As you can see, I was raised Lutheran. When Martin Luther (no doubt a man of God) NAILED his 95 theses to the door of the church, a ripple was sent through the religious community. It was a disturbance called thought, and while Luther did his best to break away from the imposed religious rubbish of his era by redefining faith as an abstract between God and man rather than a link defined by other men, he did not realize that his freedom and existence were intrinsic in himself- he exsisted and therefore those things were his and his alone. How can you have faith in something that is supposedly perfect, yet was redefined in it's heyday by one man (who still belived that his soul was not his own to posess) and now wavers in the arguments made by a 16 year old boy?

The history of that particular event caught me at the time when we begin to truly question the foundations of the social instituions that guide us (i.e. parental rule, education, authority). While 16 is certianly not the age of adult rationale, it is a time of suprising intelligence and an keen perception for flaws, both in one's self and others. At 19, my educational journey, guided by the hands and minds of the objective and self-critical, will culminate in mastery of the concept of evolution. It will take time to gain the Ph.D title, but the foundation of understanding is there. I can say with great confidence that I know where we came from. I know the gist of our natural story, and I am not fooled by the Church. They lost footing when Luther corrected them, slipped since then, and keeled when Darwin said his peace. Dennett's explanation of Darwin's theory as a "universal acid" that eats at the foundations of our world views best describes modern day religion- a "perfect" faith fr

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