How did you feel after leaving your religion and becoming atheist?

When I left islam and realized all other religions are a load of bull crap and became atheist It was one of the best feeling i had i felt free from guilt and can do anything you want like  accepting facts , sexual desires are ok , eating pork etc as long as your not hurting others. What about you what was how did it feel and what about your story ? Sorry for my bad English since it's not my first language.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 2, 2012 at 9:39am

Nice topic Ibrahim.

My own exit from fundamentalism was gradual, and so long ago I don't remember all of the details any more.

As others state it was liberating.  

I was amazing to know that I had full responsibility for my life.  Not just in religious rules but all aspects.

It was like I someone had removed a hood from over my head,  letting in light, and air, and vision, and hearing.

I gave me a chance to discover how others became who they were.

That inspiration resulted in living a life, far different from what it would have been.

Instead of eating pork, I would up vegetarian, but that is my choice.  You have yours.

You are right about sexual liberation.  And dietary liberation.  And thought liberation.

I learned that, having one life, it was my responsibility to make it matter.

I am more forgiving of others.  We are only human.

Enjoy your life Ibrahim!  Make it count!

Permalink Reply by DarkBlack on October 6, 2012 at 6:25pm

I had a feeling of freedom (from fear of wrath and the chains that had held my mind), clarity (I realised how much I had twisted my own mind to make religion fit) and pride (I was not a useless sinner who could not get anything right without god's help, my achievements are my own).

It was a little scary, because there is no plan, no powerful being looking out for me, on god to call on in a time of need and I had to be responsible for my own fate.

Then I realised what I could do and achieve with that responsibility and all I had to do was step up and accept it. 

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 6, 2012 at 8:03pm

I just woke up one day and realized theism hadn't made sense to me for the past two years. I just discovered that I was already an atheist. Just an acknowledgement of wholeness and authenticity which I'd achieved somewhere deep in my brain, then making a minor adjustment in thinking to accommodate it.

Permalink Reply by Liz on October 7, 2012 at 11:37am

I'd have to echo the other posters' feelings of freedom and relief.  But my exact feelings were closest to yours, Ruth.  I had drifted farther and farther from my "born" religion, flirted with some others, but nothing fit.  But I hadn't "said the word" to myself. That took a few years, but when I did, I realized that I had let belief go years ago.  It was, if I may say so, graceful :)

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 7, 2012 at 5:24pm

A good way to put it, Liz.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on October 29, 2012 at 6:08pm

Kalliope, I don't know you but i'm happy for you. Welcome to our world.

Permalink Reply by Two Cult Survivor on October 31, 2012 at 2:13pm

I think I was sad, really. Then angry, not only at myself, but at those whose critical thinking skills I respected, leading me to conclude that I was wrong about them or that I was right and they have to know they're peddling nonsense. I was shunned by my faith for divorcing my first wife (we had no kids; it was no one's flipping business but our own). I had people telling me my second marriage was adultery by Christ's definition (who asked him?).

But I was sad to realize that I had wasted so much time studying and devoting myself to the understanding of a conflicting mess of fairy tales served up as holy truth. All the time I spent trying to figure out if Noah's Flood was true or false, worldwide or regional, could have been spent training a telescope to the sky or really getting a firm grasp of the truly awe-inspiring process of evolution by natural selection.

The worst thing about believing a fiction is the opportunity cost: you waste time doing something useless that could have been spent more wisely doing something constructive.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on October 31, 2012 at 8:58pm

"...the opportunity cost...."

Thank you, TCS, for the reminder. I wasted much time and energy trying to comply with Catholicism. My healing required me to see that the time and energy Catholicism demanded had been doing something constructive for Catholicism: making me easier to control.

BTW, I minored in economics and your using the term 'opportunity cost' moved me to look for its first use. In Wikipedia I found this: The term was coined in 1914 by Friedrich von Wieser in his book "Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft." My mother spoke German but she didn't pass her knowledge to her kids.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pianko on October 31, 2012 at 7:52pm
I felt about the same as you did, free from all the guilt of not doing the religion and free to do activities or work in the time I would have had to go to religious services. I'm a lapsed Jew and my parents sent me to religious classes at their synagogue and the classes taught a higher level of Judaism than what my parents did so a vacillated between feeling guilty for not doing orthodox Judaism and just going along with what my family did or didn't do and in college I had to go to Hillel (a Jewish college organization) and Chabad (a sect of Hasidic Judaism) often and to weekday afternoon/evening services in addition to 2-3 hour long Saturday morning service and the Saturday afternoon/evening service, all in order to avoid feeling guilty for not doing it, so I would feel that I was doing my sacred duty to keep the Jewish traditions. I came out as an atheist in October 2009 but was still afraid to talk to non-Jewish girls or go to non-Jewish event until August 2010.

Now I am well familiar with what is wrong with religion and I say Judaism and probably religion in general also, is a system of bizarre, inherited, maladaptive, abusive, time-wasting, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and beliefs, a mental disorder people inherit and sometimes modify a little and have to do and pass on to other people in order to avoid feeling guilty for not doing it.

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