My transition from fundamentalist to non-theist took place in five realizations: 1. Faith is a blatantly self-serving double standard when used for knowledge -- instead it can only lead to actions, never knowledge. In this respect it is no different from courage, optimism or a coin toss. 2. All second-hand testimony must be held accountable to first-hand observations. 3. All experiences requiring God for an explanation are second-hand testimony from those who are not alive to question. 4. A believer has to do all the work reinterpreting their experiences to see god interact with them, they give God all the credit for it and take all the blame when they don't see him. 5. Therefore the modern, sophisticated use of god-language is empty of informational content. The hypothesis of God's interaction with us is therefore empty of practical implications.  Superfluous God is a contradiction in terms. Case closed.

I grew up the eldest son of a fire-and-brimstone preaching Baptist pastor. It was a childhood of tent revivals, horror movies about the "rapture," and winning first place for bible memorization in Vacation Bible School. Frequently I would lie awake at night wondering why I was not experiencing and becoming what a true bible-believer is supposed to be. I envisioned a 50-foot tall Jesus parting the clouds and taking away everybody I loved, leaving me behind. He was like Godzilla, only real.

Instead of attending an animation school and pursuing my dreams, I believed it was God's will that I get a useless art degree at Pensacola Christian College in Florida, a school so rigidly fundamentalist that it calls Bob Jones University compromising liberals.

During this time I had an insatiable appetite for reading and debating Christian apologetics. Ironically, I believe this was the root of my eventual apostasy! Through it I got God's permission to regard reason as an ally, not an enemy. I started spouting about how those secularists need to become objective and see the evidence of creation science, fulfilled prophecy and the historical evidence for a literal resurrection. But shouting "bias" is a double-edged sword because the bible teaches faith. I could no longer in good conscience use faith as a blatantly self-serving double standard, and I didn't want to be a hypocrite that way.

The actual Christian life, however, was problematic. Ironically I lost my faith in God because I really was sincere about it. It is only possible to remain a Christian by lowering one's expectations of the supposed omnipotent deity until a potted plant could pass them. I expected him to act like God and instead he had a suspicious tendency to act just like I would expect from his complete nonexistence. I noticed that the devotional program and state of mind prescribed in the bible was in fact perfectly adapted to the purpose of getting people to believe God exists even if it is not true. I became self-aware enough to suspect that I was generating a "personal relationship" with Jesus through mental sleight-of-hand. Once I started noticing how I was doing it, the illusion no longer functioned.

All the experiences for which we needed God for an explanation were pushed off to the ancient past (such as creation or other supposed miracles) and the indeterminate future (such as the "rapture"). It is just too fishy that we are to expect nothing within the lifetimes of anyone alive to question. I also noticed how heavily the cosmological argument of first cause relied on pure a-priori deduction, which seemed weak when I began to have to make up ad-hoc hypotheses to exempt the hypothesis from accountability to be corroborated or falsified.

I continued in a disillusioned state for a few years laboring under the assumption that non-theism entailed nihilism and existential despair. Then I read the story of Carl Sagan's death written by Ann Druyan. At that moment the emotional impediments began to fall away. To my shame it was only then that I began a serious investigation of non-supernatural alternatives. I discovered counter-apologetics existed and was devastatingly effective against all a Christian apologist's second-hand testimony and forensics.

Matthew Arnold is a desktop publisher. He moderates The Electric Monk,

a discussion board and weblog on worldviews. Matt lives north of Detroit,

Michigan.  His personal website is http://www.geocities.com/nemorathwald/.