My story is similiar to Nick Martin’s: I grew up in Germany in a traditional Catholic family. As a child I went to church (1-2 times a week) and I was also an altar boy. Nothing uncommon when you grow up in a rural area. Between the age of ca. 10-12 I was so devoted that my family suspected I would become a priest (though I myself never had this idea).

In my environment there was, though it was quite traditional and convervative, never any anti-science sentiment. Like Nick, I later on had no problems to be fully convinced of the sientific method. One of my child-time heroes was Hoimar von Ditfurth, a German scientist who hosted a very good popular science TV-show (btw- his daughter was one of the founders of the German Green Party). I read most of his books. You may compare him to Carl Sagan, except that Ditfurth was convinced that there is a transcendent reality. Since this youth hero of mine (hey, one of his books is titled ‘In the beginning there was Hydrogen’) had no problem going the scientific and the ‘believe’-route at the same time it was of course also not a problem for me. Evolution was real, the big bang was real, and so was God. Aliens, homeopathy, aura-reading and all this crap was crap.

From my mid-twenties on I slowly drifted away from this belief and started to call myself an ‘agnostic’. I would flatter myself if I would say that this was the result of rational analyzis. It was more a gut feeling, more kindled by the large gap between claim and reality that I noticed with church (both Catholic as well as any other denomination or religion).

My conversion to the dark side is almost a twin of Nick Martin’s: Somewhere in the internet I stumbled across the name ‘PZ Myers’ (don’t remember the exact circumstances, but i’m pretty sure that it was in connection with some discussion on pseudo-science). His fervent insistence to apply the same scepticsm that one takes for granted in science to all belief/explanation systems (like religion) started a chain reaction. Actually his word fell on prepared soil. It lead to other names: Dawkins, Hitchens, Benett. Harris. Stenger. The (German) Giordano-Bruno-Foundation. I re-read Bertrand Russel and Schleichert (How to discuss with fundamentalist without loosing your sanity) and recognized the rhetoric tricks used by religion. I suddenly discovered that I was an agnostic no more. I was an atheist. Not an atheis by gut feeling. But by conviction. And I can take a rational stand on this every time. I can argue about it. I can back it. Something I was never able to do before, neither as a believer nor as an self-proclaimed agnostic. It is a matter of reason.

Bernhard Funk
Germany