Looking Back Part 1

Tonight I assess things I have done in the past to realize where I am today that I was not previously. I thought I might share some of the personal paths that have taken me where I am today. I grew up in a household that one might describe as moderately conservative, barring the fact that my parents voted for Jesse Ventura, they have pretty much stuck to Republicans and the ideals that they stand for. As a child I grew up in the public schools and made a turn, like most children do, away from my parents. Not a openly defiant youth, I did things in secret, testing limits and borders and much like a Mexican, sneaking across where I found that it was easy to and avoiding the areas more heavily guarded.

My family was not very religious, my dad I cannot remember attending a Church service at any time, and my mother who was quite set back by several faiths had one that we attended regularly but eventually stopped. I can't remember why we stopped but I know that I particularly didn't like some answers that I received from questions I asked. At that point, although I couldn't say it in so many words, I would have considered myself agnostic. As I spread my interests out I found I liked the sciences a lot. Fascinating studies of chemicals and biology and what not I enjoyed that as my primary fascination and along with that came Star Trek which held a deep rooted hold in science.

From this I grew to an atheist. My belief in a higher power was no more than science and a begining and evolution. This carried my interest and based a lot of my own personal feelings. Of course as an atheist I pulled a lot of liberal beliefs. I was never violently anti-gun but I supported tight restrictions, welfare was good, capitalist bad, environmentalism good, greed bad et cetera. After a few years of that, I pondered life and the end and realized that something wasn't quite right that we would live a short period like this and dissapear. I had started into the odd sciences (aliens, bigfoot, the occult) and took a brief stint into the culture of the druids, masons, and wiccans. None of these answered questions I had though provided some much needed life reflection. I then proceeded to Hinduism which offered some consolance but didn't make too much sense to me.

I pulled one day to to Buddhism, Taosim and the teachings of Confucius. Now these teachings interested me and caught my attention but didn't answer many questions I had about life and after-life which stopped me from following them. Judism was my next stop on this line. Somehow this quenched a good portion of my thirst but still left questions unanswered. After hearing about Islam back in the late 90's I thought that maybe Islam could be a good thought. I did a fair amount of research and realized that Islam, althought it held a lot of answers, the answers could not be right. The entire text is comprised of death to anyone not complying with Islamic beliefs, and even then there was a strong anti-American movement which I could not subscribe to.

I pushed myself back to Christianity to see if another demnomiation could take on the challege that I presented.

Continued tomorrow...