Sunday Excerpts: Memories of A Former Atheist

MY INDIFFERENCE TO THE CONCEPT OF GOD PERSISTED AS I GREW UP, went through high school and started college. In high school, religion of any kind seemed to me an odd but harmless pursuit....like golf or chess. In college I absorbed the idea that Christianity was a historical curiosity, or a blemish on modern civilization or both. My college science class presented Christians as illiterate anti-intellectuals who, because they didn't embrace Darwinism, threatened the advancement of knowledge. My history classes omitted or downplayed references to historical figures of faith: for instance it was only much later I learned that Florence Nightingale was a Christian.....

I suppose I must have had classmates or professors who were Christians, but even if I did I never knew any of them. Nobody talked about faith or Christianity on campus. I remember one particular girl in my dorm, my first semester year, who (in retrospect) was probably a Christian; she objected to the fact that the resident assistants distributed free condoms and had mandatory dorm meetings in which we were instructed on how to do things safely that I, at least, never even imagined that people did. The objecting girl was nice, but I didn't understand why she was making such a big deal about all this; then she moved off-campus, and I forgot about her.

---Holly Ordway, NOT GOD'S TYPE, A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith

Note: I will be excerpting quotes from this book for the next few weeks. Am short on time this morning, but hope to come back later to add more.