Once upon a time, there lived a man; an intelligent man; a true man of science, an egotist; a narcissist; a man who believed himself to be the smartest man who ever lived; a man who believed that he would live forever; a man who disparaged anyone who even casually suggested the existence of God, angels, spirits, heaven, Hell, or life after death. Yet he called himself a Christian — believing that Christianity meant living by a certain moral code without needing to believe the “fairy tales” as he called them. He was a scientist. He believed that everything could be explained through science. And if it could not, then it was nonsense.
He was a Republican from the day he was old enough to choose sides. He never questioned his position. His position was “what was his, should remain his.” Period. And he should pay less in taxes than everybody else. A candidate for the highest office in the land (USA) only had to be a Republican to get his vote. Nothing else needed to be said. When there were multiple Republican candidates, he would pick the old, white man that promised he could keep more of his hard-earned money than the next guy. For the 2016 election, he was an early supporter of Donald Trump. He blindly believed all the fringe news sources when they made up stories about how the Democrats were going to take his money. For his politics, he had blind faith. He knew he was right. He disparaged anybody with a dissenting opinion.
This man received his Bachelor of Science degree from Michigan State College (Michigan State University before 1955) in Microbiology with a minor in Chemistry and went on to get his Master of Science degree in Bacteriology, also from Michigan State College.
He married his college sweetheart — an intelligent woman about his age, with a Bachelor of Science degree, in Chemistry and Mathematics. After her graduation, she returned to her hometown in rural Michigan, not far from the southernmost point of Saginaw Bay to work for a chemical company.
When her husband graduated, with his master’s degree, they moved to Oakland, CA where he conducted germ warfare research for the United States Naval Reserve. At the end of his tour, and after the end of the Korean war, he and his misses returned to southwestern, rural, Michigan where he took a job with a major pharmaceutical company as a Bio-sciences Laboratory Research Scientist and they built a home for themselves a few miles outside of a town of about 1000 residents.
It was here that they would choose to start a family. In 1960, their son was born and in 1962 their daughter was born. I, the author of this story, am their son. And for simplicity, the man will hereinafter be referred to as “Dad” and his wife will hereinafter be referred to as “Mom”.
I do not have many memories of my years in Michigan. Most of my memories were told to me by Mom or Dad over the years. When I was 7 years old and in the second grade, Dad got a new job as the Director of Research at a corn mill in a much bigger, rural community, in east-central Illinois.
We moved from the house that Mom and Dad built in Michigan, to a new home 250 miles away in Illinois. In Illinois, we lived in a subdivision where there were other kids my age to play with. I never had regular playmates in Michigan — probably one of the reasons that I am a loner to this day.
The Early Years
This article started as if it was about this “intelligent man”.
It is not. Well, not exactly.
It is about me, his son, and how a specific set of circumstances culminating in Dad’s death, gave me the basis of spiritual faith. And to understand why these circumstances accomplished that feat, you need to understand who I was, because of Dad, and who he was.
My early years — my formative years, really — were spent trying to live up to Dad’s expectations and failing miserably. It was the kind of thing that could damage a kid for life. Everything I did, was wrong, according to him. And everything was a competition with him. He took immense pride in beating his grade-school-aged son at everything. And throughout my life, it never stopped. He always changed the rules to favor himself to guarantee victory.
He especially liked to embarrass me in front of my friends or insult my friends with his arrogance and superiority. He would rave about his son to my friends’ parents and then tell me in private “why can’t you be more like your friends?”
Surrounded by Science
I grew up in a home filled with microscopes, telescopes, chemicals, and glassware from his laboratories. Science was everywhere. I heard stories about his many scientific accomplishments from when he was a child until he was a young adult. Dad, of course, was always the hero of every story.
I was raised to not believe in God, spirits, the afterlife, heaven, or Hell. Dad always called it silly. The Ten Commandments, however, represented our moral compass.
Anything science or science fiction was welcome in our home. Anything religious or fantasy was taboo.
Each year before Christmas, Mom would make my sister and I go to Sunday school. She wanted us to at least be exposed to the true meaning of Christmas. It was always the local Presbyterian church that we attended. How many years in a row could we proclaim ourselves “new” at the same church without the rest of the Sunday school class laughing at us? I mean, I saw these same kids in school every day. Dad said that was proof that religion was just a club for like-minded simpletons and not something to be taken seriously. By the time I got to high school, Mom no longer insisted that I go to Sunday school. I always thought that the idea of sending your kids to Sunday school, once each year, was silly, and I never went again. Like Dad, I did not see any point in it. I learned to distrust people of faith.
From an early age, I knew what the word Atheist meant. And I knew without hesitation that Dad was one, Mom was one, my sister was one, and I was one. That is what we were taught. I should just accept it. It was who we were. And Dad was always right. And we were nothing beside his great genius, as he often told me.