Atheists, is there anything religious that sticks with you to this day?
Atheists, is there anything religious that sticks with you to this day?
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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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.