This is Why I'm No Longer an Atheist: Confessions of a Doubting Believer

It is a journey that is timeless. Since man was picking fruits, terrified by monsters and the power of nature, and until he became king on earth, he is still forced on the same journey and the same confusion. He turns his eyes to the sky, searching in its heavens for a God, or searching for him in the books of philosophers, or in the arguments of atheists, or in the comparison between religions, or in the darkness of his mind. But the journey in its essence is the same, the confusion is the same, the stormy anxiety is the same, and the certainty is the same even after reaching it. Elusive. And every time the journey begins from scratch, hardly anyone is guided by the journeys of those who came before him. Their journeys only increase his curiosity. How did so-and-so in particular find himself guided to what seems difficult to accept, or to what seems self-evident and devoid of suffering and battles of confusion? In a recent book titled “This Is Why I'm No Longer an Atheist: Confessions of a Doubting Believer,” American novelist Christopher Piha presented his journey from faith to faith. Atheism To faith. During an interview for the February 2026 issue of Christian Today magazine, Beha said, “I made this return to faith after I left the Catholic Church in my youth, after being an atheist for a long time, after searching for the truth, and after finally finding my way back to the Church. Many people in my life see this development as confusing... inconsistent with what they understand about me and my intellectual values.” He attributed the reason for writing the book to the fact that it was difficult for him to provide those who were confused with a brief explanation for why he did not continue to be atheist. “I decided to make an effort to answer the question in a way that I hoped would be of interest to people of any faith belief.” He atheized it at the beginning of this century, when he was a university student, and in a chapter of his book published by The New Yorker magazine last February, he says, “In many ways, those years, the turn of the century, were an ideal time for a novice atheist. In 2004, an anonymous writer named Sam Harris published a short treatise on the existential threat that religion poses to Western civilization, entitled ‘The End of Faith.’ In quick succession after Harris’ book, the books ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins and ‘Dispelling Magic” by Daniel Dennett and “God is Greater” by Christopher Hitchens, and it found its way into the lists of popular books, and a group known as “The Four Horsemen” became a public face for the resurgence of “new atheism.” I soon discovered that I was not a fan of these books, and that I was not looking for something that would convince me to abandon belief in God, as I had already given up. Rather, I wanted to know what alternative I believed, and the meaning of my continued search for beliefs in the opinion of many atheists was that I had not gone beyond My religious upbringing is true. The true atheist is not concerned with beliefs but with information, and he is not concerned with faith but with knowledge.” Many people searching for faith are waiting for a miracle, such as an angel appearing to guide them, or a prophet appearing in a dream to guide them, and it is better for them to hear the voice of God himself guiding them to himself. It seems that there was no miracle in it, as it appears at the beginning of Timothy Egan's article about the book (New York Times\-17 February 2026) “With a poignant image, the long, winding path that Christopher traveled from a knowledgeable atheist to a knowledgeable Christian begins with it, with the image of an angel appearing to him...an urgent, pressing appearance...asking him to put his trust in the Lord. He writes with it that that first manifestation of his in the mid-nineties of the last century ‘was not a dream. I was awake, and I trust that I am awake as I write these words. It was a terrible entity communicating with me.’” His visits to Piha continued for years.”