Publisher's Synopsis
Free of Faith IS AN ESSAY ABOUT THE USELESSNESS OF GOD ONE DISCOVERS WHEN MULLING OVER EVIL, LIFE, UNIVERSE, AND MORALITY.
This essay first presents a personal experience of submission to God and religion, rejection of priesthood celibacy, and vanishing faith. This experience is prolonged by a philosophical approach to All-Without-God. Evil is the finitude of living beings. Origin and evolution of life do not require the existence of God. The history of the universe can be viewed independently of God. Men and women must acknowledge their human condition and assume their generational responsibility, which essentially consists in fighting the criminal evil that humans are responsible for.
Michel Dessart devoted some part of his youth organizing Sunday meetings and holidays camps for young parishioners. Later, in his professional life, he was known as a fair leader, be it as a division chief or a director.
He was involved in two strong communities, the purpose of which was to prepare their members for the Catholic priesthood. In the first, a university seminary, he obtained a bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Louvain, with a thesis on Aristotle's "Treatise on Soul", which won the first prize of the Inter-University Contest in philosophy.
In the second community, in Rome, he had to spend four years to study the Catholic theology. However, after two years, he quit because he refused to commit to the ecclesiastical celibacy.
He taught in Belgian schools and undertook economic studies at the University of Liège. Then, as a researcher at the National Fund for Scientific Research, he studied the possibility conditions of a European monetary policy. His Ph.D. thesis in economics was crowned by the Royal Academy of Belgium.
Recruited by a large bank in Brussels, he became an economic adviser in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal. Then he joined an international institution in Washington D.C. He was a well-known consultant-trainer in many African countries. He authored several economic books and papers.
