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I'm an atheist and I had an experience that, for at least a few seconds, made me certain I was going to die. I was zipping down the highway on my way to work last July. Nice morning, about 7:30am, Los Angeles freeway, plenty of traffic. It was a Wednesday. Suddenly I and another car both tried to change lanes at the same time and nearly collided. I saw him first and swerved. My car started fishtailing wildly, and then went into a full 360 spin (stalled at some point and the power steering locked up) and I just spun down the highway at 60mph until I finally came to a halt.

Everything really did go slow motion for a moment. Or rather, it was like a tiny black-out, following by slo-mo, followed by another black-out (maybe I was blinking? I don't know) and then my car came to a rest in the middle of the highway. Every split second during this process I expected to feel the impact of another car, and my mind was utterly convinced that these were my last seconds. Even when my car finally stopped moving, I sat there for a few seconds expecting an on-coming car, unable to stop, to plow into me and finish it all.

When my mind finally came back to normal, I saw every car behind me had managed to come to a halt, some only about 15 feet away, and they were all staring at me. I put my car in park, started it again, waved kind of dazedly at the people behind me (once nice lady with wide eyes waved back) and I pulled away, realizing "I'm not dead. No one hit anyone. It's okay!" As I drove away, I started laughing, mostly because I couldn't believe that just happened. Absolutely the most amazing few seconds of my life. I really thought I was dead.

Here's the thing: nothing having to do with religion entered my mind at all. I didn't think about if there was a God, I didn't pray, I didn't have any thoughts of that nature. All I thought was "this is it... this is it... this is... not it? Wow... incredible." But no angels, devils, gods, or anything of that nature even occurred to me. Those of us who are atheists are atheists because we are atheists. It's just not there.