The Crack Den is about all I have time to read right now, as I'm putting in a floor, starting with the joists and working my way up. It's tiring as well as time consuming, so this will be shorter than I'd normally do otherwise. Like Atrios, I'm not going to get that phone call from NPR. But I agree with him that we in the blogosphere of unbelievers need to talk more about our non-religion.

Like Atrios, I too was raised in a religion-free household. Actually, his narrative is very close to mine, with one important difference. I was really interested in mythology early on, but I was interested in it because it was just that- mythology. I loved all the different stories old and new about mythical and supernatural beings, and as a voracious reader from early on, I'd devoured the classics and then some by the time I was a teen. From ancient Greece to Renaissance occultism, from Stephen King to Joseph Cambell, I just couldn't get enough.

My first college degree was in the sciences, mainly because my grandmother told me to "study something that will get you a job" and I thought I'd go to medical school like my mother. That didn't happen, as I realized filling out med school applications that I didn't want my mother's life. I did a lot of things people do after college, and when I went back for another degree, I found myself returning to my childhood fascination with religion. I finished in a doctoral program at divinity school, and by the time I was done there, I'd learned all about the things they don't tell you in the "general audience" books about religion.

One question I had from the beginning of my Master's program onwards was "why do people believe what they believe?" A corollary to that question was "upon what do people base that belief?" I will confess that part of the reason these were important questions for me had to do with intellectual vanity, and respect. I was a smartass well before the invention of blogging, and I have always loved conversational and intellectual games of "gotcha" and one-upmanship. I have also mostly based respect for other people upon how intelligent I think they are. I won't try to defend that, but just say that this is the way that I am. So I wondered about people, when they would tell me that they were Christians or Jews or Hindus- why were they so sure that their religions were historically factual, "true" and "right?"

I suppose it's either the best or worst reason to go to school, to do so for no other reason than to satisfy your own mind. That's more or less what I did. I started learning about modern belief systems, "pagans" on distant islands and Protestants in my own country. I had the privilege to work with some of the finest scholars of religion in this country, who were at the same time widely divergent in their own personal and academic "beliefs." Divinity schools still have a unique form of academic programs, and mine was of the kind that insisted students acheive a balance of the languages of the religions and peoples they studies, the history of other religions and cultures from around the world, and the philosophical, rhetorical and political foundations upon which various religions have stood. There is little that is religious to which I've not had at least some exposure.

I can't quite recall now, but there were a few moments early on in this process when I decided I wanted to know about the origins of monotheistic belief. Monotheism seemed so important to me, probably because the majority of my peers and neighbors were (are) monotheists. From a young age, monotheistic belief seemed, well...sort of stupid to me. The idea of hell seemed downright cruel and unjust, and the God of the Bible and Koran seemed capricious, silly, and at times curiously foolish. Yet so many people I respected would pray to him, based decisions about their own lives on what "he wanted," and judged events, history and people through the lens of that belief. It just didn't make sense to me. So I went back "to the beginning." Although the scholar in me cringes to recall some of my early assumptions and perceptions of religion, I'm not wholly ashamed of my first motivations to find out more about monotheistic faiths.

I spent a lot of time learning ancient languages, reading ancient texts and tablets, reading about what others had to say about those early musings on religion. Most importantly, I studied archaeology and history, secular and religious, and compared them all. Time and time again, I saw the places in which theology and history diverged, and I came to the inevitable conclusion that a great deal of "what is in the Bible" is just plain made up.

For those of you who came to this conclusion without the benefit of a $500,000 education...you have my sincere respect and admiration. Some of us are just slower to pick up on the obvious.

To me, thinking about religion is something akin to a dam and a tiny hole. Believers call that hole "doubt" or "a crisis of faith" or "temptation" or a thousand other theological terms and narratives. But it was unstoppable in my own mental machinations. Once I realized certain absurdities, and saw for myself how much had been "left out" of some holy books, the fact that the dam would burst was only a matter of time. For while I'd never been a religious person myself, my mind had always been open to it. Indeed, there were many times when I sincerely considered joining a convent. I'm a bleeding heart for real and whimpering puppies make me cry. And to be honest, I'd long been a tad bit jealous of people with faith. I knew that a lot of people faked it, but in divinity school, I met no small number of people who could take real comfort, in a sincere and enviable way, from their belief. The thing that kept me from joining any one religious group: misogyny. There is not a single living faith that doesn't present problems, when it comes to matters of gender. Even the "Wiccans" and Gaia folks leave me feeling unsatisfied. If we're all children of some loving creator/creatrix, there must be no difference in how we are to be perceived and treated by that force.

Over time, the last few years of my doctoral program, I became comfortable in what I now term as my own "humanist pagan" belief. I'd seen all the ways in which religions lie, suffocate competing beliefs and histories, and worst of all, kill in the name of their creed. I have no problem not being a part of that. And I will say what few on the left are willing to say, because I don't fear them: people of faith do not command the total respect they could have from me, were they to be honest and admit that faith is just another way of avoiding hard fact and reality. I have no problem with those who choose to believe, but the ones I respect most are the ones who say, "the most important part my faith isn't my belief in the factual nature of its claims, but how I live my life." To me, everyone else is willfully fooling themselves, and denying asking the hard questions that I would put to them, were they not to so assiduously avoid conversation with people like me.

I will also say that I no longer believe the claim that "religion is a force for good in this world." There are exceptions, and good religious people, but an honest appraisal of history shows that for every orphan fed and clothed, a hundred are created in the name of the faith that "succors" them. Religion has also stifled human discovery and intellectual advance, and prevented prosperity and comfort from coming to a greater number. Frankly, I weep to think of what children could be learning, instead of spending so much time memorizing proclamations generated by the squabbles of men long dead.

Religion is a great thing to study, for it reveals the full range of the human animal, as a creature of good and (snicker) evil. But to place it above all other human endeavor seems criminal to me. Just as I believe that the use of our innate sense of good to control populations for the gain and power of a few is a great wrong. There are few religions in which that statement does not apply, at some (most) points in their history.

Unlike even some left leaning religious folks, I welcome discussion here and invite believers and nonbelievers alike to offer their own opinions and stories of how they came to (not) believe. This is a conversation we really need to have, every day and at every dinner table in America. I believe my way of thinking is gaining in popularity, and that the benefits of my way of thinking are great. But I think that everyone can agree that in this moment in American political history, the time for more voices to join the conversation has come. Bush and his ilk don't speak for me, or even most Christians, and he certainly doesn't speak for a majority of Americans.

Do your part to change that.