My wife and I are both hardwired to follow rules and as a young man the questioning of these rules never even occurred to me the pre-marriage classes were “creepy” enough that I began to ask why. Why are we following these rules? What is the desired outcome of the rule makers? — it is clearly not my immortal soul as I had been told that much was fairly obvious. Once the recruiting portion of my church indoctrination was over and it was time to marry it was quite clear that the churches interest were in my pocket book and in the further propagation of there agenda via our children. I was told to have “Faith” and to follow blindly despite my direct question being deflected to an explanation of “having faith” “Faith” is often used to gloss over the collective insanity often pushed by large religions i’m sorry but if you cannot give me a real reason why and right it off as simple faith or doctrine well thats just not good enough any more. I feel lied to and stupid for believing for so long.

It has occurred to me to sue the Catholic church. I feel that they, via there insane and outdated rules, have denied my wife and I a truly joyous time period in our lives that we may never regain. A time period of being young and in love and free to have “SEX” with abandon. This may sound a little petty but again my wife and I are consument rule followers we are both simply hardwired to follow rules as are our children. A simple rule like only have sex with some one you are willing to give your entire self to seems much more reasonable to me and in our case would have been better for everyone involved including this 2000 year old males only fraternity.

I started to date my wife when I was 18. We attended university together remaining celibate the entire time, we were married 2 days before my 24th birthday — 3 days later we both lost our virginity in a clumsy and guilt ridden manner following natural family planning which we did for many years (No sex even for the first time on your wedding night? But we didn’t want children yet and to have had them at that point would have been irresponsible to say the least). While I dearly love my wife, our sex life has always been clumsy and while not un-fulfilling it has always been tempered with a “Catholic Guilt” that after 20 years we have finally begun to shake off. Now I am in my mid 40s and 20 years of marriage and 2 children later my wife and I are now beginning to share the physical relationship we should have always had. To bad that relationship is exercised with 40 something year old bodies– we were both so young and virile once. It has brought us even closer which is no small feat — I consider us to be true soul mates — I always have and I suspect I always will love my wife in manner that transcends all other influences in our lives.

After we were married we went thought the motions of going to church for a year or so. Mostly just to keep my parents happy. A few short years later if you would have asked me I would have said that I was an atheist but that was just an angry young man rebelling against the Catholic Church. What I know now is that what I really meant was that I am no longer a Catholic and that every form of organized religion seems utterly ridicules to me. As for God I do believe that the universe was intelligently designed and created, if that is the definition of God then mark me as a believer. However I think it is just as likely that humans were not directly created by God. Given the known age of the Earth and known age of the Universe it is just a likely that humans are the genetic creation or manipulation of an extraterrestrial civilization that once visited or even inhabited the earth in the distant past. Even if this is true it does not change what I feel about “God” in my mind the creator of my creator is still my creator and I do not feel the need to be “God’s Chosen” or some other equally insecure notion. I certainly do not feel the need to push my ideas onto others or insist that they believe and force there children to believe in these ideas. My children are free to discover God on there own. For that matter while I would prefer that they make up there own minds and not follow some large religion if they chose to do so I would not actively diswade them. I do encourage them to learn and discover there own notions about what God means to them. This is a gift I wished that I had been given in my young life. I am fairly certain I would be a better person if it had been given to me. I see religion as just another form of control to be exercised against the week minded.

This is not what a really started out to say but I mean every word. In short I am ex-catholic, ex-atheist, and a current ?(I am not sure what I am). I believe in a god figure however I do not believe in a “personal” god. I believe my future and well being is influenced by this entity but only in the context of being just one more person walking around the surface of this planet. My general well being is effected by me and those people around me. I do not blame or praise God for anything in my life other than the actual fact of my existence was enabled by the grand design put in motion about 13.5 billion years ago. Who is to say that God didn’t use an alien race to create man? It makes just as much sense as the creation story. Take this same story and replace the word God with extraterrestrial race and the story still makes just as much sense and in my mind seems an even more plausible explanation. If the universe was created for Man as most religions seems to suggest then why is the human race so young. If this notion were true I would expect the Human race to be much much older, maybe we are and we just forgot.