We don’t see this often.

After Year Of Atheism, Former Pastor: ‘I Don’t Think God Exists’

‘At the start of 2014, former Seventh-Day Adventist pastor Ryan Bell made an unusual New Year’s resolution: to live for one year without God — this reflecting his own loss of faith. He kept a blog documenting his journey and had a documentary crew following him.

After a year, Bell tells NPR’s Arun Rath, “I’ve looked at the majority of the arguments that I’ve been able to find for the existence of God, and on the question of God’s existence or not, I have to say I don’t find there to be a convincing case, in my view.

This is a remarkable thing – primarily that a human can change a, I would think, deeply held belief, as religion is in its formal and more explicit forms is most often something that is indoctrinated into children by their parents or pushed onto a person by his social circle which makes it awkward to be the lone nail standing out, which induces people to conform (ie. school clique social influence), but moreso that he went full public with it. My hat is certainly off to him.

One of his biggest lessons from the year is “that people very much value certainty and knowing and are uncomfortable saying that they don’t know.” Now he thinks certainty is a bit overrated.

Which is exactly the message that Nicholas Nassim Tabel brought to us  in his ‘Black Swan’ – people are SO afraid to say ‘I don’t know” (and to a lesser degree “I’m not certain”)… because it, in our times, implies ignorance, and in a world where people want certainty, both for the peace of mind in a chaotic, incompassionate world, as well as not wanting to be the nail standing out.

Ryan Bell is that lone nail sticking out – and, in my opinion, for the better.

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/27/373298310/after-year-of-atheism-former-pastor-i-dont-think-god-exists