EVERY day is Atheist day, for me, anyway....not just this coming Saturday....So....lots of celebrations, since I was 13......I remember the day that 'all that' vanished from my perspectives......8th Grade....My 'home room' class was 'led' into its then compulsory prayer and 'pledge of allegiance to 'The United States Of America" one morning...like all other 'mornings' in the Alabama Public School System; then, an hour later, we were off to the Auditorium, single file, where some guest religious speaker was to perform (after the 'system' had 'outlawed' a 16MM sex education film (that I'd rather have seen....for sure!) ........My then still latent 'disbelief' was 'outed' by all that morning's demonstration of religious faith.......I felt so relieved that 'GOD' was dead and I was free to think as I wished.....and, besides, hormones had begun to ravish my brain, which had far more interesting ideas to occupy it....a few years later, at 15, I watched the movie, Inherit The WInd, which nailed the 'Religion' coffin, stuffed full of dogma, shut...In '10th grade' I read Origin of Species and The Interpretation Of Dreams...and that was that! Interestingly, both of these books were 'banned' by the School System, and were conspicuously absent from the School Library.........I believed that 'we' were just some more monkeys......In 1963, now a student at Vanderbilt, my thoughts and ideas were reified by Dr. David Nunnally, who first introduced 'Genetics' and 'Evolutionary Biology' to the SYSTEM........
