I hope you make it to Off The Map Live in November, so I can meet you in person.

I’m a middle-aged atheist who became an atheist at 14 through intellectual questioning of my southern baptist roots, but also through “mystical” experiences (yep, mystical experiences made me an atheist), and, most importantly, a process in which I practiced, by creating in my mind an altered state of consciousness, being in a state of “believing”, deeply and “genuinely”, all sorts of things — I practiced “being saved” over and over again, and practiced believing in Krishna as a true avatar of Vishnu, and practiced believing as a muslim and as a jew and as a true-believing communist. I had practiced meditation and a kind of “reversibility thinking” that I had learned about in Joseph Chilton Pearce’s books, as well as “method acting” as an actor, so I had developed this technique of “practicing belief” very nicely.

All that practicing helped me to understand a lot about how someone could “know Jesus in their heart”, “have a personal relationship with Jesus”, and “know for certain that God exists”. In fact I had experienced “knowing for certain” that not only God, but other gods, such as Vishnu, Allah, and “the Deist god of Jefferson” existed.

Once I knew that anyone, including me, using simple tools of persuasion, emotion, and cultural symbols, could put me into a state of “grace”, I was certain also that atheism was the way for me.

But I also knew that “goodness” and “spirituality” and “mysticism” were also states of consciousness that I enjoyed and valued, so I also knew that I could never be the sort of hard-edged atheist that some of my friends and girlfriends were.

I actually enjoyed and still enjoy hanging out with christians and wiccans and advaitans and hindus and muslims as much as with atheists.

In fact I ended up being a religion major in college, along with chemistry and communication, because I value both “mystical” experiences and the experience and practice of valuing, and so see religion as a deep well of states of consciousness and ways of valuing that teach me all the time. I had a great time being the only atheist in many bible study groups, as well as the atheist guy who went to church/temple more often than most believers.

Science is also important for me though, and I don’t impute any “truth value” to any of the “spiritual” or “mystical” experiences that I have — I let them stand on their own, in all of their fantastic, non-logical glory.

In a way though, those experiences are the foundation of my atheism, so I sometimes call myself a “faith-based atheist”, as a joke but also as a conversation-starter both with atheists and with believers as a way into serious talk of values and states of consciousness and the enjoyment of all sorts of rapturous experiences that arise even in an atheist’s world.

And I enjoy being an ex-Southern Baptist so that I can make jokes about the Rapture when everyone at work goes out to lunch at the same time or make jokes about why Southern Baptists don’t have sex standing up (a reference to the anti-Terpsichorean theology of some Southern Baptists).

All of that I offer simply as background in complementing you on your very valuable postings both here in your own space and in others’ blogs.

Great work! And thanks especially for the notes on your “Almost an Atheist” presentation at the off the map conference.

I’m going to share lots of your stuff with a “Christians and Atheists in dialogue” group of which I am a member — last time we got together we discussed Jim & Casper.

Oh, and I loved your chapter in the book — I just looked and I see that I turned down several pages in that chapter and wrote a note to myself to look you up on the web, but, well, I never did, so I’m very glad that I found your web presence by accident!

Almost an atheist’s Providence, eh? Maybe even a little “Mystical”

scott hines