An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Irreligious Experiences or De-Conversion
People who reject religion often feel a euphoria similar to that of a reli-
gious convert. Richard Dawkins’ website cites a number of such cases in 

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‘Converts’ Corner on Richarddawkins.net. Douglas Adams, author of 
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
starts it off:
And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn’t have enough 
to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely 
doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about 
anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, 
well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at 
it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early 
thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form 
of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind 
Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish 
Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, 
but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity 
of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about 
in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take 
the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
Douglas Adams The Salmon of Doubt, p. 99. 
Douglas, I miss you. You are my cleverest, funniest, most open-minded, 
wittiest, tallest, and possibly only convert. I hope this book might have 
made you laugh – though not as much as you made me. . . Douglas’s 
conversion by my earlier books which did not set out to convert 
anyone inspired me to dedicate to his memory this book which does!
Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, p. 117 
Is Douglas Adams Richard’s only convert? Or is he just the first of 
many? Please write in to Converts’ Corner if you have lost your reli-
gion (or have been encouraged to come out of the closet) as a result of 
reading The God Delusion or other Dawkins books.
The website continues with numerous responses, such as,
At 52 I now have the absolute confidence to be an atheist and to tell 
anyone that cares to know. Since coming out, I have discovered that 
most of the people I know are either atheists or wavering agnostics! 
Thank you Prof Dawkins. 
It is not just Christians, usually the target of Dawkins’ criticism, who 
follow his lead.
I was born and raised a Shiite Muslim. At the age of 17 years, I began 
taking religion seriously and was on the quest for the ‘meaning of life’ 

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and ‘truth’. I read the Koran almost inside out (five different transla-
tions from the various Muslim sects plus their commentaries). I even 
learnt some Arabic and was reading the book from its original 
language.
At age 19, I left mainstream Shiite Islam and became a so called 
‘reformist Muslim’ who forsook all the Islamic traditions but still 
considered the Koran to be divine in origin, and tried to interpret the 
Koran from a modern perspective. That led to various on the road to 
Agnosticism. That was when I was 21. At the same time, I started 
reading the Bible and the Hindu scripture the Bhagvad Gita. I then 
came across a book that changed my life. It was the late Carl Sagan’s 
Cosmos (a book version of the famous television documentary series). 
I was an atheist.
These experiences are obviously very ‘Dawkins-centred’. However, the 
feeling of relief which the deconverted often experience at being able to 
stop pretending to believe what they find unbelievable is palpable.
The range of spiritual experiences is vast, including positive and nega-
tive, but perhaps they are best evaluated over the course of time. Those 
with lasting effects may be valued more highly, and sometimes negative 
experiences lead to a positive evaluation overall.

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