At the age of five, my family moved from the place of my birth to New York City, a home that I little enjoyed in the three years I spent there. However during this time, my parents, who had little trust in the New York public school system, enrolled me in a Catholic private school. There I was told many of the principles in Christianity and Catholicism in watered down "children's versions" of many of the stories in the Bible; and, of course, being of the age I was, I absorbed it all.

I was also required by the school to attend confession about every month, my sins usually having to do with lying to my brother or eating a pop tart right before dinner. I would complacently recite the memorized prayers, hardly giving thought to the words that I was actually saying as my classmates entered and exited the confessional after me.

In these three years I received my First Communion and began to feel myself as a Catholic, finding enjoyment in the activities we did and comfort in the nuns that taught the classes. But then things changed when on day my parents told me that I was moving to Texas...

When my family moved for the second time in my life to Austin, we continued going to services every Sunday as I had been conditioned to do. However, the atmosphere was not the same as the school in New York, and going to church became more and more boring for me as well as my family. Eventually, my brother and I protested going to mass, as we would rather have slept a little more into the day and watched morning cartoons. The decline was steady although gradual; a few years after moving we only went to Church for religious holidays. A few years after that it was only for easter. The last time I was at Sunday mass must have been when I was an early teenager.

       I never really thought about why I had lost my faith in religion, or whether it was even there in the first place. I was content with the life I had, and I did not think about floating up to Heaven or careening into the depths of Hell. I lived for several years day after day with little thought of Jesus Christ on my mind. However I had not made a solid decision about what group I felt to identify myself with, this was something that happened to me halfway through high school...

In eleventh grade, I joined a group called PALS whose purpose was to go to elementary schools twice a week and mentor children who had been selected for the program. Of the six juniors in the group, Clinton and I were the only two boys. This and the fact that we shared four other classes made it easy and quick for us to become good friends. Unlike me, Clinton had a strong faith in Christianity; although he did question certain aspects about it, he still very much believed in the basic principles behind the religion.

        He and I would hold theological discussion between the two of us, not exactly arguing who was correct, but rather we would bounce ideas off of each other as he was redefining religion for himself as well. It was at this time that I undertook for myself a scientific approach of religion, feeling that perhaps God was the driving force behind evolution. I felt that instead of having one over the other, why could we not have both?

        This perspective on religion lasted about a year, whereupon I once again lost any faith in a higher being. I felt that I did not like the thought of living beneath a being that needed worship, and that prayer was a superficial way of respecting Him when all that should matter is how you treat His creations. Thus I no longer follow any sort of established religion and for about the last year and a half, I have lived under the rule that where I end up after this life does not matter as long as I treat all around me with respect.