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 went to Catholic catechism as a child and one of the few things I remember was Jesus washing other people’s feet. I like the humility of that and it inspires me to want to do acts of service
Was chatting with a young (17-ish) atheist guy recently who misremembered this as “isn’t there a bit in the bible where Christian licks a prostitute’s feet?” which truly left me with so many things I wanted to say that I could bareky say anything without laughing so much, but I managed to get out “did you think Jesus was called Christian??”
Similar upbringing in Catholic school. Acts of humility like a poor person giving what little they have holds more weight than a king giving their weight in gold, the golden rule, and showing general compassion has stuck with me decades later. Education was pretty good too. None of that dinosaurs lived 6000 years ago or whatever crap. I attribute the education to giving me the critical thinking skills to not fall for the indoctrination. I could tell the poor giving message was a lead in for tithing. Taking a message of helping someone in real need no matter your status to support this church that was the best looking building in town didn’t pass the logic test.
Me too, this is one of the main things that stuck with me. Honestly, idk how to think of myself except in relation to my service to community, it has really shaped my entire experience of the world.
I was raised without religion, but read religious texts. I have always wanted to touch my closest peoples feet or wash them. It seems so humble and real.
We washed a person’s feet before doing a special religious service project. Essentially like you said, to humble the self and focus on the act and God. Of course the project was really bad in terms of morality but I do think ritual aspects of religion feel nice. As someone said, people are cultural and engaging in acts and symbolism feels good.
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
deleted by creator
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.
I think it’s really more of a sociology thing. Like, it’s pretty well accepted that our natural inclination towards fairness is not from a biological drive, but because we would want to be treated that way. The best way of ensuring that is creating a society where that is the norm. Mankind decided that killing others is wrong because we don’t want to get killed ourselves. If we think stealing from others is fine, we have no redress if someone steals from us.
When I was young, I noticed that the some of the Hammurabic Codes shared a lot in common with Christian teachings. I brought this up to my dad and he said “Yeah, where do you think Hammurabi got the idea?” Now, obviously, he’s got his timeline confused, and even as a small child I could do that math and knew the royal edicts pre-dated the 10 commandments and are of a completely non-religious nature. Groups living together need fairness to prosper.
Evolution, however, tends to lean more towards the strongest surviving. Evolutionarily, we need our genes passed on. Sure, we might manage to procreate before we die, but then we’re not around to protect that lineage. Lions are a good example of that problem. If a rival male takes over your pride after killing you, they will also kill all the cubs. Presumably so only their genes are the ones moving on. That is the evolutionary drive. Wolves, however, are much more social creatures. They function as a group that doesn’t necessarily need to be related and they make decisions similar to how we would expect our own group behaviors. If one of the pack is hurt, they don’t leave it behind to die, they protect it and even leave them behind with the pups to heal when they go out on hunts. But this only extends to their pack. Anything outside the pack does not get that consideration. It’s only in groups where being grateful and kind is an advantage.
Sociology is still a science though! A very good reason to follow those precepts.
Oh man, and that other poster thought they were rambling… I get real wordy when the Adderall kicks in first thing in the morning.
I don’t agree completely. Using lions as a comparison doesn’t really work imo since their behavioural patterns differ greatly from ours.
Gratitude always served as the foundation of our communities. It’s what motivates us to look out and care for one another and work as a group. Humans are herd animals so it has an evolutionary advantage to be kind to people. Being excluded from a community (which is the most common response to dicks) usually meant dying.
For people who didn’t suffer that fate, it kind of went something like this: Your parents and other community members take care of you as a child (instinctively). You notice that and feel gratitude, motivating you to return the favor by doing something for other members of your community. They feel grateful as a response and also want to return the favor. Ideally, this loop continues.
It used to work way better, the Neolithic Revolution really fucked things up but it still works.
You make a lot of assumptions there though, don’t you? You’re assuming that you would be motivated to “return the favor,” but where does that motivation come from? Humans reciprocal acts are learned traits. There’s nothing they get in return for that act alone. The return only comes from the potential impact on the community, which is a social function, not biological.
I used lions as a contrast specifically because they’re behavior is different. They are baser creatures who’s community does come directly from biology and it’s drastically different. I also also gave canines as an example because they are specifically social animals and those behaviors that are similar to ours are derived from the social aspect, not biological since it’s community specific, not species.
Sociology studies how humans behave as groups in relation to each other. It’s specifically about the things you’re describing. Evolution drives us to pass our genes on. That’s it. What you’re saying can be just as easily used to trace literally everything humans do back to evolution. The argument could just as easily be made that religion is a result of evolution. Humans are curious because looking for answers gave us a cognitive advantage over competition. That trait leads us to searching for answers. If none are available, we find one. And now we have gods. But religion is organized and requires groups, which brings us back to sociology again.
I’m sorry for misunderstanding the thing with the lions. Thank you for helping me understand it, it makes much more sense now.
As I said, living in groups is desirable to humans on a very basic level. It’s what makes us survive and allows us to pass along our genes which is why staying in groups gives humans an evolutionary advantage.
I also said that what I described is how it used to work most of the time until the Neolithic Revolution happened. This enormous change also changed the way humans interact and behave. Stuff like greed and jealousy became much more common.
Despite that it is still baked into human biology that kindness and gratitude are advantageous to us. It explains the positive emotions that emerge when being kind and grateful.
I am also not doubting what you’re saying about sociology because how could I? It’s not wrong.
I think that our opinions don’t differ that greatly. The only point I am making is that behaving in a social manner is indeed evolutionary advantageous because it undeniably is.
species that form groups through social interaction will result in a group of individuals that gain an evolutionary advantage, such as increased protection against predators, access to potential mates, increased foraging efficiency and the access to social information.
Is what Wikipedia says about group living.
You’re assuming that you would be motivated to “return the favor,” but where does that motivation come from?
It would come from gratitude. Being grateful is simply a tool that emerged to motivate animals, including humans, to live in groups. The behaviour I mentioned earlier can also be seen in chimps and other primates, whose behavioral patterns are pretty similar to ours.
TL;DR
Living in groups does have evolutionary advantages thus staying part of one’s group is desirable which makes social behavior necessary. However, the Neolithic Revolution messed with human behavior and today’s society being much larger than human groups used to be thousands of years ago complicates things further. Gratefulness is simply a tool that emerged in many species, including humans, to further the goal of staying part of the group. It is still baked into human biology although not as much as it used to be.
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 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.
Can’t shake it either, it’s so deeply ingrained.
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.
“Jesus christ on a stick!”
I like “Jesus Christ on a pogo 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.
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!
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
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 wasn’t raised very religious.
I do think some of the stuff from the Christian Bible would be great if people followed it.
- pray in private, not where people can see you
- help other people. Like, go read the good Samaritan again. It’s not long. That dude goes way the fuck out of his way to help someone he’s never met. And some people do some fucking intense mental backflips to justify "no it’s a metaphor man you don’t have to like actually go near a poor person
- you’ll be judged by how you treat the least among you. Yeah, anyone can be nice to their friends, or suck up to wealthy. But how you treat the poor and vulnerable? That’s telling.
Part of what makes the religious right in the US so infuriating is they spend so much time being mad about gay people and comparably no time on poverty.
Every mega church should be condemned as heretical and repurposed as housing or something for the needy.
I am religious now, but I always swore I’d never walk into a church after growing up in a very Roman Catholic area for exactly this reason. That was the only Christianity that I knew - hating on LGBTQ people, refusing women bodily autonomy, just general hypocrisy with the whole “love your neighbor” thing. Spent some time as a Zen Buddhist, but then felt the call to go to church, so I did some reading and found the Episcopal Church. Went once, got invited to chat by the priest and took him up on it during the week after my second Sunday. Straight-up told him that I’m a bisexual woman who values my rights to leave an abusive marriage and to choose what goes on with my body. His response blew me away: “I don’t have a problem with any of that - and I don’t think Jesus does either.”
That was back in 2012. They’ll get rid of me when they put me I the ground (after a requiem mass, of course). The love and care I’ve witnessed in this denomination just wasn’t possible under the RCC teachings that I always saw as a kid. The more I go along, the more I’m convinced that you can’t honestly be on the political right and truly follow the teachings of Jesus.
Sorry if this is a little rambly. It’s 3:30 and I’m trying to stay awake while I feed my baby.
The more I go along, the more I’m convinced that you can’t honestly be on the political right and truly follow the teachings of Jesus.
As someone that was raised in a religious right wing home and is now a moderate left atheist, I have a feeling it’s because a lot of these people choose their beliefs first, political or otherwise, and then attempt to twist and interpret the Bible in any way they can to reduce the cognitive dissonance that occurs when you inevitably run into contradictory information between the teachings of Jesus and the reality of right wing politics.
Without a doubt, much to the detriment of them, us, and all of you. Best thing we can do is work across faith and non-faith lines to combat their seemingly-endless stream of bullshit
I hope it’s not too late, but their propaganda and mental hoop jumping seems almost infinite.
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 “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.
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.
Feeling guilty for existing.
*Jesus has entered the chat
