood.)
That’s pretty much why these traditions are there, just like people don’t actually believe in Santa similarly you don’t have to believe in Jesus to enjoy a winter holiday/break and excuse to see friends and family
Christmas was a Roman holiday called Saturnalia before the Christians reappropriated it.
I don’t place any relious meaning on Christmas, but I celebrate it because humans have been celebrating roughly the same event at roughly the same time every year for over 2000 years.
Christmas for sure because it’s fun and there’s good food and smells and all kinds of stuff. Beyond that, no not really.
I slowly begin to rename it to winter solstice. Also makes it easier to incorporate the red clothed dude and stuff. Despite he doesn’t make sense in any constellation, but the kids live it the weird way it is.
Christmas isn’t in the winter solstice though…
It’s pretty close (Usually Dec 20 or 21), and some versions of the holidays that were merged together to form today’s Christmas were indeed celebrated on the solstice.
It is close (pretty sure it’s 22nd), but I’m not sure there’s evidence that co-opting a pagan festival is what happened. It is a common assertion though.
I don’t need evidence, out just moves the the Christmas in the way we celebrate it and that hasn’t much left of the Christian Christmas away from the Christianity, but towards something I really appreciate: days getting longer again.
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
For me it’s funeral potatoes, or half the desert dishes from various potlucks that would happen in the chapel gym.
Jokes on them though, all those recipes are posted online now! Don’t need a temple recommend for that shit lol.
For a moment I was worried that “funeral potatoes” was some euphemism for something there that I couldn’t identify
You may be thinking of soaking.
Only true friends will jump-hump for you.
What’s that?
Just seeing urban dictionary in the link makes me worry
Edit: Welp, I actually recognize this. And now this will stay in my mind in a funeral-potatoes-context
Yeah, even though I went on a mission and have tons of family from Utah/AZ/Nevada/Cali, I’m on the East Coast so a lot of LDS culture like that didn’t sink in. I would honestly probably participate in ex-mo stuff more if I had to deal with it on a daily basis, but I’m fine mostly pretending it doesn’t exist!
Oh, hie, Kolob!
KLOLob!
The Osmonds were Mormons weren’t they, which I guess makes this banger a Mormon choon:
Yep! Imagine Dragons is also kind of Mormon, but has very much butt heads with the church on their LGBTQ stance.
