Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello,
My name is Johan, sometimes I go by my third name, Alexander. I'm 27 years old.
I've been vegan for 2 years now, and really enjoy it. I am vegan because I am against violence towards animals. I believe we should have a loving relationship to our environment, which includes animals.

I've been a theist now for about 2,5 years. Before that I was a materialist atheist, that was really into Christopher Hitchens' debates, I would watch them all the time. When I broke up with a girl about 2,75 years ago, I made the decision that I wanted that break up to go well, to not just handle it apathetically, which was a bit of an improvement over how apathetic I had become to my own well being and that of those around me in the years prior. I believe now this soul-based decision (to believe things matter in life) attracted an event into my life that really had a big impact. I saw the following video in a related video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXtBcY8vXQ0

When I saw this, my first reaction was one of curiosity: what was I going to see here? Psychotic people? Actors? This should be interesting. When I started watching the video, it had a quite calming effect on me. The way Jesus described in this video what God is like was completely different to the anti-theist picture painted by Hitchens, and also completely different than how illogical the typical Christian would see it. This was actually a God I would want to believe in. And on top of that, the person talking about it, didn't expect me to take anything on blind faith, but was speaking about how you could find out and experiment with the truth yourself. So I did. I followed the instructions of how to conduct the experiment that would prove the possibility of an inflow of Love from an invisible source, and it worked. What AJ and Mary talk about in other videos, about how the human soul works, among other things, also I have seen work in my own life... I quit smoking and drinking, and became vegan (they are vegans themselves too). I had been a vegetarian from age 15 til 21, but had become quite disillusioned and apathetic with life and when I was in a hospital after having had a psychosis I started eating meat again. However the aforementioned series of events taught me to care about things again. I'm now working on becoming a better person, and processing through emotional stuff from my life. This connection to an entity that gives me feelings of immensely deep love and understanding is something that is a really interesting fact about life. Maybe people will say this is just the "God-zone" in the brain being triggered when my emotions desire it.. But I choose to go with the experience as such, and not take the in my opinion convoluted intellectual detour of doubting my experiences.

Anyway, that's a long story, I'm more than willing to answer any questions, and hope to have a fruitful (pun intended) time here on the forum,

love & peace

Johan Alexander

Welcome to the forum, do you mind if I call you Alex. I'm sure you will find the forum slow going, as we are constantly trying to grow the community please check in daily, (don't be yet another theist to leave us). You will find that most the people on this forum are strict sceptics, and will (often harshly) criticize your statements. The community currently has 3 open projects you may want to check out; a second open letter to matt (pending recording in the upcomeing weekend) https://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=579&start=180 , a open letter to Penn Jillette (an atheist who is known to have irrationally criticise veganism, although he is one now, the letter is kinda died of through lack of direction) https://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=859 , and a response to a local pastoral letter on gay marriage (brand new, but outside of me it has received little attention) https://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1065 . If you have little to no interest in these projects the various other sections should still be useful to a new member of the forum such as yourself.

As far as theism is concerned do you identify by any labels, or are your beliefs similar to that of any known ideology? I ask this not to try to pin you into any ideology but rather to understand your ideology in general, if it differs from a similar ideology all you need do is state that it is so when relevant. This is far simpler that laying out your theistic ideology which may be complex.

Do you hold any moralistic viewpoints dew to your views on theism? (gender, homosexuality, marriage, activism, ect)

do you hold views that are simmer to Catholicism? The video you posted seems to be more down a new aged path, although I admit I did not watch it till the end. If you are new-aged than I can relate as I was heavily into it before I joined this forum, although I identified as an atheist and a new-ager.

welcome again to the forum.

Welcome to the forum, Johan Alexander. In addition to the questions that bobo0100 posed I am also curious to know about the attributes of the God whom you believe in. Omnipotent, or not? Omniscient, or not? Purely benevolent, or both good and evil?

One of my reasons for being an atheist is the lack of agreement about what "God" is. Thank you for your insight.

@ArmouredAbolitionist

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:I will define God as the creative entity whose existence is the condition of possibility for the universe. It is a being that has the interlinked qualities of being loving, wise and intelligent, compassionate and understanding.

this quote is from the topic in atheist vs theist debates entitled "Proof that god doesn't exist." maybe it explains what you want to know. Although I would like him to extrapolate more on the topic. he uses terms that are lesser than omni-x prehapts to avoid contradictions.

OK thank you I'll check it out.

Hi, welcome to the forum!

We don't really get theists on here often, so it's great to finally have one, especially like this. The ones we've had haven't engaged in any discussion about theism with us, or if they have, they've been a bit less than sane, or even just trolls.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: What AJ and Mary talk about in other videos, about how the human soul works, among other things, also I have seen work in my own life... I quit smoking and drinking, and became vegan (they are vegans themselves too). I had been a vegetarian from age 15 til 21, but had become quite disillusioned and apathetic with life and when I was in a hospital after having had a psychosis I started eating meat again. However the aforementioned series of events taught me to care about things again.

Just to clarify, are you saying that theism led you back to veganism?

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:And on top of that, the person talking about it, didn't expect me to take anything on blind faith, but was speaking about how you could find out and experiment with the truth yourself. So I did. I followed the instructions of how to conduct the experiment that would prove the possibility of an inflow of Love from an invisible source, and it worked.

Ok, I'm going to watch the entire video, do the experiment, and get back to you.
UPDATE- Where are the instructions? I assumed they were in the video, but I didn't hear them there.

Were you raised religious, or were you an atheist your entire life until you watched that video?

Hi all,

thanks for the warm welcome. I'll try to frequent this forum relatively often. I used to post quite a bit at discussanything.com, but those folks are either conservative american christians, generally unpleasant, or both (with a few exceptions). It's ad hominem and other logical fallacy galore there. I have an academic background in philosophy and so was quite pleased to see a list of logical fallacies to avoid at the top of one of the forums.

I'll try to answer some of your questions now:

bobo0100 wrote:Welcome to the forum, do you mind if I call you Alex.

Thanks, I prefer Alexander or Johan... But I don't mind if you call me Alex for short.

bobo0100 wrote: I'm sure you will find the forum slow going, as we are constantly trying to grow the community please check in daily, (don't be yet another theist to leave us). You will find that most the people on this forum are strict sceptics, and will (often harshly) criticize your statements.

As long as people are willing to listen, and unassuming, people can criticize what they want. I'm open to admitting I don't know everything. That's one thing that separates "the way" as Jesus describes in his video's as a way of life from religions: it's not about believing in a pre-made concept that you take on faith, it's a method to discover things about God and life for yourself.

bobo0100 wrote: The community currently has 3 open projects you may want to check out; a second open letter to matt (pending recording in the upcomeing weekend) https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... &start=180 , a open letter to Penn Jillette (an atheist who is known to have irrationally criticise veganism, although he is one now, the letter is kinda died of through lack of direction) https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... f=22&t=859 , and a response to a local pastoral letter on gay marriage (brand new, but outside of me it has received little attention) https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... =13&t=1065 . If you have little to no interest in these projects the various other sections should still be useful to a new member of the forum such as yourself.

Those look interesting, the letter to Matt (Dillahunty?) is about veganism? I'm pro same-sex marriage, so as a theist I could maybe contribute to that letter. I heard of Penn Jillette, so he already changed to veganism? Is the letter about him being more vocal about it?

bobo0100 wrote: As far as theism is concerned do you identify by any labels, or are your beliefs similar to that of any known ideology? I ask this not to try to pin you into any ideology but rather to understand your ideology in general, if it differs from a similar ideology all you need do is state that it is so when relevant. This is far simpler that laying out your theistic ideology which may be complex.

I often call myself an areligious theist. As I stated before, when I first saw this interview with Jesus and Mary video, I was intrigued, and quickly started watching more video's from the Divine Truth channel, such as the "secrets of the universe" series (8 hours total). I can't say I've personally experienced all of what he describes in that series, but I experience large parts of it to be true. So, for some parts (such as the division of the universe into spiritual spheres), I believe they are true, based on circumstantial evidence, rather than personal experience, or from extrapolation of my own experience. For other things he says, my reasoning goes along the lines of: a lot of things he said have been proven true to me, so I consider it likely that these things will turn out true to me in the future.

So in short, it's much more about learning to experience things for yourself, rather than taking on any belief without evidence.

The shortest summary of my beliefs about God at this point would be: A being was so overflowing with love, existing as a causa sui, that it wanted to share her love. So it created entities separate from herself, with an independent will, to share this love with and a playground for them to play in.

bobo0100 wrote: Do you hold any moralistic viewpoints dew to your views on theism? (gender, homosexuality, marriage, activism, ect)

Well, yes. I'd define morality as: acting in harmony with the true value of all things. Therefor, since animals are beautiful, sensitive creatures, using them merely to please our tastebuds, and be violent to them in the process, is highly immoral. Sexuality can be a beautiful expression of love between two individuals. If we use sex as if it's a disposable product, so to speak, we aren't honoring the true value of it, so we are immoral and out of love. I see porn this way, even though I still watch it sometimes. I'm trying to change that, by looking into myself at the reasons why, such as being disillusioned with romantic/sexual relationships in my own life, and also issues surrounding receiving love from my mother and the relationship (failed marriage) of my mother and father. This is pretty hard, to take an honest, hard look at, as you can imagine. Praying helps me with dealing with such issues.

I believe that soulmates exist and that sex is best experienced between soulmates, and that any other sex doesn't do complete right to the value of that connection. I do believe that soulmates can be of the same sex/gender.

One subject that I once got into a conflict with a friend about, is that of gender dysphoria. I believe that spirits influence people a lot more than we are usually aware of, and can hook into people that have emotional openings to them. Having experienced psychosis, this was basically the voluntarily walking out of my own life, and letting different spirits take over my behavior. Different desires can lead to different types of situations of spirit attachment, including 'gender dysphoria'. In the case of very young children, the parents' emotions are the cause of such spirits 'walking in' and taking over the body of such a child. If the spirit is opposite sexed of the child, this can lead to so called gender dysphoria. I wouldn't recommend parents choosing surgery for young children. I also wouldn't recommend an adult to have surgery, if they indeed experience gender dysphoria. However, in the end all people are free to make their own choices and I don't want to judge them for it, or treat them differently.

bobo0100 wrote: do you hold views that are simmer to Catholicism? The video you posted seems to be more down a new aged path, although I admit I did not watch it till the end. If you are new-aged than I can relate as I was heavily into it before I joined this forum, although I identified as an atheist and a new-ager.

I don't agree with most Catholic or Christian beliefs, such as: vicarious redemption and the trinity (two of the if not the two defining beliefs of Christianity) . I do like the current pope, because he seems to focus on important issues in the world today: accepting homosexuality, environmental issues, wealth distribution issues. It may be a matter of time before he says something about animal protection (i.e. not killing/abusing them).

I don't know too much about new age belief systems. When I see typical new age YouTube channels, I often don't understand the words they are using, to such an extent that I suspect their meaning is so vague that I might call it, as Hitchens once did, 'white noise'. It seems a lot of their words have very little practical meaning, application or result, besides convincing the person involved that they are doing well.

I have once heard a shorthand version of a theory ascribed to Terence McKenna that Gods love flows through the universe in ever increasing quantities, raising the potential of evolution in it. I do believe it may be possible we are in such a time of transition to new, better realities.

bobo0100 wrote: welcome again to the forum.

Thanks again.

I'll respond to the other questions in a new post below.

ArmouredAbolitionist wrote:Welcome to the forum, Johan Alexander. In addition to the questions that bobo0100 posed I am also curious to know about the attributes of the God whom you believe in. Omnipotent, or not? Omniscient, or not? Purely benevolent, or both good and evil?

One of my reasons for being an atheist is the lack of agreement about what "God" is. Thank you for your insight.

Good questions. Like I said above, there are things about God that I believe because I experience(d) them personally, and there are things that I heard about God from what I consider a trustworthy source. There's also philosophizing about things myself.

The main thing I know for a fact is that I can experience (sometimes intensely) strong feelings of being understood and loved and cared for, feelings of compassion, as if a light shines on my wounds and balms them - if I open myself emotionally to it, that is if I truthfully long for it, if I desire it. I believe the source of this is an actual entity outside of myself that gives me these feelings.

I find it hard to explain why I believe the source of these feelings is likely the creator of everything that exists. It has to do with the laws of the universe, how life's events trigger emotions that lead me to seek comfort and growth with this entity, that feels like a caring father. The entity also feels intelligent... I feel there's a clear link between being loving and intelligent, if you love something you'd want to treat it or create it as intelligently as possible.

Omnipotence and omniscience are difficult concepts.
Let's try omnipotence: I believe God is bound by love and logic. If this is by choice or not, I don't know. It's hard. We (humans) say things like: I can't contribute to animal suffering. I know for example that I find it really hard, almost impossible, to lie. You can't all of a sudden will yourself to kill an animal, or lie. So could God do something illogical, or unloving, becomes a rather philosophical question, or rather hypothetical, because the being is in fact unchangingly logical and loving, so it's kind of hypothetical/moot to ask what it could do if it doesn't want to.

Omniscience is hard as well, I believe the intelligence and understanding of God is indeed very large and very fine, perhaps to the infinite degree. However, omniscience seems at odds with the potential of free will. So maybe God knows the status quo, but not the future. This however is at odds with the idea that God is eternal, or outside of time. I don't know! I do believe God is eternal and unchanging. A perfect being would necessarily be unchanging. I don't believe our futures are set in stone, but we make our decisions. God created us as separate from himself, with an independent will, so it is possible that he does not know the decisions we make, even though he can know the outcomes of them exactly. I don't know these things for sure yet at all, so take it with a grain of salt.

I do believe, intellectually, that our Creator is completely benevolent and perfect. This belief comes from extrapolating my experience. But I do sometimes feel that he is not completely benevolent.

Thank you for your questions. They remind me of a course in medieval philosophy i took 2 years ago. I do not know the answers, but I hope to discover them in a process of growing closer and more acquainted with my father entity = )

EquALLity wrote:Hi, welcome to the forum!

hi = )

EquALLity wrote: We don't really get theists on here often, so it's great to finally have one, especially like this. The ones we've had haven't engaged in any discussion about theism with us, or if they have, they've been a bit less than sane, or even just trolls.

That sucks, I actually find a lot of fault with the behavior of many shall we say "specific" theists. They have an investment in defending their beliefs, even at the cost of logic or manners. There is a lot of judgment about people not of the faith. I completely understand a lot of atheists, being very into the Dawkins, Randi and Hitchens type thinkers for a long time myself. I actually think it's a beautiful thing that a relationship with God depends only on desire, that personal proof comes only from personal desire, and that the creator lets us be free in our beliefs. I agree many beliefs of Christians for example are in essence illogical, and I think they do a disservice to a personal relationship with God, or "areligious", "unspecific" theism.
As an aside, I don't believe in a punishing God, I only believe in a God that shows us the consequences of a lack of love in our choices.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: What AJ and Mary talk about in other videos, about how the human soul works, among other things, also I have seen work in my own life... I quit smoking and drinking, and became vegan (they are vegans themselves too). I had been a vegetarian from age 15 til 21, but had become quite disillusioned and apathetic with life and when I was in a hospital after having had a psychosis I started eating meat again. However the aforementioned series of events taught me to care about things again.

Just to clarify, are you saying that theism led you back to veganism?
[/quote]
Yeah, initially. I decided I wanted to take responsibility in life, and be loving. Jesus said in one of his videos that treating animals the way omnivorous people do is unloving, so I decided to follow that advice. I then researched veganism a lot more.

If I at some point would decide that my experiences of God have all been an illusion (which I don't consider very likely to happen at this point) or that it was real but I don't want the relationship to continue (that could happen, theoretically, because the relationship confronts emotions that are in error, i.e. not loving, and releasing these emotions is painful), I would still remain vegan, just because I like what I eat and how I feel so much, and I love animals.

EquALLity wrote:

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:And on top of that, the person talking about it, didn't expect me to take anything on blind faith, but was speaking about how you could find out and experiment with the truth yourself. So I did. I followed the instructions of how to conduct the experiment that would prove the possibility of an inflow of Love from an invisible source, and it worked.

Ok, I'm going to watch the entire video, do the experiment, and get back to you.
UPDATE- Where are the instructions? I assumed they were in the video, but I didn't hear them there.

The video I linked was just part 1 of the chopped up version, the entire interview is about 2 hours long. I do believe he describes the experiment in short in the entire video, but there are other videos on the Divine Truth YouTube channel that go into more detail. I've described quite a bit already in the posts above, but in short the experiment goes as follows: It's the decision to feel "if there is a God, and that being has love for me, I would like to feel it." Notice that it's a conditional sentence, starting with 'if'. You don't have to pretend to believe it, you just need to wonder, what would it be like? And it has to come from your heart, not your head.


Right now, I became very sad longing for it and writing it down, and that's an important quality to keep in mind too: humility. That if a feeling comes up, no matter if it's strong fear or sadness, you don't judge it, or try to be better than it, or keep your composure, but allow it, no matter what.

EquALLity wrote: Were you raised religious, or were you an atheist your entire life until you watched that video?

I was raised basically atheist from my dad, who went through the secularization of Europe in the 60's and broke with his parents' protestant faith. I don't really know what my mothers beliefs are, I suspect agnostic. I had periods where I was a really strong anti-theist, watching Christopher Hitchens videos the way I now watch Divine Truth videos. There were some instances earlier in life where for instance I got an anti-evolution pamphlet from Jehova's Witnesses, that caused me a great deal of fear and made me dive into the talk.origins archive a lot. I can't go into biographical details right now any further, gonna take a drive with my car.
Thanks for your questions you too, and if you want to let me know how the experiment went down, I'd be interested, take your time, take care. Johan

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Hi all,

thanks for the warm welcome. I'll try to frequent this forum relatively often. I used to post quite a bit at discussanything.com, but those folks are either conservative american christians, generally unpleasant, or both (with a few exceptions). It's ad hominem and other logical fallacy galore there. I have an academic background in philosophy and so was quite pleased to see a list of logical fallacies to avoid at the top of one of the forums.

Great!

Can you tell me a bit about your philosophical background?

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:As an aside, I don't believe in a punishing God, I only believe in a God that shows us the consequences of a lack of love in our choices.

What do you think happens after we die? No Hell?

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Yeah, initially. I decided I wanted to take responsibility in life, and be loving. Jesus said in one of his videos that treating animals the way omnivorous people do is unloving, so I decided to follow that advice. I then researched veganism a lot more.

If I at some point would decide that my experiences of God have all been an illusion (which I don't consider very likely to happen at this point) or that it was real but I don't want the relationship to continue (that could happen, theoretically, because the relationship confronts emotions that are in error, i.e. not loving, and releasing these emotions is painful), I would still remain vegan, just because I like what I eat and how I feel so much, and I love animals.

Ah, I see. I wish more Christians took the idea of loving others to heart, and I'm glad that you don't just care about it now because of your religion.

I like how Pat Condell put it:

Pat Condell wrote:But you have a particular brand of Christianity in America which is unique and extremely creative in that it bears absolutely no resemblance to the message of the prophet it supposedly reveres and is in fact diametrically opposed to every single thing that he ever said, without exception, which, if nothing else, America, shows incredible balls on your part.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:The video I linked was just part 1 of the chopped up version, the entire interview is about 2 hours long. I do believe he describes the experiment in short in the entire video, but there are other videos on the Divine Truth YouTube channel that go into more detail. I've described quite a bit already in the posts above, but in short the experiment goes as follows: It's the decision to feel "if there is a God, and that being has love for me, I would like to feel it." Notice that it's a conditional sentence, starting with 'if'. You don't have to pretend to believe it, you just need to wonder, what would it be like? And it has to come from your heart, not your head.


Right now, I became very sad longing for it and writing it down, and that's an important quality to keep in mind too: humility. That if a feeling comes up, no matter if it's strong fear or sadness, you don't judge it, or try to be better than it, or keep your composure, but allow it, no matter what.

Oh, ok. I'll try that, but I'm not sure that it's good enough for me.

People of all different religions believe and feel that their god loves them (I used to also when I was a theist). How can I know which god it is if I do think that I feel something? Do I wonder about a specific god in particular?

Also, I think there might be a bit of confirmation bias there. If I want to or even just wonder what it would be like feel a certain way, I might think that I feel that way just because of that.

I believe that what you said about personal proof coming only from personal desire supports this. You wanted to know about what it would be like to experience certain feelings, and then you felt them.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: Thanks for your questions you too, and if you want to let me know how the experiment went down, I'd be interested, take your time, take care. Johan

Alright!

Can you tell me about your experience? I'm curious.