By Ajit Krishna Dasa

You’ve got to hand it to vegans—most of them really care. They see the pain animals go through, they feel something deep inside, and they’re moved to action. That kind of empathy is rare in a world where people are often too distracted to care about anything but their own Netflix queue. From a Vaisnava perspective, this impulse to protect animals is beautiful. It’s a spark of the divine, a sign that there’s something deeper going on. But then, things start to unravel—big time—when atheism crashes the party. When you try to mix that compassion with atheism, things go sideways fast. It’s not going to work.