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I was confirmed Lutheran when I was 13 years old. I was supposed to read a prayer in the service of confirmation, but became very concerned that the prayer was somehow defective... blasphemous even. I brought this up with the Pastor, who agreed that is was a marginal prayer, and I re-wrote it into something more acceptable.

When I was about 14, my parents joined a church nearby that was much more dynamic than the stodgy old Lutherans... it was Episcopal and it was Charismatic. The Church of the Redeemer services were long... about 3 hours, but included a lot of enthusiasm, good music, long sermons and long prayers that usually included a bit of glossolalia. I tried to join in, but usually the mood was just a bit too elevated for me. But I did enjoy the church and the great effort put into it by all involved. Eventually we returned to our local Lutheran church when the Redeemer stopped welcoming Suburbanite commuters (which we clearly were) wanting to reach out to the community that was immediately beyond the walls in preference. This was a 'silly mistake', it seemed to me (a 15-16 year old), because not only were the neighbors mostly hispanic and very likely to be Catholic, but not particularly interested even if the Redeemer did introduce services in Spanish. So we drifted back to our dull Lutheran church, and the Church of the Redeemer missed out on becoming what have could have been one of the world's first megachurches.

In the summer of 1975, when I was 16, I went to a Church of the Redeemer church camp located near Giddings Texas. This is only notable because one night after the activities, myself and some other campers were hanging out on a trampoline and enjoying the beauty of the clear central Texas sky and the thousands of stars. I still clearly remember watching something pass over us, traveling low and not overly fast, that could not have been any kind of terrestrial aviation. In the first place it had odd white irregularly flashing lights... or rather the flashing lights (which seemed quite bright) had an odd rhythm... sort of a burst of 3 or 4, then a short pause, then repeat. And while it was quite close by, there were no green or red outboard lights. And the clincher was that there was absolutely no sound. When the craft, whatever it was, was at its closest approach to us, I could see that it was triangular, with the point of triangle facing aft, and the body of the craft had a light orange glow. When it passed, the intensity of the flashes greatly decreased, but still could be seen for a while, I'd say 2-3 minutes.

Later, when I was 17, my parents allowed a troubled young man in his mid-20s named Pat Lamp who was trying to reform himself, but struggled with alcohol, promiscuity, pornography, and generally living a debauched life. A man named Kellum entered the picture, diagnosed Pat with demon influence (short of possession) and wanted to try to help Pat, and one night they attempted to cast out the demons. I was in an adjacent room, and could only imagine the scene, but I could hear muffled commands to 'come out in the name of Jesus' and 'be gone in the name Jesus'. At the climax of the action, I heard an inhuman high cackling evil laugh 'panning' across the ceiling of the room I was in, as if there were stereo speakers mounted in the ceiling and someone moved the sound from one speaker to the other in a sweeping way. I'm pretty sure the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I immediately left the house, as did my older sister, who was there with me. That was enough for me. The next day I confirmed with her that what I had heard was also heard by her, although we didn't go into detail. It was enough to confirm that what I heard wasn't 'only in my imagination'. We never spoke about it until many years later. It was too strange of a happening. This sort of thing was embarrassing for a teenager. Anyway Pat might have been helped for a while, but eventually reverted to his debauchery and moved out, but not before doing some rather severe damage to my parents' marriage, or so I thought at the time.

For many years after this event I studied engineering and amused / educated myself by reading Scientific American and all the sorts of science books that were available during that era (starting in the late 1970s through the present). These books (by authors such as Douglas Hofstader, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan, Martin Gardener, Lewis Thomas, Richard Preston, Richard Dawkins, Steven Jay Gould, et cetera) well informed me about what fundamental materialism has to say. And I felt at the time (and still feel) that it is a curiously clueless body of work when it comes to application beyond its immediate scope. I had been 'innoculated' by my experience(s) against taking scoffers and those dismissive of the reality of certain phenomenon seriously, so it did no harm to indulge my curiosity, even if I did not accept their assumptions regarding our access to 'all the evidence'. I appreciated that communication requires that one make assumptions, and they are there even if they are unstated, which is generally the case.

As for my attitude toward ordinary Religion, I was open and interested, although not particularly happy with various aspects of the standard approaches. I didn't find out why until much later.