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.

  •  ulkesh   ( @ulkesh@beehaw.org ) 
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    41 year ago

    Honestly…I actively avoid all things religious, especially dogmatic religion. Of course there are religious influences all over the place and I cannot say with certainty that I don’t get affected by it, but given that the most popular religions currently (Abrahamic) were essentially engineered to control the masses, I consciously try to avoid them and their influences.

    Sadly, where I live, I can’t throw a rock without hitting a church so without moving to an uninhabited island, it’s stuck in my life in one way or another.

    And before someone says something about morals, morality both predates religion and doesn’t require being a human to have any. In other words, one can have morals without ever being exposed to religion.

    I get this goes against the grain here, and doesn’t exactly answer the question, but it’s an honest answer.