A local newspaper asked people to write about their conversion experiences, and what they found lacking in their former faiths, so I wrote my "deconversion" primarily about what undermined my reliance upon "faith" as a yardstick of truth. There is, of course, much more to the story, but I find having to condense my words sometimes helps to get to the core of an event.

Sometimes faith is not found in an ecstatic moment of enlightenment, but in a never-ending string of disappointments. In a sense, as an excommunicated-Catholic-Muslim-apostate-agnostic, with a tinge of Jewish heritage, I find myself dissuaded from believing in the supernatural God of Abraham in all of his different permutations. I have faith that I will not be roasted alive in a pit of burning fire when I die because I see the psychological underpinnings of my former faiths to be so clear, and the historical and scientific problems all three of them face to be even more manifest.

Alas, I abuse the word faith. Just as through the ages so many have misused the words justice, good, evil, truth, lies, pure, and impure, so I commit a sin of the greatest gravity. May God forgive, as there are questions that should not be posed, ideas which should not be spoken, lest the devil take possession of the tongue.

Human beings are fallible beings, with fallible brains, who think quite fallible thought (popes and imams not included). Could it be more likely that a person is a madman or charlatan, than a direct conduit to the Almighty?

My experience of madness, and moments of desperation have lead me to a conclusion that I could not escape- that I have no divinity within, no soul, and that judging by human behavior in general there is no reason to suppose I am merely an exception to the rule.

Of course there are anecdotes about prophets and saints, just as there are anecdotes about the Virgin Mary appearing on a tortilla, Noah's Ark, and the virtues of astrology. And so we apotheosize a Jewish carpenter whose eschatological predictions leave a little bit to be desired. We canonize those whose messages we can twist to fit our needs, whose traditions, while unsubstantiated by any proof, have been sustained in one cultural milieu to another.

I cannot presume to know exactly how it has come about that there are human beings, any more than I can presume that a Omni-this and Omni-that has gone about doing the creating. While this doesn't mean I have to stop searching for the reasons, and evidence for the reasons, it does mean I have to be on guard against manic certainties.

Sure I might believe in angels too, or maybe that I was a prophet, if I was ever to have the peaks of mania.

As I have discovered through my altered states of mind, to put complete and absolute faith in one's perception, whether society classifies you as sane or insane, is folly.

If you care to differ I propose an experiment. I am going to buy a lottery ticket (and commit the sin of gambling, which isn't a sin if the gamble involves the soul you don't have, and the life you do have vis-a-vis Pascal's wager) with the complete faith that I will win. Likewise, take your pick of the thousands of sects and religions.