Why would these things be equal?

In India, cows are revered as living deities. I know I don’t worship my dog. While both mindsets lead to a revulsion at the idea of eating said meat, I don’t think we’re talking about the same emotions at all.

I don’t think we’re talking about the same emotions at all.

Yes, we are.

Love and respect.

I know I don’t worship my dog.

So you would be ok with me killing it and serving it to you? (no, I never would)

Serving my dog? No.

Serving a farm raised dog intended for consumption like a pig or cow? Yeah I’d try it.

My personal oddities aside, I still disagree. I don’t think worshipping a holy entity is at all the same as loving your pet. Maybe it is for you, but I know I don’t feel commonality between what I feel for my pet dog and what I feel for God.

For example, I give my pet treats and teach him to do tricks. My relationship with God is one of respect and wondering. Would you say that’s similar or different?

Your relationship with your dog is much more significant since he probably cares about you, is a good companion and can be proven to exist (unless you’re making him up for the purpose of these comments). A relationship with god is a one-sided time/effort/focus sink that provides no benefit to anyone involved unless they’re in on the con and passing around a collection plate.

If someone doesn’t eat beef or tries to discourage others from doing so because it might be magic, they ought to lay off their bullshit. Stuff like that carves out a blind spot in peoples’ critical thinking where things like ayurveda, homeopathy, chiropractors and acupuncturists can hide and prey on the desperate. Accepting the less-harmful aspects makes it harder to reject the dangerous ones.

Yes, dog is god spelled backwards. They have a real love and loyalty for their humans. At the same time, I think that people’s gods can be real to them and they form a relationship with their unseen deity, it becomes more than one-sided (in their mind at least).

I think some of these things are not a monolith, to be rejected all together. For example, there are some herbs that fell under the umbrella of homeopathy that turned out to have very valuable medicinal properties when properly studied.

There is the practical/pragmatic side to it, that cows are basically incredible biomachines, converting grass to nutritious milk and are in that sense more valuable alive than dead. The encoding of that practice into culture is very strong.