*Matthew enters*

[Welsh cake]

I'll repeat what I said in my last post: "I did not perceive that God was pursuing me. Rather, the repeated experiences of trying and failing to avoid the conclusion I did not want to arrive at certainly gave me the impression that I was not simply wrestling with my own thoughts but with something outside of myself. After my conversion, I understood that something to be God Himself."

You didn't answer my question Matthew, once again, how do you know you didn't hallucinate or perceive this external agent, this god? How are you certain it was a deity communicating with you and not some other chemical imbalance in the brain brought upon by stress, depression, anxiety, a nervous breakdown, or some other mental disorder? Not saying it was necessarily any of those listed, of course, but how did you rule out all the other possible natural explanations and conclude your thinking some deity outside the real world was responsible?

This is not the Christian understanding of "becoming a Christian". To become a Christian, God must accept you. A person becomes a Christian because of what God does, not because of what they do. God cares very little about whether human beings believe that He exists.

What interpretation of Christianity is this? You seem to be quoting Christian soteriology yet it adds another requirement of being predestined to be saved which contradicts the doctrine of repentance. I was once a Christian regardless. I adhered to scriptures in the Hebrew Bible. I believed God the father sent his son Jesus, the Messiah to redeem mankind. Like all Christians I simply accepted the atoning sacrifice of Christ for my sins.

I finally deconverted, and stayed deconverted, because there was not a single shred of evidence that Christ ever lived or that God even exists or manifests in reality. On the other hand there is an abundance of evidence that shows we evolved, so there was no Adam and Eve, no fall, and consequently no original sin for a saviour to save us from.