actually i come from reddit. i wanted to meet some new comrades.
i posted my story on reddit so i'll link two stories from there. actually it won't let me link, so i'll copy paste instead. you guys can google it to get to the source
becoming an exmuslim, from two of my reddit comments.
i stopped being a muslim after seeing this video (ken miller video on chromosome 2)
this was around late 07, early 08. i can't say i understood as much about evolution as i do now, but this guy was presenting genetic evidence. you just can't go up against dna. science was in direct contradiction to what was thought to me. and you know, i like science.
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i was born in to a turkish muslim family. so i don't know arabic. i was thought how to read the quran when i was young, and i even read half of it, even tho i didn't understand what i was reading (stupid isn't it). i did it to gain 'sevab'
i remember asking my religious teachers, and my dad, why i couldn't just learn arabic and interpret for myself what it said. it's quite funny actually, they will tell you that the quran is the word of Allah, but you don't have the scholarship of interpreting it for yourself, since it's in arabic and written a very long time ago. you need to rely on religious "scholars", "alims", "ulemas" and "evliyas" for your understanding of islam. now who made these people scholars, that is another issue all together.
so i can't pinpoint to you where in the quran it says some nonsense about science. (actually ash09 would like to have a [1] word with you) i wasn't thought islam from the quran at all. i would venture to say that this is also the experience of most if not many muslims around the world. i think ~20% of muslims are arabs.
some muslim reading this might be thinking i'm letting the quran off the hook. and that the truth is in the quran and i just haven't seen it yet or that i haven't found an interpretation supporting evolution, abiogenesis and the big bang and whatever else. i honestly don't think allah took three tries to get things right. he sent people in the desert the tevrat(torah), and than he sent them the incil(bible) to supercede his previous laws and then the quran to supercede the previous two and all involving some alleged 120,000 prophets. but this too is also besides the point.
after i learned about abiogenesis and evolution, i wanted to see what these "scholars" had to say about it. so i opened up one of my dad's book of some "scholar" and read it. i still remember the argument he presented. he said what are the chances of pulling 10 numbers, from one to ten, out of a bag in the right order. it's 1 in 3628800 (1 in 10!). if the chances are that low for something mundane like pulling balls out of bag in order, what are the chances for molecules coming together and forming cells.
this "scholar" clearly didn't know what he was talking about. abiogenesis, and evolution are not things defined by chance. things don't just come together, bump into each other and form something of magnificent order just randomly. there is a natural mechanism to all this. someone who doesn't have an understanding of this mechanism might buy into this "scholar's" disingenuous, straw-hat argument.
so i guess i have to thank the internet, and especially youtube. lot's of videos on evolution there. if you read my long reply, at least watch this video.
becoming an atheist, another comment
i have read many many stories of fellow atheists here. in fact i'm the moderator of r/thegreatproject.
i understand that we all came to the same conclusion that god is a figment of human imagination. but most of my fellow atheists came to that conclusion by questioning god's contradictory nature.
it's just, that's not how i got there. i used to be a muslim, i remember watching ken miller present genetic evidence of the fusion of chromosome #2. i stopped being a muslim because science was in direct contradiction with what i was brought up to believe. and for a while, i was agnostic.
i remember a friend asked me once why i believed in god, and i thought about sincerely for a few seconds and i said "because i want to," i realized it wasn't a rational reason, but it wasn't enough to push me over the hump.
one day as i was staring at a pencil on my table. i thought to myself, how could i move it with my mind. the 'bending spoon' scene from the matrix had left a mark on me. as i thought about it, i realized the only way one could move that pencil was if he/she put in some energy in to it thru a physical process. and it just dawned on me right there. that one could not break the laws of the universe. if the laws held true for the pen and the space surrounding the pen, they would have to hold true for all space and time. they held true for the whole universe. [you could also extend this for all of existence, think about the nature of the universe 'before' the big bang]
i immediately realized miracles can't happen. more importantly, miracles didn't happen. jesus didn't walk on water, and turn water in whine. these were blatant violations.
and i couldn't fit in a god in to that universe. because he is incompatible with such a universe. coupled with the notion that believing is equivalent to wanting to believe, it occurred to me that god didn't exist. a few days later, i saw stephen hawkings give an interview to charlie rose, and he practically brought up the same points about the universe. i knew i was right.
i'm turkish, tho i spent a good chunk of my life in the US. thank fsm, otherwise I wouldn't have had access to information that led me out of this indoctrination. i'm also grateful for having a good head on my shoulders. religion is like a psychological disorder, it seriously cripples critical thinking. unfortunately, i don't think a lot of people have the hardware to escape from its clutches.
i'm also looking for feedback. i think here in turkey one of the biggest obstacles to free thought is that the majority of muslims don't go to the source of the information.  and most of the source is in english, so there is a huge language barrier. this might sound stupid, but i was wondering if there is a way we could email spam the hell out of the country with information. bring the information to them. at least expose them to the information. everyday, i get a few emails from nigerians asking for money. i realize there are a lot of technical hurdles in pulling this off, so what do you guys think?
another idea i had was to confront all these muslims on facebook. using facebook as a platform, we could inflate, and i mean really really inflate our numbers thru fake accounts, i've seen trolls do this, and argue with them. maybe a program can keep track of all the accounts.
one of my biggest pleasures is to get to know other exmuslims. we are so rare, it's not funny. nice to meet you all.
Topic: hey another exmuslim