Journey to Atheism

When I was a kid in elementary I asked my mom what Allah looks like.
She said, "Close your eyes and think about it". Back then I believed that women were intrinsically nicer than men, so my mental image of Allah was chosen by me to be female. I was also upset that Allah was constantly being referred to as a "He" by people.

My belief changed when I realized that people can be mean irrespective of gender, so my conception of Allah changed to a gender neutral entity.

From elementary school to grade 8 I associated religion with race because I noticed a pattern. White people were likely to be Christian. Brown people probably Muslim or Hindu.

In grade 9, I started high school where the student body had a large Chinese population. I was stumped because my religion-race model was failing because I was unable to map "Chinese" to a religion. I read in a book at my mosque's library about Confucius who lived in China and started a religion. I asked my Chinese friend what his religion was and he said, "I have none". I responded ignorantly, "but aren't you a follower of Confucius?". He responded with patience, "his teaching are outdated, no one follows him anymore". I ignored his response and just assumed that Chinese people are primarily Confucianists.

In the winter of 2010, I had another friend to whom I asked, "Do you believe in a god?". "No". "What? So what caused the big bang?". "I don't know and I don't care. I'm an atheist". Before then I never thought that it was possible to not believe in a god. I thought that he was an idiot for not giving a shit about the universe. But he challenged me by being the first person to admit that they didn't know. I started to shift my thinking into a more scientific light (I've always had a passion for science, but that's a different story).

One by one, my conception of Allah slowly shedded it's human attributes. This can be shown by how I ask my friend that question. I was asking "what" and not "who" caused the big bang. Allah wasn't a person anymore. Around this time I recalled what I was taught in religious class when I was in kindergarten. "Allah is everywhere". I reasoned therefore "Allah must be (or in) everything".

Sometime around 2010/13 I discovered the wikipedia article on 'pantheism'. I was like, "that's what Allah is!". "Allah is equivalent to Nature!" I was happy at my realization, I felt as if I was dealing with good news. I felt like I was finally able to find a balance between religion and science.

When I shared my findings with my sister she said, "You know that goes against Islam right?" That response felt like slamming into a brick wall. It was around this point when I understood that Allah was distinct from my conception of god. I stopped believing in Allah and started to believe in my pantheistic god conception. It was also around this time when I started becoming irreligious. Even if Allah exists, I wasn't concerned that he will be mad if I didn't believe in him. I reasoned that Allah couldn't convict me of thought crime.

During my research on pantheism, I discovered a youtube video with Richard Dawkins who described pantheism as "sexed-up atheism". My reaction to that video was a tipping point. I became interested in atheism as I devoured all atheistic content on youtube because, surprisingly, there's lots of it! I was impressed at how popular atheism was with scientists. I felt like I had finally found what I was looking for.

For a bit I was between a pantheist and an atheist. I was a pantheist who was open to the idea of atheism. Then I found an episode of The Atheist Experience where a pantheist caller phoned in. I think it was Jeff Dee who pointed out to the caller that they have effectively reduced "god" to an absolutely useless term and how it's just a word game. The argument was like, "Why call nature: 'god' when we already have a perfectly good word for nature: 'nature'? What's the point of playing with definitions?" I think that settled the issue entirely.

And that's how I became an atheist.

*confetti*