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Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Hi!

Post by Dream Sphere »

Hey fellow VA forum goers, I'm Dream Sphere. I joined this forum to share ideas and take part in the discussion on topics of interest to me. The Vegan Atheist's forum seemed like a good place for that, since I've enjoyed many of his uploadings to Youtube, some of which helped me become Vegan again.

Here's a bit about myself. I've been an atheist my whole life, since my parents never brought me up with any religion. They said I could believe in whatever I wanted, but I guess having not been brought up with anything made me unable to see any reason to follow any sort of religion at a young age. When I started to mature I began to actually explore the topics, which just reaffirmed my stance, though I came to the more specific conclusion that I was an agnostic atheist, rather than a gnostic one.

I've never really been a fanatic for meat, and needed a lot of coaxing to get into the habit of consuming it as a child. However, I had always been a big fan of dairy, especially things like cheeses and ice creams. I decided to become a lacto-ovo Vegetarian three years ago, which quickly led to becoming a Vegan for a short period of time, but I hadn't really properly prepared myself and I fell out of the diet, back to a lacto Vegetarian diet. For some reason I had thought it would not be too bad to go back to eating dairy, but upon watching some more videos which advocated Veganism, I realized just how dreadful some of the places which provided some of the food I still ate were like, and decided I didn't want to support anything which needlessly caused animals any pain or suffering regardless of if they killed the animals or not, so I became a Vegan again. I've since made a much better effort at making the Vegan diet a very pleasurable yet healthy diet for me, which potential it always had, I just hadn't realized it until recently.

Also, some other interests of mine include video games, Metal music, hiking, Hockey, and Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Horror literature.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to discussing some interesting stuff here!
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CryoVirus
Newbie
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:55 am
Location: USA

Re: Hi!

Post by CryoVirus »

Welcome to the forums, that is quite the intro there. You even went as far as to back up the reasons for your veiws, well. Nice to meet you and i look forward to conversing with you in the future.
~With a heart of Ice and an unbreakable Will, My soul is of the untouchable~

~CryoVirus 2012
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thebestofenergy
Master in Training
Posts: 514
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 5:49 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Italy

Re: Hi!

Post by thebestofenergy »

Welcome!
How is atheism viewed where you live?
How is veganism viewed where you live?
What games do you like the most/currently play?
For evil to prevail, good people must stand aside and do nothing.
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Re: Hi!

Post by Dream Sphere »

thebestofenergy wrote:Welcome!
How is atheism viewed where you live?
How is veganism viewed where you live?
What games do you like the most/currently play?
Among my close family, my parents are both pretty much atheists. Neither of them believe in any deity, but my Dad has expressed his hoping for there to be some sort of peaceful afterlife. Both my parents were brought up to be Christians, but began to reject those beliefs in their teens/early adulthood. In my extended family my only living biological Grandparent is an atheist who was originally raised to be Pentecostal. My last biological Grandparent remarried to a Jewish man, who is very respecting of other people's beliefs. Most of my Aunt's, Uncle's, and Cousins are Christians, though I expect maybe some of my cousins to possibly be Agnostic Atheists, like me. I don't really bring religion up around them myself much, but whenever I've heard my Aunt's/Uncle's talk about religion they usually take the more moderate/accepting stances than some of the more extreme Christians out there. In the society I live in it's majority Christian (I live in Canada) but I've never had any direct conflicts with religious people, and most tend to be quite accepting. One issue I wish was looked into more here, but which is usually not thought of as a problem by the majority is how the Catholic schools get money from the government just like public schools, and I believe that that's wrong since I wish the government would stay as secular as possible. Whenever I've brought it up around my parents or other fellow atheists here, they always agree, but the couple times I've brought it up around Christians they've basically said they see no problem with it, even when I tell them how the government shouldn't favor any religions over the rest of the people's beliefs.


Pretty much everyone I know, except for one Cousin, aren't Vegans. I've known a few Vegetarians through school, but never came across anyone who was willing to go the extra mile. Most people I've met don't have any big objection to me being Vegan, except some sometimes pestered me about staying healthy. I once got this slightly silly comment from someone that basically said "so would you drink a human woman's breast milk now to get your calcium since she wouldn't be going through what you believe the cows do?" My reply was along the lines of, "no, I would find drinking her milk gross, since I believe it's only normal for babies to be drinking their mother's milk, and I can get the nutrients I need just fine from plant products." She said my reply got her thinking, (she was already a lacto-ovo Vegetarian) so hopefully she was then able to understand my reasoning after that, and begun to question things herself like "why do I find cow's milk less gross than human milk." Also, despite my parents being animal product consumers, they've been very supportive of my dietary choices and have helped provide me everything I've needed to make the Vegan diet work for me.


Some games I've been playing recently are Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, Civilization V, and Europa Universalis IV on the PC. I've also been playing Wolfenstein: The New Order on my Xbox One. I like most genres of video games, though I've just recently been more into Strategy and FPS games. I'm planning on building a good gaming PC in some years time once either NVidia's Pascal or Volta architecture Geforce cards are released, and will use my consoles mostly just for their exclusives by then.
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TheVeganAtheist
Site Admin
Posts: 824
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 9:39 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: Canada

Re: Hi!

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

Welcome Dream Sphere! Thanks for joining the community. Great intro.
Do you find the forum to be quiet and inactive?
- Do your part by engaging in new and old topics
- Don't wait for others to start NEW topics, post one yourself
- Invite family, friends or critics
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brimstoneSalad
neither stone nor salad
Posts: 10273
Joined: Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Hi!

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Hi Dream Sphere, and welcome!

Great intro posts, sounds like you had it pretty lucky with parents, and family in general.

What led you to first become vegetarian?
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Re: Hi!

Post by Dream Sphere »

Thanks everyone!
brimstoneSalad wrote:Hi Dream Sphere, and welcome!

Great intro posts, sounds like you had it pretty lucky with parents, and family in general.

What led you to first become vegetarian?
I guess what led me to become Vegetarian was partially my distaste for most meat, because since I was older than about 5 or 6 whenever I ate meat I always had a nagging thought in the back of my head that what I was eating was gross (due to it being a dead animal) despite occasionally enjoying the flavor. I always had to be coaxed into eating the meat, especially the meat that had a greater resemblance to what the former living animal's body used to look like. So it just sort of naturally came to me, without having to watch any of the graphic slaughterhouse videos or animal rights advocates videos.

Veganism took significantly more work, but with the helps of all the information available on the internet, supportive parents, and lots of thinking the issues over, I found that Veganism would be absolutely the right thing to do. One of the videos which originally got me wanting to be Vegan was the Earthlings documentary. A couple of videos which got me cemented back into Veganism from my period of lacto-Vegetarianism were the two videos VA uploaded called 101 Reasons to Go Vegan, and the one where Gary Yourofsky made a speech advocating Veganism. As of now I have no regrets having gone Vegan, which contrasts the first time I went Vegan, so I don't think I'll ever fall out of the diet again.
HarvesterofSorrow
Newbie
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:48 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Hi!

Post by HarvesterofSorrow »

Hey there... I'm HarvesterofSorrow.
I know this is vegan atheist talk but I can't help but wonder what your taste is on metal bands. Regarding theology and veganism I think we agree on the most part but I would like to know your favorite bands for example, by my name I think you'd be able to tell which is my favorite. That's if you're a REAL metal fan...
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Re: Hi!

Post by Dream Sphere »

HarvesterofSorrow wrote:Hey there... I'm HarvesterofSorrow.
I know this is vegan atheist talk but I can't help but wonder what your taste is on metal bands. Regarding theology and veganism I think we agree on the most part but I would like to know your favorite bands for example, by my name I think you'd be able to tell which is my favorite. That's if you're a REAL metal fan...
Judging by your name I'd guess it's taken from a song on Metallica's ...And Justice for All album.

When I first got into Metal I was more so into just the Traditional Heavy Metal, and Thrash Metal bands. But as time went on I started also getting into Power Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal, Folk Metal, Doom Metal, and other various types. My favourite sub-genre as of now has to be Black Metal. Here's a quick list of some of my favourite Metal bands of some of the sub-genres.

Traditional Heavy Metal - Satan, Visigoth, and Iron Maiden etc.

Thrash Metal - Overkill, Sodom, and Metallica etc.

Doom Metal - Black Sabbath, and Candlemass etc.

Death/Doom - Uaral

Death Metal - Bolt Thrower, Death, and Morbid Angel etc.

First Wave Black Metal - Bathory, and Mayhem etc.

Melodic Death Metal - Kalmah, Hypocrisy, and Wintersun etc.

Technical Death Metal - Atheist, and Gojira etc.

Black Metal (includes Raw, Atmospheric, Progressive, and Melodic kinds) - Cirith Gorgor, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Dissection, Vreid, Windir, Mondstille, Rotting Christ, Sear Bliss, Stormlord, Ulver, Cor Scorpii, Nocte Obducta, Mistur, Forest of Fog, and Klabautamann, among many others

Power Metal - Blind Guardian, Persuader, Sonata Arctica, and Demons & Wizards etc.

Avant-garde/Experimental Black Metal - Sigh, Mors Tua, Hail Spirit Noir, Fjoergyn, Vulture Industries, and Transcending Bizarre? etc.

Blackened Thrash Metal - Absu, and Melechesh etc.

Folk/Pagan Metal - Forefather, Manegarm, Ensiferum, Catuvolcus, Equilibrium, Bran Barr, and Gallowbraid etc.

Post-Black Metal - Alcest, and Janvs etc.


I'm probably missing some stuff that could give you a better picture of my taste, but I think this will do for now.
HarvesterofSorrow
Newbie
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:48 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Hi!

Post by HarvesterofSorrow »

Judging by your name I'd guess it's taken from a song on Metallica's ...And Justice for All album."
Wow I must admit you do paint a picture with that extensive list. Do you personally have a favorite Metallica album and (or) song?
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