MutedMiles

What do you expect ? There are laws against them to be executed if they happen to be in wrong place and stating something very obvious. Everyone has a particular experience of religion in their life while growing up, due to how it is interpreted by society and people around them. For some it's like a "toxic relationship" which they need to quit to be alive and healthy again. Mostly early on Ex-Muslims are filled with rage due to obvious reasons and some make the rage an identity but many find there way in life after few years and being an Atheist doesn't play any major role in there lives. I found seasoned ex-Muslims to be really balanced and un-biased people. It's a rare combination of courage, integrity and insight that makes someone take such a huge call, specially people from some of the less privileged countries.

If it's not your direct experience it's just speculations and concepts running around in your head. The best advise i received on spirituality is to stay with my experience. Now I can have all the knowledge about consciousness but those are concepts that i'm accumulating, having more concepts like that doesn't mean I get it. These words point to something that's what matters.

I don't know what they mean by conscious experience, however while writing this reply, there is awareness of what is happening at this moment, it is something involving thoughts, sensations of my body and my hands pressing buttons additionally there is awareness of visual space too, and making sense of this along with characters appearing on the screen. Now making sense of what's going on, does have a social angle to it. However the real fact of being aware of all this is clearly at a much fundamental level. To understand we can imagine another thought experiment. By imagining a child when he is just born, Now assuming there are no concepts at that moment, the child is very aware of the experience of what's happening, that to me is consciousness which clearly precedes all concepts that will come afterwards, including the concept of the "self" and living and experiencing life on behalf of a person in whatever social context that person happen to find himself.

I think I'll die somewhere between 70 and 80, while being optimistic. This means i have some 20 to 30 years left in me. The reason is medical issue that i have. This is optimistic assessment otherwise I could die anytime. I'm otherwise healthy and well, and sufficiently active also don't have any chronic diseases, just a genetic condition that i have from birth which was discovered very recently.

For me, it's Erik Satie: