Hey guys, I've been lurking this forum for quite a while now
and I thought I might as well join, you know? So... I'm an "ex-muslim" atheist in my first year of university. The reason I put ex-muslim in quotes is because I'm not even sure if I was a muslim in the first place. When I was a kid I always used to ask my parents questions regarding why certain things were (You know, stupid questions like why the sky was blue, why did Asians have different eyes, etc.), and hearing "Because Allah made it that way" was never a satisfying answer to me. Of course, I was just a kid so I just agreed with my parents. I became a lot more religious when I was about six to ten years old when I moved to Saudi Arabia. I had cousins living in Saudi Arabia who were heavily indoctrinated by their parents. I mean these guys would recite kalmas or play tapes from the Quran during car rides (Which in turn lead to some very verrrrrry boring car rides). So my cousins used to tell me stories all about the Quran, black magic, witches, djinns etc. And I would just eat all of it up. I used to be scared of the bathroom, (always pulling the shower curtain to make sure no witch or djinn was behind it). I went to the mosque (Of my own will) to pray at least 3 times a day (I had school
). But then something happened as I approached my early teens, I started to see people suffering around the world, and wondered why Allah wasn't helping these people. I was too scared to ask my parents cause they would probably find such a question blasphemous, and I wasn't on good terms with my parents back then. It didn't help that I had no idea of what Islam really even was. I mean the sermons for Friday prayers were all in Arabic, and as far as I knew, there was no translation of the Quran avaliable in my house at the time so I didn't even know what I was reading. So I started to slowly forget about religion and was pretty much non-practicing after that, yet I still referred to myself as a Muslim.
Well one fateful day, I was on youtube, looking up optical illusions and then I saw this video entitled "The Best Optical Illusion Ever!!!" (I'm sure at least some of you must be familiar with this video). The video talked about how prayer was not proven to have ever worked and it voiced the same sentiments that I had before (Why God doesn't help those that are in impoverished countries). Unfortunately, since I was in Saudi Arabia, the internet censorship there is intense. My only source of religion debunking material was from youtube. So I watched videos, mostly on Christianity. I was actually shocked to see that people thought the Earth was 6000 years old and didn't believe in Evolution. (No one ever brought these topics up in my household) and I started to see religion for what it really is. I was too scared to tell my friends that I stopped believing. I thought they would shun me.
Mind you, I still haven't read a translation of the Quran, I've just deduced that any religion that says their God is All Powerful, All Knowing and The Most Benevolent is a fraud. It's such a glaring contradiction. Furthermore, many verses that people claim to have been "miracles" describing science are actually incredibly vague (That's because they're not really describing science). Why would a God reveal such epic scientific information so vaguely? I'm a fair person, so I tried to look at evidence for religion and it's just not compelling at all, filled with logical fallacies, half-assed explanations and lack of understanding of elementary science. Further down the line, I actually found a youtube channel that put Quranic claims to the test (That person is actually a part of this forum, I forgot his name on here but his youtube channel is TheIslamMiracle. Amazing work by the way
) and well. Now I'm reading a translated version of the Quran for myself and saving verses in a Word Document with my own annotations on them on things that just don't make sense. I never thought it'd be this mind numbing.
To this day I have only told one of my closest friends who is an ex-Hindu about my atheism. And it kinda wears you down after a while. I want to be honest with my friends, I want them to know that I don't believe but I know that I'll lose them if I do. There are even some friends who I suspect of being atheist, yet I'm too scared to ask them, and I'm sure they would be too scared to tell me. Most of all I want to tell my family. My parents still use "Because Allah made it that way" whenever something that confuses them comes up. My dad has become deeply religious over the years and that scares me. I know he probably doesn't understand even half of what he's reading. My sister and mother are two more examples that believe but probably (ahem, DEFINATELY) have no idea what they're believing. My sister is also really into conspiracy theories and claims that everyone's been brainwashed, when the irony is that she has been brainwashed by religion since birth, yet she is so blind to see that. So that's part of my reason for reading the Quran for myself. So that if one day I finally have the courage to tell them, I can shoot down any claim they can bring forward and hopefully they wake up. (Haha, I'll be disowned before that'll ever happen)
Anyways, yeah. That's my story. Now off to study for a Calc 2 exam
Topic: Meow