I often receive messages from Muslims, including former Ahmadi Muslims, who no longer believe. But they stick around as cultural Muslims because they enjoy the sense of community they’ve grown up with. They wish and hope for there to be an afterlife. They just cannot accept Islam theologically as they’ve taken a critical and close view of the Qur’an. Other religions seem similarly ridiculous to them.
These cultural Muslims do find value in some religious positions however, as a means of pushing back against some trends they perceive in popular culture, such as the sexualization of young children. This post is my response to one such private message, which I feel can benefit many other cultural Muslims going through a similar thought process.
These are not unreasonable positions.
I’m also culturally conservative in many ways. I think it would be great for a subset of Humanists to form different societies that resemble religions in that they provide community, structure and some non-controversial, structured ethical teachings.
Imagine a “Sunday School” where the kids read from wise extracts of stoic philosophers that we curated, instead of Qur’anic verses excoriating “the disbelievers”. Where we read inspiring stories from Khalil Gibran instead of Sahih Bukhari or the biography of Muhammad.
That hasn’t happened yet because so many people who leave religion are scared of re-inventing anything that even remotely resembles it, and re-starting the vicious cycle of control and dogma anew.
On definitions, being an atheist just means that you are not convinced that there is a god (by default, without specifiers, “atheism” implicitly means taking the “weak atheism” position). This is a completely different question than whether you would like or hope that there is a deity out there.
Hoping doesn’t make it so. So these are two different questions for you to be honest with yourself about.
I wish there was an afterlife to frolic around in for eternity too. But that doesn’t mean I have good reasons to believe it.
The first stage in achieving progress is self-honesty. Set aside what you wish to be true, and first get clear on what you earnestly believe is actually true. Then go from there.
What you want to then do is codify what you feel is missing in the world. And help popularize that secular philosophy. Some groups have already gotten started. For example, The Ethical Culture Movement.
If you watch/listen to enough episodes of the YouTube show, The Atheist Experience (you could even call in to the live show), you’ll get a lot of these concepts better clarified in your mind.
Consider the position of deism as a way to hold on to a belief in an Intelligent Creator and let go of the mythical claims of all “revealed” religions ever known to humankind. Maybe that will strike a chord with you. Read Thomas Paine‘s classic The Age of Reason. He’s a founding father of the United States of America, and was a vocal deist.
Finally, you may find my post on Beliefs and Labels of interest, walking you through the terminology.
A Logistical Note
As I don’t have time for many 1:1 conversations, if you’d like to contact me and have me weigh in on a topic, please create a pseudonym and post publicly, including on Twitter.
I do wish to invest my time sharing what I can in a way that can reach the most people. Your questions are bound to be ones that others want to ask. Share your thoughts publicly. You’ll realize that you are not alone. Thanks for understanding. Peace.