Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

The prolific English author and columnist, A. N. Wilson, graduated from Oxford in the early ‘70s and considered going into the Anglican ministry. But he lost his faith by the ‘80s. He called himself an atheist and wrote a short book entitled, Against Religion: Why We Should Try to Live Without It. He describes his conversion to atheism.

I realised that after a lifetime of churchgoing, the whole house of cards had collapsed for me - the sense of God's presence in life, and the notion that there was any kind of God, let alone a merciful God, in this brutal, nasty world…It was a nonsense…the idea of a personal God, or a loving God in a suffering universe. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. It was such a relief to discard it all that, for months, I walked on air…

Yet, he started doubting his doubts about God.