Let me start gathering notes for that spiritual autobiography

About Al
The name "Old Whig" comes from Hayek's "Why I am not a Conservative," in which he disparages conservative positions and places himself in the Lockean camp. He says some things in praise of Edmund Burke in that article...fortunately Burke once wrote a piece called "A Vindication of Natural Society," which makes it possible for me to continue using that moniker.

My Life

Milestones: My "best friend" punched me in the stomach three times in Kindergarten. (Maybe that shouldn't be listed first, but chronologically it's the first thing that disturbed me. It was the birth of a deadly rage, in me.) Dad taught me to fight and I "got even" with that sob. That was never satisfying. I wanted to be friends, or at least be left alone. Both of those were out of the question. He wouldn't leave me alone, and he couldn't take me. Beating him up became a grim, several-times-per-week chore. Nobody offered him psychological counseling or me a better solution. Christ! I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old! People are telling me, "You're fighting too much," or "violence doesn't solve anything..." Funny that nobody seriously tried to stop us. Ever.

...

Age seven: accepted Jesus as my Savior and was baptized. We went to a Wesleyan church which is a fundamentalist offshoot of the Methodists. My mother was raised Missionary Baptist in Oklahoma, and occasionally we went to an Assemblies of God church in town. In college, I called myself a Baptist/Methodist/Pentacostal. The first and the last figure the other is a variation of Satanism. Ho ho ho!

Age eight: started beating the crap out of my enemies. It got to be a dull chore.

Age nine: Read the whole Bible. When I was done, I started rereading it, bogged down in Leviticus, skipped ahead to Numbers, bogged down again, skipped to Deuteronomy, bogged down again... No, I was good with the Books of History, plodded through the Books of Poetry and the Major Prophets (Daniel is good story-telling), gave up on the Minor Prophets, except for Jonah and went ahead to the New Testament. Most of the preaching and teaching I heard all those years was from the New Testament, though we did some OT Bible studies from time to time over the years.

I should talk about what a lousy witness for Christ I was at school. I'm sure nobody ever thought I was anything but a heathen there. If they knew I was a Christian, they were repulsed by me. I had a foul mouth, talked "dirty," ...and, most shameful of all, when I became a big jock, I bullied some people. There's a guy named Dave I need to make amends to.

College: German major, Math & Philosophy minors. Graduated a nihilist. Nothing was true unless it was right in front of my face. I went to the Grand Canyon to make beds. I was shanghai'ed to drive a delivery truck (because the boss was a racist and the other candidate was black).

I found that part out when I got to know the boss better. I was ashamed to look the other candidate in the eye after that.

I need to check something. Some part of me doesn't want me to describe my time at the Canyon. Or doesn't like the way I've done it, now, twice. I've discovered two ways to accidently delete a post.

Suffice it to say, I met a guy who was the quintessential Christian moron, rejected him, read Nietszche and enjoyed godlessness for a while.

Where I'm at right now:
We raised our kids Lutheran, though, lately I've been monkey-wrenching church attendance. I've just been absent when it's time to go, so nobody goes. It's not the right way to handle it, I'm sure.

It's hard for me to believe that my wife didn't get that I was an atheist until I said it flat out a couple of weeks ago. I guess she was working really hard at keeping two and two apart. I suppose the whole thing of rejoining the choir made a really effective smoke screen. (I like singing and I like the style of music we sang - and the choir director and members... But I can't help them spread that word anymore.)

I have three witnesses that prove there is no god: my brother, my stepson and the guy from the Canyon. They're the strongest Christians I know and all nutty as squirrels.