The first time I let organized religion know exactly how I felt about it was when I was baptized. Sure, I was only a couple months old, but, not to be indelicate, I shat on the altar. My mother still has the photos in an old album somewhere. It was the ultimate in foreshadowing, punctuating my eventual disdain for religion and its place in the world. Unholy shit, if you will.

I was raised Catholic, which for me meant being baptized, receiving first communion, experiencing the mental torture of confession and the strange, cult-like ceremony known as confirmation. Catholicism demands loyalty, and receiving these so-called sacraments are supposed to cement your faith. For me, it became the lubrication down a slippery slope known as atheism. This slippery slope was a welcomed one, resulting in a belief system that includes innate human goodness and rationalism.

I'm cut from the Christopher Hitchens cloth of non-belief, meaning not only do I not believe in god, but the very idea that one might exist honestly repulses me. I would prefer there was no omnipotent being spying on me, gleefully plotting punishments for arbitrary sins like swearing, or inexplicably not ridding the world of disease and atrocities.

This fantastical notion of an all-knowing creator is made worse by its mortal representatives here on Earth. My former sect of Christianity is one of the worst culprits of unadulterated evil the world has ever known, the Catholic fingerprints having been found on everything from genocide to pedophilia.