About Me

I strongly encourage people to rely on teachings and not on the character or actions of specific teachers. Every teacher (including me) is an imperfect human being. Placing too much importance on the character or actions of a teacher eventually leads to disappointment.

Yet, some people might be curious about me. Who am I? Why am I teaching spiritual humanism?

Here are a few quick facts about my background.

• My childhood was relatively uneventful, growing up with a family who loved me and gave me room to be myself.
• Growing up in a funeral home gave me a deep and lasting interest in spirituality.
• I attended a religious university for 1 year with plans to become a minister.
• I grew disillusioned with, but not hostile towards, organized religion around 20 years old.
• I served in the U.S. Marine Corps for four years.
• I earned my Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Maryland at College Park.
• For family and financial reasons, I switched careers from psychology to computer programming.
• I have earned my living the last 20 years as a software engineer for a company in the food industry.
• My spouse and I have been lovingly married for 40 years, and we are both proud of our kind and intelligent son.

My motivation to teach is simply to share what I have learned. I have spent decades studying ideas from a variety of sources, such as:

• poetry
• ancient and modern religions
• existential and pragmatic philosophies
• cosmology
• biology
• psychology

I hope that something I have learned might benefit others.