u/carlataggarty

Leaving Islam is always a good thing, but you may be leaving Islam for the wrong reasons. The ONLY valid reason to leave Islam is that you no longer believe Islam is real. If you 'left' Islam just because you think the teachings are too harsh or strict, or you want more 'freedom', or you just want to feel rebellious, or the result of some trauma, these are not good, intellectually valid reason reasons to leave Islam. In fact I would argue if these were your reasons, you never actually left, and will most probably return many years later even more religious than ever.

I understand that creationism from religions are almost all nonsense and is not supported by any evidence whatsoever, with that said these points have been bothering me for a long time

1. From what I understand, whatever unknown process that created the first living organism on Earth, it seems to have only ever happened ONCE; all life on Earth appear to originate from a single unknown process billions of years ago and doesn't appear to happen again ever. It bothers me an that a supposedly naturalistic event seem to only ever happen just once a long time ago, instead of several if not many times over.

2. From the trillions of species that emerged from all life on Earth in it's billions of years, only ONE has achieved human-level intelligence/sentience, we humans. It bothers me that after billions of years and trillions of species, we're the only 'intelligent' species on the planet, with no other species coming even remotely close; there are no intelligent species of crab or fish or insect that is able to think, feel, and experience consciousness at least at the level we do.

3. We seem to be the ONLY intelligent species in the observable universe, or at least intelligent enough to send radio signals. I don't expect aliens to come visit us on spaceships, since interstellar travel is near-infinitely impossible by our current scientific understanding, but I do expect at least radio signals coming from them. It's been about 14 billion years since the big bang, presumably if intelligent alien life exists and developed into a civilization that's advanced enough to develop radio technology, we should at least receive at least some of them, but for some reason we haven't.

You know, brooding cynical antihero protag who is a thief or rogue, dark city steam punk fantasy setting, warring factions in the city vying for power, conspiracies everywhere, that sort of thing.