enlightenment

i am often asked what made me turn atheist, in the conceptual sense, e.g. why, notions about belief, religion, divinity, etc, which i'm not going to go into in this post, suffice to say its a nonexistence of faith - incidentally i prefer this term (for lack of a better one) over others such as "lack of faith" or "not having faith", which seem to have negative connotations, implying a want or a need but not having it. if anything nonexistence of faith for me is a liberating notion. but anyway, stuff for another discussion..

..and also from a notion of "turning points" or some dramatic event that caused me to take an abrupt change of view. in reality its nothing like that, rather than an abrupt change it was an eventually progression and development or even evolution of conceptions of (my view) of reality, of a weltanshauung, if you may. everyday (figuratively of course) i continually develop, expand and deepen my views of reality, realizing if anything that it is an evolving conception, a neverending process of learning (some may find this 'lack' of overarching truth disconcerting, i on the other hand find awe in the mystery and pursuit of my constructions of reality, which needs no divine element or inspiration)

but i digress again. when i was young i tried hard to be a good muslim, trying to pray, fast, recite the qur'an and talk to god before sleeping, but of course that didn't work out very well. thinking it was simply the wrong religion, i tried christianity, going to church, reading the bible, adopting symbols etc, but again that didnt work. but in both scenarios what i did enjoy was the sense of community it entailed, the sense of belonging (although i didnt realize it at the time), e.g. being able to walk into the mosque or amongst fellow christians and think, i'm one of you, we have something in common.

its only when i stepped outside of the bubble that was my life and went to college did i really come to accept my deeply inherent though process and the consequent world view that is at complete odds with any notions of divinity or religion. of course this was a complicated journey, enabled by many things, including the very personal, experiences with different religions (so btw no one can say i didnt try :p), openess and exposure to different POVs in a new environment (and more importantly, acceptance of a culture of alternative POVs, granted this was the US, not exactly the epitome of free thought, but then again we're comparing with M'sia remember), and so on, all equally important.

here i'm gonna talk about the affect of a community of peers, if anything it was being able to be around others with similar worldviews, and here I dont necessarily mean only other atheists, but others who share a common paradigm and analytical approach to reality, even if the conclusions are different. the sense of need for community of the likeminded, or peers, is (in my view) of course genetically programed in us as social creatures, our survival depends on social relationships (or, more accurately, genes that promote affinity to like-minded individuals will propagate better in a socially-determined survival environment because we will tend to help each other survive).

In other words, the paradigms or belief constructs that i attempted to try out and explore in the beginning was really not about belief or the meaning of life per se (although related), it was really about finding a sense of belonging. so being able to gain acceptance into an (informal) "community", or rather finding an (informal) community of the likeminded to which I can attribute a sense of belonging, was an important factor in allowing me to shed these attempts at belief constructs, which were really nothing more than baggage, dead weight that masked itself as something else and really had no purpose (the radical humanist emancipation?). this allowed me to open up and freely and fully explore my views and conceptions, without worry of being ostracized. because in reality you never really belonged anyway.