A few weeks ago, Rodrigo wrote a powerful and beautiful little composition that reflected on his experiences and his relationship with secularism, and it (along with the end of 2008) inspired me to think and write about this myself.

My life as a skeptic, a secular humanist and an atheist has been short. As a young child, I was raised a moderate Catholic, but I’ve never found that it had much of a direct impact of my life. I was swayed from it by one of my best friends a few years ago. But it’s only been over the course of the past year that I can really say that my beliefs have been defined. I was introduced to Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene by said friend in early 2008, and it is that which I have to thank for a great deal of where I’m at right now.

I fell in love with biology from that book, but more importantly, I learned about logic.

This year I realized that logic is a skill that takes practice just like any other. At least, I certainly wasn’t born with it. This has been an important thing for me to understand. Between the time when I stopped going to church for the better (I was eleven or so) and the point where I finally began to grasp what it meant to be an atheist (beginning of 2008), there was a void. Although I was glad to be free of the church, I didn’t understand anything any better. I was confused, and I tried searching for answers in alternative religions (Wicca, Buddhism, Scientology) but I couldn’t ever make up my mind. I wanted to make my own decisions about what I thought, but at eleven I was terribly helpless about how to do it.

Fast forward a bit to the time right before I first opened The Selfish Gene. I was still just as lost, but I had long given up attempting to fix it. Really, I think that looking back on my eleven-year old state, all I needed was more education. By the time I started reading the book, I already had a small interest in science and far more knowledge on the subject (and in general). So I was just able to get through it, and what I read amazed me. For those who haven’t read the book, it really has little to do with logic (directly). It’s about biology and natural selection. But the thing was, I’d never really understood evolution. My memories of science class lessons about the subject include picking up camouflaged colorful confetti on a multicolor piece of paper, which is an accurate demonstration but astonishingly uninformative.

And then there was Richard Dawkins, in a book obviously written for adults, explaining to me in perfect, clear language what I had always struggled to grasp in middle school. I understood him so astoundingly well… and in an unexplainable way, I saw what it was to be logical.  If there’s any time in my life where I’ve ever experienced a eureka moment, that would be it.

Basically, this experience ultimately threw me into atheism and skepticism. Attending the Center for Inquiry student leadership conference this past summer was the second event that changed me. I had just turned fifteen when I went. I met all kinds of people. Fascinating, incredibly marvelous people. It was worlds apart from my high school biology class, and the discussions that we had during that conference were far beyond anything that happened in the little debates in my freshman English class with twenty other kids. Everyone I talked to was someone new, and it was so refreshing. I don’t think I can ever forget that weekend with those people. I learned and grew so much. That was the weekend I really fell in love with inquiry, and skepticism and the universe. Biology had only been the beginning. I’m even more passionate about those things now, and it sincerely overwhelms me beyond anything else I can imagine.

The reactions I get from people about it are pretty predictable and they usually have to do with my age. But surprisingly, most of them are from the people I go to school with, who are about the same age I am. When I mention things like Edger and what it means to me, I’m met with confusion a lot of the time. It really forces me to consider how lucky I am. I’m incredibly grateful to have people I can go to who think like I do. They’re not only my friends, but something else, even though I’m not really sure what to call them. I owe so much to them either way.

Speaking of Edger, it’s really been a gift to me. Everyone who works on it is seriously talented and fantastic, and even though I have no idea how I ended up in the middle of it all, I’m so glad I did. And as the new year comes in, I think about where I’d be without it. Because despite the differences in age I have with everyone else, at the end of the day we are all thinking about the same thing in like-minded ways.

So after all, I guess this turned out to be a thank you letter to everything and everyone who helped me get where I am this year, especially the folks at the Center for Inquiry and especially especially everyone at Edger.

I feel like I belong here, with secularism and skepticism and science. I really wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world, and it’s the most comfortable feeling.

Thanks for 2008,

Cheers