Some help from Creationists

Age: 48
State of residence: VA
Marital status: M
Education Level: BS Ecology, BS Management
Religious Affiliation: N/A
Occupation: Consultant
Type: ME/PM

I just realized I hadn't answered the last question in the OP: I think my trip to PM and ME began in the same place, but took alternate trajectories - the shores of Lake Erie.My atheism derived from a rather uninspired (albeit Old Rite) suburban Episcopalian upbringing that did nothing really to drive me away from religion/belief but did nothing to restrain me, either. From Sunday School lessons which I remember were indistinguishable from Saturday morning cartoon shows to the final separation when as a 13-14 yr old my "burning" questions concerning the existence of evil, etc, were unanswered/unanswerable by our kindly-but-non-confrontational pastor, it was a process of "drift" rather than reason or rebellion. What finally "did it" for me was the rather obvious realization that for thousands of years billions of believers of all faiths had unceasingly sought for evidence of the existence of their deities and the supernatural, and had yet to produce any. I made a conscious decision at that point that it made more sense to accept the world as it WAS, as a humanist seeking human solutions to what were human problems, rather than putting any "faith" in the assistance of a quite evidently non-existent entity.My trip towards ME started at a small, community nature center, a fascination with the fossils so abundant along the lake, a decent education system (even for those long-vanished times) and an inquisitive mind. I became fascinated with the living world, and the evidences of long-vanished organisms I could see everywhere. I was an avid, if indescriminant reader. I gradually formed an opinion (more like a "feeling") for what was bogus and what was genuine - although I still get tripped up on that one. In a sense, my arrival at methodological naturalism as the best explanation derived from how bad everything else was. In essence, I owe my ME position not to religion, but to Eric Von Daniken.

Indeed, my friend. Although a bio major may not be up on physics ("Physics? We don' need no steenkin' physics!"), the bit about spontaneous generation = ToE would be hard to justify if you've taken even high-school biology.