I was raised in a strongly Christian household by parents who converted to Roman Catholicism after WWII. I was schooled in parochial schools and essentially brainwashed into believing there was no other way to think than religion. I eventually felt "called" to the ministry and pastored two churches and earned a doctorate in psychology. In my mid-thirties I began to critically read the Christian scriptures and study church history. Gradually, I came to see a pattern of error and denial in the texts and the teachings that paralleled patterns in non-Christian religions. When the standard arguments for examining non-Christian religions were applied to Christianity, it too failed the test.

Over time, I moved from agnosticism to naturalist atheism as larger and larger amounts of evidence piled up for me against Christianity. It became merely another one of the false major world religions. In my early forties I left organized religions and their deities behind and decided to stand on my own two feet, so to speak. I've never regretted that decision.

Despite my former Christian acquaintances' prophecies of gloom and doom, I am a successful consultant, happily married for more than a quarter century, with four wonderful adult children.

Life goes on. It is good some days, not so good on others. But I've decided that when the cards are dealt, it's up to me, not deities or demons, to play the hand I pick up off of the table on any given day.

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