Below is the story of my life over the past twenty years, highly condensed but as honest as I can make it. It is a story of my attempts to try to get to God, and how I totally and completely failed to do so. It is a story of the anguish and misery accompanied by that failure. There is happiness in my story, as it is related to God, only in my very early childhood when I believed anything and everything was possible.

Any person who has walked away from religion will know what I mean when I speak of the wild thrill of elation you experience in doing so. These feelings arise when you realize that you have actually managed to get rid of all the dogma and emotional baggage related to your faith. For the first time you are being straight with yourself, and are discovering that you can actually THINK for yourself and not depend on a doctrine or a belief system. I would imagine that some people even feel angry when they realize the negative and confusing effect these things have had on their lives and a sense of having wasted years on something that turns out to be a massive delusion.

At the moment, I am just starting out on a life in which I have totally abandoned religion, completely, totally and utterly. I feel truly free! No heaven, no hell, no guilt, no fear, no angels, no devils, no miracles, no God. This is the result of years of searching for the Christian God, and finding that he does not exist. It is not a position I have chosen, it is the only possible conclusion I could have come to. It is the natural position we all are born into, until parental and societal influences intervene. I suppose if I had not been exposed to religious dogma (trauma) there would be no realization of the non-existence of a God; I would simply have taken it for granted. I had been sitting on the fence for years, not living a Christian life, but still harbouring secret and atavistic fears. Over the past few years, and especially the last few months, I have been actively replacing those fears (and the shell of a defunct religion) with a view of the world, and our place in it, grounded in science and reason. I am, at last, experiencing freedom from the angst and deeply incongruous feelings and thoughts that come with religion. Atheism is a great tonic!

I recall from my childhood a collection of illustrated bible books for children that my parents bought for me when I was about three or four years old. It was a beautiful set of, if I recall correctly, twelve books, richly illustrated with paintings depicting the events of the bible (accompanied by text that was inaccessible to me, although, I suppose, my mother may have read to me from the books, but I don't remember this). I do, however, clearly recall many of the colourful pictures. There were many dramatic pictures, dark storm clouds, fire and explosions, even cataclysmic pictures of the great battles yet to be fought at the end times. There were also peaceful, gentle pictures. In particular, there was a picture of a little girl in one of the books, looking up at the reader and smiling and, in her hands was an open book with the one single phrase "GOD IS LOVE" (my Mom must have been the interpreter!)...This picture awed and amazed me and I puzzled over its full significance. I loved the paintings in those books and I spent many hours studying them. I cannot remember my exact feelings and thoughts at that stage, but the concept of God, revealed to me by these books, had stirred something within me. The books served as an introduction to Christianity at an early age for me and created some kind of pre-disposition that would make itself felt later in my life.

With hindsight, I realize now that these books were my father's sincere attempt at fulfilling his duty at religious instruction for his son; for he was not a particularly religious man himself (today he is a born again Christian, it's funny how things turn around!).

This is basically how I grew up. My father did not try and compartmentalize me in the ways of religion and always encouraged me to think for myself and not allow myself to be "put in a box" by other people. However, he never opposed the schools that I attended (or errant aunts!) from applying religious instruction and teachings to me. I can clearly remember reciting the "Our Father" at assembly meetings at primary school.

As the turbulence of adolescence descended upon me, I began to seriously question my place in the world and the reasons for existence. And, of course, I turned to Christianity for answers.

I converted to Christianity in 1984, praying a little prayer and signing a little slip of paper to record the event. I remember emerging from the tail end of that prayer a little nervously, expecting maybe some kind of bang or flash (like St. Paul!). Nothing happened, but those attending to my conversion assured me that it was a genuine event that had occurred. It had nothing to do with emotion and I should not be disappointed that God had not given me any sign or acknowledgement of acceptance. I was encouraged to build my faith by reading the bible, joining a church and attending meetings regularly.

I clearly remember my honesty and sincerity that accompanied this event and my parents were impressed with the new commitment and beliefs I professed. I looked forward to an exhilarating experience as I learned more and more about God and Jesus. Salvation! Heaven! Eternal Life!!!

It was not to be a simple journey. From an early stage I was plagued by doubts and questions regarding my faith. My expectations were not fulfilled, or should I say I never experienced what I expected one to experience given that Christianity was supposed to be the greatest truth and Jesus the greatest Being (God, no less) in the universe. What had I expected? Well, to tell the truth, I expected the whole trip, miracles, healings, a Pentecostal revival, and signs from on High. I expected a deep and meaningful, experiential relationship with God, now that I had discovered him. These were things spoken of in the bible and, what's more, were taken for granted in the fundamentalist church that I frequented. Of course, I got nothing of the sort. Instead, I discovered early on the meaning of "brass heavens". I found that the reading material supplied to me to bolster my faith raised only questions.

The questions I found myself asking (heretically, sinfully!!!) were not unique and my experience not different from many Christians over the centuries. Certain things really bothered me, like what happens to the many millions of people born into another religion? This would include people like Albert Einstein and Anne Frank who were rare and wonderful people, but unfortunately Jewish and therefore not "covered by the blood of the lamb." The standard answer (that God, in His own mysterious way, will have another plan for them) did not hold water for me.

Another one: why would a loving, compassionate God create a lake of fire to punish sinners for all of eternity? Again, the standard answer (that God actually made hell for the devil and his demons, and sinners only get sent there by default because, once they die, they have nowhere else to go as God's perfection could not tolerate their presence) really stuck in my throat.

Hey, what about that old standby, "original sin". How can it possibly be that God (having just created the very first man and woman who then, promptly after being created, disobey God by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) deems it fair that forever after the fall from grace, ALL human beings are born into sin and need forgiveness? Forever into the future? And those that do not find the truth and attain redemption get to pay for their "original sin" forever and forever?

Essentially, any and all objections or questions raised were answered by a special plea: the divine right of God and his mysterious and ineffable ways. I had trouble buying this "one for all" answer.

And why do so many parts of the bible read like fables or magical fairy stories? The old and new testaments were filled with miracles and healings; they occurred almost on a daily basis as long as one called upon Jehovah or Jesus. But not so today. Why no miracles?

I prayed for a modern day miracle. I attended mass revival meetings and coffee shop, hand clapping sessions hoping to witness first hand the glory of God manifested by miracles. Not a single one did I witness. I can still remember the contradictory, uncomfortable feelings I experienced whenever I entered a church (the "House" of God). Here I was, "surrounded" by God, but why did I feel so deeply and fundamentally that something was wrong? Where was He? Why did I only see a bunch of emotional people singing, clapping hands and mumbling or shouting prayers? The more I felt myself trying to reach out to God, the less closely I felt myself approaching Him. I would have done anything to FEEL a real touch from God. A whisper was all I wanted. I got nothing.

The more I found myself questioning my faith, the guiltier I felt about my lack of it. It did not take long before I seriously doubted whether I really was saved at all. At this stage I was making the observation that people do not get saved by the "power and grace" of God but by their own belief in his "power and grace!" What a heretical, demonic thought! It was inevitable, and it gradually became clear to me that, for some unfathomable reason, God had decided that I was in fact not really destined for redemption. In my search for answers, I stumbled across some very pernicious doctrines that further confirmed to me the certainty that I was among the damned. The "unpardonable sin" and the doctrine of pre-destination seemed to be the only explanations for my anguish. I became enmeshed in an existential nightmare.

I did not give up immediately! My most heartfelt prayer was a plea for more faith, stronger faith. Yet the doubts persisted; nagging questions plagued my mind. I slowly began to realize, to my horror, that I was a natural skeptic! Although not formally educated beyond high school, I was always peripherally aware of a great body of knowledge called science. I began to perceive that there was an unresolved conflict between Christianity and a naturalistic explanation for existence.

Nevertheless I persevered! I still prayed, I still kept confessing that Jesus was the messiah of the world. I vacillated between states of religious fervor and anguished despair. On the one hand, it was my lack of faith and commitment, my pitiful state of sin, that caused me not to attain enlightenment and to continue to feel separated from God. And on the other hand it seemed to me at times sheer madness to believe in a God that was so silent, so cold and so contradictory.

Slowly the pennies began to fall. Reason could not be dismissed! Over a period of many years I began to explore the science section of my local library. I discovered several authors who, at first, seemed to me breathtakingly atheistic in their views. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan in particular had me steering a new course in mindset. I read many books on evolution. I had had no education in this theory and it was the biggest challenge to come to terms with (in fact it was only much later that I began comprehending the grandeur and mystery of the universe we inhabit, seen from an evolutionary perspective). Occasionally, I tried to make a re-commitment to Jesus. This invariably failed, becoming a more and more watered down effort. Those years were characterized by a great deal of ambivalence and fence jumping. Every attempt to turn to faith for an answer, support or confirmation, was met with a falling penny.

Ambivalence was, however, reluctant to depart from me. Having gone through such an intense experience, having truly given my utmost to truly find God, parts of my (crumbling) faith stubbornly clung to me like burrs to a sock. I was still confused, guilt ridden and unable to come to terms with a life without God. With hindsight, I now realize that I had stopped believing in Jesus years ago (don't ask me when exactly!) but that there was nothing that had replaced that belief. I therefore re-doubled my efforts to educate myself as to a naturalistic explanation for the reasons for life, the universe and everything.

I kept going back to the library. I consumed books by newly discovered authors and gobbled up all the popular books on science, from cosmology and physics to neo-Darwinism (written for the layman).

The pennies fell faster still.

Within twenty years of my original conversion, I was using the Internet and discovering more and more information, atheistic sites, free thought zones, etc. Amongst others, Robert Ingersoll's "The Gods" had a profound effect on me as well as an essay entitled "The Joys of Christianity" (the word joy is to be read with inverted commas) by Eric von Laudermann, which dealt with this person's own process of disillusionment and breaking away from Christianity. In particular, this essay reflected my own angst and was pivotal in helping me break away.

My favourite quote is the following by Robert G. Ingersoll:

"When I became convinced that the Universe is natural - that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling of the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust."

As the pennies fell, I was able to remove those burrs that had clung so atavistically to me.

I found myself in a rain of falling pennies!

Am I an atheist? Yes, if not believing in a personal God, such as is resident in all the world's religions, makes me an atheist, then I am one. I must be emphatic about it; the God revealed in the bible does not and cannot exist. There is absolutely no evidence for his existence. My own personal experience confirmed it. There is nothing rational or reasonable about such a belief. It is clear that the God of the bible (as are all Gods) is a creation of the mind of man.

However, I don't dismiss the possibility of a REASON or FIRST CAUSE for the universe (this is a convenient, handy explanation for the remaining mysteries of the universe. Just for me, you choose whatever you want!). I have no hang-ups about this concept and no way of even trying to describe it. I would gladly dispose of it if science does eventually offer a theory of everything (this may never be forthcoming; scientists reason that, because the universe is complex enough to have resulted in the evolution of sentient beings, it may be ultimately unknowable. Had it been a simple universe, easily explainable, we could never have evolved. This is an elegant idea and I like it).

Those who thirst after simple explanations, who claim to be in touch with a personal God with whom they have a day-to-day relationship, make that claim by their own personal faith alone. Nothing else supports their claims except that belief. What an unhappy state of affairs! Not to know, but simply to believe, with nothing offered as evidence. In fact, despite overwhelming evidence against that belief!

I firmly believe that deep inside every believer there are doubts and questions just as I had. I believe that most people, however (due to deep parental and social conditioning) brush these doubts to one side and simply carry on believing. Or they simply keep affirming their belief without deep conviction or commitment in which case their belief then becomes a watered down, lukewarm affair (the God of the "comfort zone").

This I could never abide. For me it had to be all or nothing, a real God or no God and it turns out that the latter is the true state of affairs. I am learning that contentment can be found in a purely naturalistic explanation of things. Surprisingly, the simpler the explanations are, the more elegant and satisfying they are. Once you bring onto the stage the great cosmic battle, revealed in our bibles and scrolls, between good and evil - God and Satan fighting for the right to claim perished souls, heaven and hell, et cetera - things become ridiculously complicated. You construct a universe that is needlessly bizarre and weird and simultaneously you limit your whole existence to just two choices. However, having made a choice (let us say you choose Jesus) you get nothing immediately; you must wait until death for your confirmation. On Earth, you receive nothing.

No, it is just we here, the inhabitants of Earth, evolved over an unimaginably long period of deep time, from primeval stock. We are the product of the interior of an exploding giant star that spewed its nuclear products out into space, from which formed our solar system and in which were atoms that possessed the fundamental properties of combining into more and more complicated replicating systems, fuelled by our own 4.5 billion year old sun. Ultimately, these properties have been traced back in time, as best we can estimate, to an unimaginably distant 15 billion years ago and a mysterious event called the Big Bang. It is at this point, in a split second, that our universe, the very fabric of space-time and energy, came into existence. Scientists speculate that a quantum fluctuation gave rise to the universe literally out of nothing. So, 15 billion years later we find ourselves on this Earth under a big, blue sky by day and a black, sparkling sky by night. Occasionally it has occurred to us to make forays off the Earth's skin and attempt to peer beyond the veil and into the wide beyond.

Yes, we are faced with an immense and deeply mysterious universe but there is no need to fear a hell and hope for a heaven. There is no compelling reason to worship a deity. For the answers we have thus far obtained through scientific enquiry, we can be assured that reason and rationality have pointed the way. We can depend on them. For the remaining mysteries, we have a future to explore, answers are yet to be found. If we do not have them all, it is a shortcoming within ourselves and there is no need to introduce a personal God to explain anything.

One needs to think deeply about these things. It is not easy to break away from Christianity, but it can be done. In my case I am doubly proud for, having had only a high school education, I have sought out answers and assimilated them in a form that, although diluted and lacking in mathematics, is nevertheless a good description of the universe (and accessible to just about anybody willing to make the effort!). However, I have no ambition to "preach" to anybody to try to "de-convert" him or her. It took me 20 years to get where I am, for all the pennies to fall.

From this perspective I see clearly in the majority of people that their faith and beliefs are as deeply ingrained in their minds as are the grooves in a vinyl record, and any departure from their particular orthodoxy will be virtually impossible.

This does not worry me. My quest has been for myself and nobody else. It has been, and still is, a search for answers that satisfy the demands of reason and logic.

To me it has been like the fall of pennies.