Hello CFI Forum People,
When I was a kid growing up in Phoenix, I loved to check out Martin Gardner’s Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight from my library.
I grew up in a religious family, but I came up in the punk rock scene, so they canceled each other out and I became the laziest of Christians. That is, I believed enough not to embrace the atheism that my friends had, but not enough to keep going to church. The more I have studied about history, ethics, and biology, the less comfortable I feel identifying myself as any religion. While I am still figuring out where I stand on a god or an afterlife, I am certain that I am against how religion has affected politics and science in the U.S.
I live in L.A. now. I host a podcast called “Shakeytown Radio,” and when actress and playwright Lauren Weedman appeared on our show, I followed her visit up by attending her one-woman play at the Steve Allen Theatre. The venue is located at the Center for Inquiry in Hollywood, and there is a lot of information in the lobby about this secular humanist worldview that I had never looked at depth into.
After hearing about Gardner’s death, I started to read more of his books and articles about him online, and I found out about his association with the CFI. In fact, most of the reading I have been doing lately has been related to fringe science, and arguments over evolution and climate change (two non-Gardner books I’ve enjoyed lately: Anarchy Evolution by Greg Graffin; How It Ends by Chris Impey). I recently checked out more Gardner books at the library, and recalled my visit to the Steve Allen Theatre. This morning, I was listening to the CFI “Point of Inquiry” podcast, and looked more into their work.
I’m excited to participate in these forums and attend events at the CFI here in L.A.
Thanks for reading.
