CHAPTER 1

What's Wrong with Me?

I could take you back to the very place where I lostmy faith in God. I was 14 years old.

At Prospect High School in Mount Prospect,Illinois, the biology classroom was on the third floorin the northwest corner of the building. I was sittingin the second row from the windows, thirdchair from the front, when I first learned about Darwin'stheory of evolution.

REVOLUTIONIZED BYEVOLUTION

This was revolutionary to me! Our teacherexplained that life originated millions of years agowhen chemicals randomly reacted with each otherin a warm ocean on the primordial earth. Then,through a process of survival of the fittest and naturalselection, life forms gained in complexity.Eventually, human beings emerged from the same family treeas apes.

Although the teacher didn't address this aspect of evolution,its biggest implication was obvious to me: If evolutionexplains the origin and development of life, then God was outof a job! What did we need God for? Life was just the naturalresult of the random interaction of chemicals.To my mind, this was great news! Finally, here was arational basis for atheism. If evolution explains life, then thefirst chapters of the Bible must be mythology or wishfulthinking. And if that were true of the first chapters, why notthe rest? Jesus could not have been God. Miracles aren't possible;they're just the attempts by pre-scientific people tomake sense out of what they couldn't understand but whichnow science can explain.

For the first time, I had a rational reason to abandonChristianity.

BORED BY RELIGION

Not that I'd ever really been a Christian.

My parents believed in God and had done their best to tryto spark spiritual interest in me. When I was a kid, theybrought me to a Protestant church, where I would struggle tostay awake during the 20-minute sermons. I didn't understandthe rituals, I couldn't relate to the organ music, and I quicklyconcluded that religion was a waste of an otherwise perfectlygood Sunday.

When I was in junior high, my parents enrolled me in confirmationclass. This meant that one day a week after school Iwas forced to sit in the church's airless basement and gothrough a series of classes.

I can't recall learning much about the Bible—or aboutJesus, for that matter. Mostly, I remember having to memorizethings like the Ten Commandments and then stand and recitethem. Nobody knew them well; we sort of bluffed our waythrough as the pastor would prompt us. It was mind-numbinglydull. I don't remember anything that I was forced to commit tomemory back then, although I do have vivid memories of thepastor lecturing us and telling us sternly that we didn't haveenough "diligence." I didn't even know what that was, butapparently we were bad for not having it.

GRADUATING FROM CHURCH

When the time came to be formally confirmed and made amember of the church, we were told in advance the kind ofquestions we would be asked so that we'd know the answers.I didn't want to go through with this because, if I had any faithin God at the time, it was hanging by a slender thread. To me,God was irrelevant, mysterious, and a stern disciplinarian who,if he existed, was probably mad that I lacked "diligence."

On the other hand, I wasn't too excited about the idea ofstanding up to my parents and saying, "No thanks, I'm notinterested in being confirmed, because I think your God isprobably just a fairy tale." My dad would have gone ballisticand my mom would have freaked out. I didn't need that. Ifthere were no God, then what would be the harm in goingthrough some meaningless ritual?

So I went through the confirmation ceremony. Afterward,we got a stack of pre-printed envelopes so we could give moneyto the church. That, I figured, was probably what was reallybehind the whole confirmation scam—and probably behindall of organized religion. But confirmation had its advantages:I figured that my confirmation ceremony was actually my graduationceremony—I had graduated from church. Now I wason my own. My parents stopped dragging me to church on Sundays,and I was happy to sleep late. I had done the religiondrill. Time to party!

LOOKING FOR LOVE

After that day in biology class, I had even more reason toparty. After all, I'd figured out that God did not exist. And thatmeant I was not accountable to him. I would not have to standbefore him someday and be judged. I was free to live accordingto my rules, not his dusty commandments that I had beenforce-fed in confirmation class. To me, all of this meant thatnobody else really mattered unless they made me happy.

But there was someone who mattered—and who made mehappy. Her name was Leslie, and we met when we were 14years old. On the day we met, Leslie went home and told hermother, "I've met the boy I'm going to marry!"

Her mother was condescending. "Sure, you did," she said.But Leslie didn't have any doubts, and neither did I.

We dated on and off during high school, and after I lefthome to attend the University of Missouri, we maintained ourrelationship through the mail. We became convinced that therewas nobody else we would ever be happy with. Within a year,Leslie moved down to Missouri, and we got engaged. Wedecided to get married in a church because ... well, that'swhere people get married, isn't it?

Besides, Leslie wasn't hostile toward God, as I was. Shewasn't opposed to religion, especially for other people. For herself,though, God was just another topic she had never takenthe time to seriously explore.

LIVING IN HIGH GEAR

After I finished college, we moved to a high-rise apartmentnot far from Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago. Leslie wasbusy with her banking career. I was beginning to climb theladder at the Chicago Tribune, where my internship had led toa permanent job as a...