70: "Social progress is ultimately inevitable" - @Soytheist Aditya Prakash - Sentientist Conversation

Aditya (https://www.soytheist.com/ & https://www.youtube.com/c/Soytheist) is an animal rights advocate from Assam in India. His @Soytheist YouTube channel focuses on taking a straightforward & rational approach to animal rights, identity politics & occasionally religion & atheism.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube https://youtu.be/A1a6z-uX6no

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:17 Aditya's Intro - rational animal rights

- Having the "luxury" of being able to take a direct approach

3:10 What's Real?

- India as a religious country

- Growing up with religious parents who didn't push religion

- Asking deep questions as a child & being handed Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"

- Never believing in god "There is not sufficient evidence to support the claims."

- Criticising religion requires more caution than discussing atheism

- "A straightforward reading of a lot of religious scripture leads to conclusions & worldviews that are completely at odds with what a regular person would consider to be moral"

- But "No matter what the scripture says you can bend it" so "the vast majority of religious people are perfectly moral people"

- The mental gymnastics of adapting religious ethics (e.g. rejecting homophobia)

12:00 What Matters?

- I can ground my morality as well as a Christian or a Muslim can. But not in a perfectly objective way

- Every sentient values it's own suffering & flourishing

- If our suffering & flourishing matters, so does that of others

- Growing up in a "heavy meat-eating culture" in North-Eastern India

- In Western countries the slaughter is hidden away. That's not the case in much of India 

- Visiting a market at age 14 to buy goat meat. Seeing the terror in a baby goat's eyes as it was picked up & seeing another trying to hide. Thinking "that's exactly what I would do." "Don't kill him."

- Discovering animal rights philosophy online

- "This is the greatest moral emergency of our time & I have been contributing to this horrifying atrocity"

- Going vegetarian then learning about dairy & going vegan

- "What happened to you? - you've become like those 'mainland' Indians"

- "There's a notion that veganism requires economic privilege - That's nonsense" - "The only people claiming that are those that think a Starbucks latte is a basic need"

- The cheapest foods in the market were plant-based

- "Pure veg" & caste purity - can hinder the fight for animal rights. It's about purity, not compassion

... and much more. Full show notes at sentientism.info and YouTube.

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Thanks Graham.

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