Basically, it was combination of many things that lead me to disbelief but firstly, it was the double standards I saw in my religious community and the inability to tolerate questioning and also too much division even though my religion’s holy scripture claims that it is a clear book, and if it was from other than God, you would find a lot of disagreements. And being an atheist has somehow gave me freedom and sadness like when I was in religion, I can do only limited amount of things and cannot be truly myself, I was always worried if me and my parents would end up being in hell or what if I lose my faith in God or what if I got punished in my grave, I am also bisexual so the part that it is sin made me cry and pray a lot to take this “abnormality” away from me, now I do not need to hate myself and my feelings and desires, I can be friends with anyone and can do a lot of things which I cannot do, I can question my views more boldly and look for unrestricted knowledge. Sadness came though due to the fact that God, who was the source of comfort and fear for me, the source of ultimate truth, the only thing I can trust to, my dearest friend whom I can call upon anytime, to whom I can talk in my whispers, is dead. That death causes me pain. Although I sometimes invoke a different god from my religion but deep down I know they also don’t exist and so it makes me sad. And also, it stripped me away from that main character vibe that I am part of some special group who have the word of God and ultimate truth, worthy of forgiveness. Now I am just a tiny part of a huge cosmos.

Nah, we can be mob-lynched or kidnapped out of our places due to “blasphemy” taken seriously and it all exists online mostly. We have to be very careful and most of us remained closeted atheists at least when we are living in that country.

Thank you

I am personally reading The Big Picture by Sean Carroll right now and it is awesome. I like watching Alex O Connor, Heliocentric, Genetically Modified Skeptic. For books, I personally prefer reading classics or banned books or like mainstream religious scriptures like Bible, Koran, and etc.

Where I live, if you are not so much vocal about it like yeah I don’t practice it, I am a progressive believer, then generally it is not big of a deal. It is mostly a deal if you are vocal about it. Most of the intellectuals, scientists, even some religious clergy are secretly atheist but they won’t come out due to extremist mentality of people.

I have not heard that but I have started to read The Book of Mormon. There are some voluntary organizations that worked in my country ran by Christians. I have visited a Catholic-owned (I did not know it before as they did not have a Christian sounding name) home for mentally and physically disabled children and adults as part of my community assignment (in 2024). It was kinda good like architecture was good, children were good, it had children of all backgrounds dancing playing. It seemed good maybe cuz preaching of any other religion other than the state religion (which is not Christianity) is generally very rare and you cannot convert the person out of the state religion into another religion legally so we don’t see other religions being expressed as publicly as possible.