My science textbook was Christian, and it bolstered these lessons with warnings about the lengths to which evolutionists would go to prove their theory. We were likely the only schoolchildren in Florida who knew the details of the Piltdown Man fiasco, in which human remains found in a Sussex quarry early in the 20th century were used, in an elaborate hoax, to prove the existence of evolution's "missing link." We watched film strips, with titles such as "God of Creation," that reminded us that the natural world disproved Darwin's theory of evolution. I found books in the school library with titles such as "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!"

Browsing the shelves of our public library, however, I found different books -- books that explained Charles Darwin's theory in more detail and offered scientific analyses of the age of the Earth that made no mention of Genesis or the Great Flood. When I asked my teachers about this, they tried to offer guidance. But puzzling through these contradictions marked the beginning of my first serious questioning of fundamentalism, a questioning that eventually led me away from the tenets of fundamentalism and to a secular life.