Well, as a kid I believed in God. You just internalize what the culture is, and I would pray to God and try to be a good person, because God was watching me. ((Faith Based Belief System, Inside The Soul Of Human Beings, Like A Slave, Reached The Apex, Universal Humanism)) And I didn’t really examine what that meant, the whole concept of an all seeing, all powerful deity somewhere hiding behind the clouds. And so, I had a job in the local candy store where all the newspapers, the New York Times particularly had to be — different sections had to be inserted, so it came in all one package. And on the day after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it was the big headline in the papers and I just thought one after another, after another, and realized how many people, and they still didn’t know, had been killed by it and burned.

And it suddenly struck me, how could God let this happen? ((This Question)) And I didn’t forgive him or her or it, but I still then, and now, have little private dialogues with the deity I don’t believe in, just sort of as trying to — as a venue for being objective about my motivations. ((Turning The World Upside Down Pt. 1))