Heather Bellamy heard Mike McHargue's life story.

When I looked at what sceptics had to say about that contradiction, the answer was much simpler, the Bible was written by different people and at a time in history when modern science didn't exist and so it represents an unscientific attempt to explain how the universe was made. That explanation was simultaneously offensive to me as a person of faith, but also intensely gratifying, as a person of reason.

Heather: To what extent did you lose your faith and become an atheist? Did you not believe God existed at all?

Mike: Yeah, I ended up completely leaving belief behind. I identified as an atheist and found hope in secular humanism as a personal philosophy.

Heather: What was life like for you as an atheist?

Mike: Very confusing, because I felt like I'd learn more about the world, but I couldn't talk about that with people I knew. I was married to a Christian woman. I come from a Christian family. Most of my social experiences was through my church and so if I were to speak publicly about my loss of faith, it would come at a tremendous social cost. So for a period of two years, the only time I could be honest about who I was, was with a stranger in some other city, or with people on the Internet. I basically lived a lie, pretending to be a person of faith in my experiences at home, but whenever I travelled, or conversed online, I would be honest about what I believed.

Heather: How did that affect you as a person?

Mike: I felt duplicitous. I felt unknown and isolated and had a period of depression.

It is a traumatic process to lose God for many people and that was true for me. I had a grief, only I couldn't talk to anyone. So if you can imagine grieving, but not being able to talk to the people you love and hold close to you, it intensifies that feeling of loss.

Heather: How did you eventually become known in this process and how did you begin to tell people?

Mike: My wife figured out that I didn't believe anymore and she confronted me about it. She told my mom who confronted me about it and that led to a little small coalition of people close to me who knew I didn't believe anymore. Ultimately I went to a conference and stood up and told a room full of people that I didn't believe in God and I viewed that as my moment of reconciling my public and private life. I was pretty excited about that, but that's not how things turned out. Instead I ended up having what scientists would call a mystical moment. It was an overwhelmingly powerful moment where I felt like I was in the presence of God, which led me down a new line of inquiry altogether.

Heather: So tell me about that.

Mike: I had this unexplainable experience that made me think I probably had brain cancer. I was lying on the beach and I felt this love and what many people would feel is the presence of God. I was so sceptical that I had a hard time coming to terms with that. When I turned to the Bible again and in Christian theology to explain the experience, it only made me feel more sceptical.

So instead I started to do research into cosmology and quantum physics to understand how the universe came to be and if God could be involved at all. When I found a beautiful mystery at the heart of physics, I was comforted, but it wasn't a God who would have intervened with us, or know us in any way. To understand how we know and we relate with God I started to study brain science and through that process I found a scientific justification for the practice of Christian faith.

Once I could unconsciously pray and unconsciously study the Bible, it began to renew my faith and something new grew from what had once been dead.