I was pretty much raised as believing the Bible to be the Word of God. My mother had contact with Jehovah's Witnesses when I was very little, but she didn't get baptized and stopped studying with them by the time I was 6 years old. My parents and I never attended church in the traditional sense. Some of my friends and family were Mormon, so I would go with them from time to time, but just for association.

Around the age of 17 I developed a desire for some sort of religion. I hated Christianity and it's hipocrisy though, so I searched out other paths and eventually chose Wicca. Due to some strange happenings in my life that I believed were supernatural, I gave up the Craft, and went back to Christianity. I was 20.

After 2 years of studying with Jehovah's Witnesses, I (and my mother) were baptized. That was 1990. I thought I had finally found "the Truth" and true friends. I was wrong.

The next 9 years were pretty much hell, as I tried and tried to maintain my faith in a God that would kill off most of mankind just to prove some Divine Point. Eventually I could do it no longer and deconverted in early 1999.

I've read and researched many different religions, hoping to find a niche I could call mine. I thought about Paganism (again) and even Deism for a while, but eventually realized that I can not accept any "religion" that teaches a supernatural God or Goddess, in any form. Any religion that teaches a Creator, also teaches that this Creator, for whatever reason, allows humans and animals to suffer. I can't believe that a being, capable of creating the universe and life, would just step back and allow mankind to harm itself, the animals, and the Earth. (I don't accept the "We are just specs too small to notice" or "We've literally been forgotten" apologetics either.)

I feel such awe when I am confronted with nature and the universe. But I don't need a God to feel that awe. After all, I am made up of the "stuff" of stars. All is connected. We are all just energy/matter when we get down to it. The understanding and appreciation of this is as close to a "religious experience" as I expect to get.

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