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 Topic: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?

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  • 1« Previous thread | Next thread »
  • Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     OP - December 15, 2009, 05:44 PM
    Hi Folks,

    As you might know chaps and chapesses I lost my faith gradually over many years.

    How did you lose yours?

    Was it gradual or sudden agonising departure.

    If so why so?

    Challenge All Ideologies but don't Hate People.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #1 - December 15, 2009, 05:50 PM
    Does gradually also mean over the course of maybe 5-6 months last year as was the case with me?
    Pakistan Zindabad? ya Pakistan sey Zinda bhaag?

    Long Live Pakistan? Or run with your lives from Pakistan?
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #2 - December 15, 2009, 05:52 PM
    Mine was very slow and gradual. I tried to hold onto it for as long as I could. Always giving it the benefit of the doubt. I wish I had done it sooner instead of wasting time with it. I was very anreally long timegry and hated Islam and Muhammad for a really long time. Now I'm fine and can focus on more positive things instead of cursing Muhammad and Islam.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #3 - December 15, 2009, 05:53 PM
    My faith in both God and Islam died a slow painful death over probably 2 years.

    My religious practice however died a sudden death. I stopped all my practice at once at the end of Ramadan of 2004. On Eid. But by that point, even though I was practicing, I had basically lost all faith in Islam and God was on the chopping block.

    So overall I'd say gradual as far as faith goes and sudden as far as religion goes.
    Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
    Iblis has mad debaterin' skillz. Best not step up unless you're prepared to recieve da pain.

  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #4 - December 15, 2009, 05:59 PM
    Quote from: Kafirist on December 15, 2009, 05:53 PM
    My faith in both God and Islam died a slow painful death over probably 2 years.

    My religious practice however died a sudden death. I stopped all my practice at once at the end of Ramadan of 2004. On Eid. But by that point, even though I was practicing, I had basically lost all faith in Islam and God was on the chopping block.

    So overall I'd say gradual as far as faith goes.

    Almost the same, except it was the last Ramadan (2009).  cool2
    "In every time and culture there are pressures to conform to the prevailing prejudices. But there are also, in every place and epoch, those who value the truth; who record the evidence faithfully. Future generations are in their debt." -Carl Sagan

  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #5 - December 15, 2009, 05:59 PM
    Quote from: atheist.pk on December 15, 2009, 05:50 PM
    Does gradually also mean over the course of maybe 5-6 months last year as was the case with me?


    I would say gradual meaning over many many years.
    Challenge All Ideologies but don't Hate People.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #6 - December 15, 2009, 06:03 PM
    So when you say "gradual" in losing your religion do you mean like you stopped practicing elements slowly? Or do you mean simply your conviction in the religion?

    Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
    Iblis has mad debaterin' skillz. Best not step up unless you're prepared to recieve da pain.

  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #7 - December 15, 2009, 06:05 PM
    Quote
    So when you say "gradual" in losing your religion do you mean like you stopped practicing elements slowly? Or do you mean simply your conviction in the religion?


    Both the practice and conviction.


    Challenge All Ideologies but don't Hate People.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #8 - December 15, 2009, 06:20 PM
    Quote from: Rubaiyat on December 15, 2009, 05:59 PM
    I would say gradual meaning over many many years.

    Well in that case, mine was like a sudden agonising departure that eventually place over the second half of 2008.

    For someone who really took Islam seriously throughout my entire teenage years and generally being an introvert shy bugger, I always made sure I was into daily observance stuff up until the age of 22.

    I think George Carlin's death in 2008 really moved me intellectually, as I was just getting used to his style and guts in his comedy. The things I discovered later on my own as 2008 went along, and it put me in a real fix.

    There was strong sense in my mind that religion was absurd, but I kept telling myself about "still being happy as a Muslim" as the year ended.

    Then January 2009, and I snapped. I was all alone at that time, so had plenty of time to think for myself. I discarded that cloak of being happy, and accepted who I was.

    I felt relieved, free, but also heartbroken....as if I finally realised how much I had been betrayed by something I really cherished and held on to for personal salvation.

    That void of feeling heartbroken has still not been filled almost 12 months after I let myself go.
    Pakistan Zindabad? ya Pakistan sey Zinda bhaag?

    Long Live Pakistan? Or run with your lives from Pakistan?
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #9 - December 15, 2009, 06:40 PM
    Depends how you look at it I guess.

    I was losing my religion from the first moment it was taught to me, because I always had questions, I always had doubts.  I even had doubts about whether a god existed or not.  I don't actually remember a time as a muslim when I was at peace with it.  I was a muslim because I was a muslim, not for any real true reason.

    So in that way gradually.

    Or perhaps it was sudden, since I always thought I was going to be a muslim til I died, and I always fought those doubts, or believed that one day I would understand.  Then I read the da vinci code which made me wonder if Islam had any background stuff I hadn't looked in to, which led to searching the internet, stumbling acrosss some stuff and waking up a few weeks later knowing I would never be a muslim again.

    So suddenly? lol  Wink
    Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #10 - December 15, 2009, 08:52 PM
    I had doubts since my early teens and never really recovered from them. Like Berbs, my doubt was always about God. Religion was just a casualty of that doubt. If the notion of God was incoherent, then discussing the merits or strengths of religion just seemed futile.

    When I looked deeper, I realised that the followers were really "trusting" Muhammad and what he had to say. Even that was rather dubious, because there really was next to nothing in terms of eye witness accounts. Everything we had came from the six books of hadith and Ibn Ishaq. In the first case, it was more thatn two hundred years after the events and in the second it was more than one hundred years. On what basis was I to trust these sources as an accurate historical account, trust?

    I was already having doubts about God. The arguments that were put forward as "evidence" were extremely fragile and I could see the holes in them. To top that off, as I stated above, the historical sources for a religion that is claiming to be the final religion just seemed rather incoherent. There wasn't anything that distinguished it from other religions. Absolutely nothing!
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #11 - December 15, 2009, 09:15 PM
    It's odd. I've always had doubts about God, and regularly debated with atheists and was exposed to all the arguments. But to me.. God was all about faith, not reason. If my heart was intact, no argument against god would matter in the slightest. Because it boiled down to emotions for me.

    It was my faith in Islam and my disgust towards Muhammad that grinded away at my religious convictions. I lost my faith in Islam first but remained sort of Deistic/Pantheist afterwards. In fact I'd say I was a Deist/Pantheist for many months while I was actually still practicing. My view was that all religions were simply human-made ways to praise the self-evident divine and the prime mover.

    After my practice in Islam ended and I removed myself to Muslim company I started approaching the issue of God in general in a more open manner and didn't take me long to reject the divine altogether. My idea was that even if there was a divine origin/deity of some sort, he was most likely some sort of barely conscious prime mover - and such a "god" is really meaningless to my life anyways, so why bother?

    So my faith really progressed in a very incremental downward slope:

    Traditional Islam -> Liberal/Metaphorical Islam -> Deistic Islam -> Deism/Pantheism -> Agnosticism -> Atheism

    I can sort of understand why the fundamentalists are crazy against any sort of liberal manifestations of Islam. It really is a slippery slope towards eventually leaving the faith altogether.
    Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
    Iblis has mad debaterin' skillz. Best not step up unless you're prepared to recieve da pain.

  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #12 - December 15, 2009, 09:57 PM
    Few weeks, was looking for an excuse to let it go Wink
    ~My story~
    ~Collection of unethical hadiths/surahs~
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #13 - December 15, 2009, 10:01 PM
    for me it was a period of 3 years.

    at 13 being a devout Sunni Salafi Muslim to becoming a Deist at 16 then onto becoming an Atheist
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #14 - December 16, 2009, 12:10 AM
    Ages 16-18 for me. It takes time for the mind to adjust. Inner beliefs don't change over night since they are intrinsic to a person. There are many variables:

    - how young they are
    - how locked in the faith one is at the start
    - how much pressure around them
    - how much space there is for open thinking & the information to think counter-wise
    - courage
    - how much one likes to ponder over such matter

    Average conversion rates from the "Introduce yourself" thread probably come up with these characteristics:
    - lost faith between 15-20
    - have access to decent education (and internet, obviously)
    Hear ye -->> DONATE TO CEMB

    Relativism | Cognitive dissonance | Cognitive biases | Memeplex | Consequentialism
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #15 - December 16, 2009, 12:15 AM
    Quote
    God was all about faith, not reason. If my heart was intact, no argument against god would matter in the slightest. Because it boiled down to emotions for me.


    See, this thing about faith was simply about credulity. I had a friend who said something similar to what you have just said. He said that it was all about faith and the arguments didn't move him a bit. What used to get me about that argument was that it could be made about any religion or any number of dieties. For Islam and Allah to be real and valid, it simply couldn't be about faith. Something had to distinguish it from the others. I also saw it as a rather false virtue or a kind of arrogant and stubborn stance.

    There was a point where I thought that maybe I was being punished for asking too many questions and that "faith" was being taken away from me by God. But then I came to the realisation that it was my credulity for thinking like that and the very notion of this kind of faith is nonsense.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #16 - December 16, 2009, 03:33 AM
    Took me three days to get to the point of no return, but it took maybe 4 months to get to agnostic deism.
    "We were married by a Reform rabbi in Long Island. A very Reform rabbi. A Nazi."-- Woody Allen
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #17 - December 16, 2009, 04:58 AM
    Technically I never was a muslim since I had doubts from the beginning.
     
    I didn't hear much about religion until I was about 4-5, then my family suddenly started telling me about heaven/hell, Allah and all that. At first I didn't believe them at all but they told me that if I question it, it'll be a sin and i'll go to hell, so I started believing it.

    Then there was a period when I was 10/11 and my hormones were building up, that I was really jihadist, supporting osama bin laden & taliban, etc just the way I used to idolize He-man, Superman etc before that.  I'm very thankful to my elder brother who basically woke me up and taught me about concepts like racism, secularism, etc which I had never heard of (I suspect he is also an agnostic/athiest though he hasn't told anyone, and neither have I).

    Then I was still a muslim for a while though I didn't like saying prayers and all the religious duties, and looked for excuses to not do them (i basically very rarely said prayers and that too only before exams and such  dance). Furthermore i had a growing attraction for girls, and then guilt as I tried to suppress it, and one day when i was 14-15 I just asked myself that if Islam were really true and god had created me, then sexual attraction must also have been created by him. So it would be OK if I had sex or watched porn etc. Plus I learnt more about how it was a biological desire experienced by everyone and not something I personally created and need to feel guilty about. This also started making me doubt many other things in islam.

    Until last year I was in that state where I still called myself a muslim and believed in the core aspects of the religion, but I never prayed, did whatever i wanted to do, had a few girlfriends, etc (though i didn't drink or eat pork, and still haven't). Then last year I learnt more about evolution and I researched it, and found that it was proven that humans evolved rather than being sent in as adam & eve. Furthermore I found out about the many contradictions in quran, and in religions alltogether. All of this I found in perhaps a few weeks. And then I basically decided to abandon it for good, and that no god was going to smite me and send me to hell for it. And i've been feeling liberated since Smiley.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #18 - December 16, 2009, 06:09 PM
    Quote

    I didn't hear much about religion until I was about 4-5


    Me too!

    Quote
    Furthermore i had a growing attraction for girls, and then guilt as I tried to suppress it


    Islam takes somethig so natural and makes it un-natural.

    The irony is that you get to have all these things in the Paradise - Houris with see through skin and erection that lasts all eternity.

    As for me I did not have problem with God.

    I was very uneasy with Muhammad from the start....




    Challenge All Ideologies but don't Hate People.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #19 - December 16, 2009, 06:22 PM
    Quote
    erection that lasts all eternity.


    Dude.. does it really say that?  piggy piggy piggy piggy piggy

    Quote
    Islam takes somethig so natural and makes it un-natural.

    The irony is that you get to have all these things in the Paradise - Houris with see through skin and erection that lasts all eternity.


    I'm glad I was actually crazy enough to question this belief and think about it rationally to figure out that since the biological desires were created by god, then surely it can't be my fault if i felt those desires, and that made me stop feeling guilty about it.

    Ironically the same elder brother I mentioned above once asked one of our really religious uncles about what women get in heaven if men get hoors. All my brother got in response was a really dirty look  Cheesy, although it was damn funny, it made everyone laugh
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #20 - December 17, 2009, 02:01 PM
    aaah like it. Very intriguing story. Kind of similar to mine. Maybe I'll post mine up one day.
    "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #21 - December 17, 2009, 02:05 PM
    Quote
    aaah like it. Very intriguing story. Kind of similar to mine. Maybe I'll post mine up one day.


    Post it now!!  parrot
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #22 - December 17, 2009, 02:15 PM
    ACtually since I'm here I'll say that I was never really religious in the practising sense but I moulded Islam it which it fitted my life. I did not fully realise that Islam was something that you mould to fit the religion instead. I steadily found out some hurtful truths about Islam i.e. that it allowed slavery, and the rather immoral character of the prophet who used the standards of his time and set them as an eternal moral precedent for all Muslims. Instead of accepting them I ignored them and put them in the 'closet', and basically took the good and inspirational ideas and basically formed my own version of Islam. I guess after a while I was tired of living a lie, I mean my parents were not like devout religious people they allowd me to go parties and hang out with friends (I don't drink btw) but they still believed in Islam. Gradually my faith in Islam began to slowly diminish and that was it. Once faith is gone it rarely ever comes back and being a str8forward logical persn I can no longer believe in Islam.

    The problem I now face is telling my situation to my parents. Problem is, in our community, word travels fast, and although the idea of living a lie continuously pains me right now I am not ready to hurt my parents especially since we've been having major family problems and our situation is kind of shit right now. But, yeah, it was a gradual process albeit not as long as some people - maybe a couple of years.
    "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #23 - December 17, 2009, 03:03 PM
    Interesting story. If your parents aren't really religious would they really care?
    If you think it'll do more harm than good then I would opt to not tell them at this stage. There might be a better time later on.
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #24 - December 17, 2009, 03:21 PM
    Well its a brief outline of the story. Going into details will kind of get me emotionally charged and I'm not really up 4 that right now. If u are interested in reading a well written, full account of Muslim apostasy go to Hassan's profile links. Best written story I've read. You will be moved.

    Regarding telling my parents, my mum will be angry, she recently told me she feels guilty that I'm 19 now and I do not know how to pray but I've gt a whole lot of more important shit going on so I told her basically I'm an adult no wand she shouldn't feel guilty because it's my responsibility. She thinks that I'm learning nothing about my religion when to the contrary I've read much of the Qur'an and I simply do not believe in it anymore. One Surah I do concur with, is verse 2:220 or something which states 'Let there be no compulsion in religion' if Muslims followed this more, I guess at least apostates will no longer feel as troubled to leave Islam. I love my parents regardless of their religious beliefs but having said that I can not just force myself to believe for their sake, the dishonesty and hypocrisy I would feel is just too much.
    "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #25 - December 17, 2009, 11:50 PM
    Quote from: Heyjustlooking on December 17, 2009, 02:01 PM
    aaah like it. Very intriguing story. Kind of similar to mine. Maybe I'll post mine up one day.

    Go for it  Afro
    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: Did you lose your religion gradually or was it sudden agonising Departure?
     Reply #26 - December 18, 2009, 12:33 AM
    I will do a full version when I have time and I'm in the mood for it lol.
    "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
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