Pastor Ryan Bell made a commitment last year to live without God for almost a year, the experiment led to this conclusion—God doesn’t exist. The Hollywood Adventist pastor was asked to leave by his church in March for his liberal views on homosexuality and female ordination. His exit from the church reportedly led him to live without church or God for a year.

“... I feel like I lost my church leadership position and then I really didn't have any compulsion to go to church internally, like I just didn't feel like participating in church. I tried a number of times,” he explained in a NPR interview. "Well, let me just give church a rest. And as I did that, I just began to wonder about the very existence of God.” Bell, 43, lived nine months as if there were no God.

He didn’t pray, read the Bible, or acknowledge God in life circumstances. He felt liberated and started studying atheist authors, arguments, and connected with other atheists on the journey. Bell admits that it sounds very irrational to come to the decision he said in interviews with the Huffington Post, and RNS.

“I’d just say that the existence of God seems like an extra layer of complexity that isn’t necessary. The world makes more sense to me as it is, without postulating a divine being that is somehow in charge of things.”

Bell explains that  atheists would  understand that Christians care about truth and seek wisdom, and there is just a small number who are ignorant.

“[Christians] are not stupid. In every group there [are a] percentage that are ignorant, but if you take a wider view, Christian intellectuals have contributed a great deal to the body of human knowledge through history.”