Hello World. I lurked here for some time and now I decided to be a part of it. Apologies for bad grammar in advance as English is not my native language. I'm an ex Muslim from Karachi, Pakistan. I'm in my mid twenties. I have been an Ex Muslim for about 9 months or so. I was always an skeptic since I can remember. I always tried to see things rationally than spritually, I'm not sure what spritual actually means. The stories of angels pouring down rain didn't made much sense to me when I was a kid. Neither did the myth of having two angels on each of your shoulder, writing your every move. Is God out of memory that he needs angels to jot things down for him? I had so many questions, but we all know how we were silenced when we get too rational. Suddenly its not us but the Satan in our voice, only to lead others astray by speaking sense to them. I didn't like the concept of Hell. Neither of Heaven. One of my pet peeves was concept of "Day Of Judgement". It all depends on Allah, whoever he wants to put in Jannah or in Hell. So why invented the idea of deeds at all? And there are so many free passes to Jannah. Learn a scripture by heart without knowing what the hell it says, and voila, you have a free ticket to Jannah. Then there were philosophical problems that robbed me many of my sleeps. Did Allah knew where I'm going to end up before he even created me? If he knew, then where is my freedom of choice?, if he didn't, then he is not omniscient. Why did he needed to create kuffars, who he knew eventually be burning in hell, forever. Why create them in the first place? Forever is a long time. I found it sadistic.
But I was afraid, as we all were, of burning in hell. I found myself so lucky, to have been given the meaning of life, at the time of my birth, thanks to my muslim parents. While everyone else, who were not muslim, have a huge task of figuring it out. Only if they were born into the salvated geographical location, with ancestors of muslim faith. To me, it was really a flawed and imperfect system. These questions never got answered. Since these questions were obviously from the devil, I needed not the think about them and pray to Allah for forgiveness. Time goes by, and I became an average muslim growing up. Brainwashed by his surroundings. Unwilling to accept new ideas. Unaware of how ridiculous its all is. Just like when you were a kid, the world was all sunshines and rainbows. And you have no clue of morbid reality. Whenever I read any controversial stuff regarding Islam, I always tried to justify it in my head, it appears to seems bad but there must be some mysterious hidden hikmah we cannot comprehend. I questioned my sexuality, I figured I'm attracted to both genders. But I thought the attraction towards guys must be a test from Allah. I must be special to him that he is testing me further.
Meanwhile, one the greatest inventions of mankind of the last century, the internet reaches my home. The invention that connects human minds and their ideas on the grid. I got exposed to the various ideas. Many of them were surprizingly amazing. I learned what evolution really meant. The origin of the universe. I was oblivious of what the word science meant. Now I was hooked. Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson and many others science writers became my favourite personalities. I started to realize the nature of religion, and its relation to idealism. I found out that I'm a naturalist by nature. I would rather live in a world where two people claim things, backed up by theories, hypothesis or evidence, susceptible of being wrong. After some time one of them accepts the version of another one to be aligned with reality, and carry on understand the nature of reality without being hurt. Rather than the world of feelings, sprituality, myths, intolerence and the false assumptions like being the chosen one. I understood the nature of religion. Its nothing but myths, created by our confused ancestors to make sense of reality back then and use it for their political interests. The 21st century has no place for organized religion. Now that I look back I cringe so hard on my justifications on being bisexual. Now I don't have to justify anything in my head, for who I am. Also when I read about the real character of Muhammad, I find it disgusting. When you were a muslim, you don't get to exposed to a lot of controversial stuff. When I read stuff about Muhammad, from the mercy to mankind, Muhammad became a greedy warlord, a sex maniac and a surely a rapist if not a pedophile. Things finally starts to make sense. Islam is not a final version but has been plagiarized. It is nothing but an amalgamation of Christianity, Judaism, Sabianism and Paganism. The words holy, divine and miracle have lost their meaning to me.
The final blow to my faith came after I read "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, It introduced me to existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. Another book, "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn helped me see things from a different perspective. I realized I no longer believe in Quranic myths. Now I would define myself as an Agnostic Atheist and a Humanist.
When I lost my faith I thought I'm the only one, but when I looked up on the internet I was surprized to find so many like me. I think in the near future we might see many more people realizing and dusting off religion. There so much to learn about ourselves and the universe, hence I'm here to connect and share ideas with like-minded minds. I'm sorry for writing this huge wall of text, thanks for reading
Topic: Greetings from Pakistan