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?
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.
This absolutely. Rather than think it strange that you don’t eat cows, you should think it strange that you eat any sentient being at all. If something feels pain and runs away, it’s a strong sign that we should not use and abuse them, especially when our needs can be met without doing so.