I'm a professional biologist in my beloved city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama with the Geological Survey of Alabama--the State's oldest scientific agency--located on the UA campus. When not in the lab I spend much of my time in the field capturing and/or observing various aquatic lifeforms--everything from cave organisms to marine fishes. The greatest thing is that almost every one of the specimens we capture are immediately released back into the water, which is beautiful...In my spare time I run, play rugby, and read about the evolution of sexual behavior (OK, I sometimes do more than just read about it). Living things are the most complex objects in the known universe, and it sometimes surprises me that anyone would want to study anything else.
I also have a "spare" bachelor's degree in philosophy, and an interest in that subject. I suppose if I had to ascribe to a philosophical doctrine, I'd call myself a "materialist" in the sense that I don't see any reason to suspect that the world is made of anything other than, well, "stuff," and operates according to brute, mechanical, physical laws. I suppose that bleeds into atheism, but the real reason I'm a religious skeptic has to do with the so-called "Problem of Evil," but that's a long story. Basically, aside from the plentiful human suffering seen all around us, I'm impressed at how utterly ruthless and brutal animals are to each other. One might expect things to look different if there really were an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient deity. But, I'm afraid it just doesn't look that way.
On a more chirpy note, I've been a distance runner since the spring of 1993, and running is still perhaps the most important thing I do or have ever done. I played on the University of Alabama Rugby Team during graduate school, with the Montgomery Yellowhammers during my two years in Montgomery (a great bunch of chaps, even Mean Gene), and soon hope to start playing with the Birmingham Vulcans Men's Club. I love those guys, even Fat Mike. Rugby has aptly been described as "elegant violence." Thankfully from an olfactory standpoint, we sometimes get a few women players.
Here is a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "The Christian God is a being of terrific character--cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust."
