Within the run-up to the 2022 Lebanese parliamentary elections, I began a 15-episode podcast sequence the place I attempted to showcase candidates I believed in and endorsed. I felt the affect of those long-form, measured and fewer bombastic (than IG tales) podcast episodes was spectacular, and I loved recording them.
After the mud had settled, I made a decision to longer episodes with friends I respect or admire, discussing areas of their experience or a lived expertise I really feel is price sharing with whoever desires to hear. The primary episode of this sequence was with a pricey good friend of mine, Pamela Ghanem, and we mentioned a topic typically taboo in our a part of the world: being an atheist.
The dialog kicked off with our private journeys of shedding religion. For me, it was beginning my Biology research at AUB as a closely religiously conservative Maronite Catholic. Quickly sufficient, I spotted the complexity of Nature and the way elegant pure choice was, the necessity for a “creator” wasn’t chopping it. I felt immense guilt, as Catholics normally do. Possibly it’s Devil testing me. Let me learn a couple of books about scientists who discovered religion. Each e book made me lose religion much more although. Ultimately, one behavioral neuroscience course with a professor that actually modified my life, kicked me from the precarious cliff to the opposite excessive, and after a yr’s battle, turned a cheerful, fulfilled individual with out a god.
We then jumped in to match the rise of spiritual extremism in all places, whether or not in at residence within the Center East, or proper right here in America with overturning of Roe vs Wade in a significant victory for the Christian proper and a fair larger blow to ladies’s rights.
The dialog then moved to why religion appears ingrained in us, and my tackle how nature chosen for us to assign intention to inanimate issues, and the way that advanced as we settled down in sedentary cities and cities and have become extra artistic with our perception techniques (that always replicate civilization on the time of every perception system’s ‘golden age’)
The conclusion was a message to Arab women and men in international locations the place their lack of religion might land them in jail, or buried within the floor. If it compromises your security or liberty, you don’t have to threat it. We care about you, we don’t need you harm. Understanding we’ve got this one life, we recognize how treasured and unlikely it’s, and squandering it for guarantees of an afterlife looks like such a waste of human potential within the closest factor to goal actuality we expertise.
