Asklemmy

Not 100% sure this answers the question, but here goes.

Closest I can say that stuck with me, as someone born in a Christian household would be the original Veggietales and how some of the messages have stuck with me. You take away the Christian aspect from some of the messages and you get messages that I think could still apply to a general audience.

• Small people can do big things (Dave and the Giant Pickle)

• Despite your differences, you can still be friendly with others (Are You My Neighbor)

• You should forgive others (God Wants Me To Forgive Them!?!)

I may not follow them to a tee but I am at least somewhat trying.

I was raised in a Buddhist family and we all celebrate christmas til this day. Just the part with the tree and the gifts, none of the other religious stuff that comes with Christmas.

I'm just wondering if souls exist. I hope they doesn't.

I still cross my fingers for luck.

Proper gospel music.

Not a goddamn thing. If I needed religion to tell me how to live, I'd be completely amoral and depraved. I simply treat others as I wish to be treated and live life trying not to negatively impact anyone else.

Buddhism's concept about Karma seems pretty cool and I still view it as the most reasonable religion out of the ones I know of.

Was raised atheist.

I have had some seriously bizarre cases of deja vu. Like, recalling dreams I had years before that exactly predicted a place I would be in in the future. It has happened five or six times. It does make me question things such as consciousness and my place in the universe. It also makes me wonder if my brain is broken.

Yeah choosing to abstain from eating certain animals for moral reasons (dogs/cats/cows/horses) and not others (pigs/chickens/fish) is definitely weird. Though the majority of people in western society fall into this category, you just moved one more animal across the boundary due to normalization. If you were brought up with pigs, chickens, and fish you'd probably abstain from those too.

The real question to ask though is despite normalization, what's actually the right thing to do? Is it actually okay that some people eat dogs, cats, and cows? Or is it wrong to do this?

People should put more effort into reconciling this dissonance, because slaughter and oppression is not a matter we should leave up to the normalization of society to decide. Society has countless times normalized immoral things.

I still use common colloquialisms without paying much mind to them. "thank God, oh my god, Jesus christ" etc. Kinda hard to get rid of those, but it's no biggie, really.

What I will say, is that while I do identify as an atheist in the sense of not believing in established religions or cults, I do consider that I am able to believe in more than what reality presents. I've always said I'm an agnostic atheist, but as of late, I've been feeling like it's rather OK and even necessary to wonder about reality and existence a lot more than what science allows itself to. For example, if you take even a moment to ponder about what physics and the quantum realm means about reality, you'll feel like something else is definitely going on, like we're obviously not seeing the full picture and there's a good chance we never will, and that the picture were missing is unparalleled in its majesty. To just think that we seem to be just a combination of countless fields fluctuating together to form reality, but at the end of the day you could just say we're the expression of different waves going through different mediums juxtaposed on each other. A combination of planes crashing in on each other in a multidimensional membrane, a universe that could be just one possibility out of a mostly dead multiverse, where even our universe seems to be mostly dead, yet here we stand. It's hard to wrap your mind around it, or even begin to grasp it all. Definitely makes you feel like there's more to it than just chance, hell, chance sounds like an implausible explanation for all of this.

I think I mostly take issue with "matter of fact" stances, where people will claim things are a specific way because their faith or textbook says so. No. Just, experience life, question it, question your beliefs, but also question life itself, don't settle for just "big bang and chance and meaninglessness" as science is just a tool, don't settle for just "God willed it all and demands these things of us", we're not here for that long, let's ponder on it all while we can, and enjoy the life that were lucky (or unlucky) to be able to experience for one moment in eternity of nothingness, or an eternity of eternities of different existences. Who knows what were doing here, where we go from here, where do we come from? It's ok to acknowledge that the answer to those questions is "nobody on this earth knows, and maybe we'll never know". Let's cope together, let's smile together, let's live and ponder together.

Greetings from an Ex-Hindu Atheist. I was never really into Religious Banter that much even as a small kid. But I would say the major propelling force that made me become an Atheist would be my curiosity and eagerness to study science. Science answered all those questions Religion could not and my treatment by my super religious parents helped me not to retain any religious superstitions. Their berating only gave me more strength to continue my study of science and legitimized my standings.

I like a lot of religious art (architecture, paintings, music...). Some of it is certainly the result of historical patronage, but plenty is the result of genuine religious inspiration and even ecstasy. I often think that art is the only real redeeming quality of religion!

Every December I start practicing classical guitar arrangements of Christmas music, just like I always have.

I went to a Methodist boarding school, but I was never religious. I was well read at a young age, and I had a pretty good idea about my belief system.

I thought eating beef was taboo in India regardless of religion, as in – you could get away with it in private but good luck finding a butcher that would prepare one without ruining your reputation in the neighborhood. The taste is not good enough to risk it. However, (not) eating beef is an actual choice if you go abroad.