In the ceiling of a coal mine in Illinois, geologists have discovered the world's largest fossil forest. It's a huge area of tropical rain forest that was abruptly buried in sediment, probably due to an earthquake, 300 million years ago. And it's pretty much completely intact.

...miners noticed shiny, funnel-shaped concretions that occasionally fell from the shale layer above them. They called them "kettlebottoms." But they were really fossilized stumps, whose roots fingered the peaty layer that ultimately became the coal seam the miners were working in.

"What's extraordinary about this discovery is that this forest has been preserved in its growth position," said Falcon-Lang. "It's an upright forest with trees still standing upright."


"We get to walk under it and look up at it," he said. "It's the earthworm's view."

That's just the kind of story that always turn a science geek like me on. It's always been that way for me. And it's those kinds of stories that, in a roundabout way, led to my general disdain for all things religious. As a kid I was a voracious reader of everything from trash to treasure, but it was real science that somehow just grabbed me. I had the chemistry set, the microscope, the pan balance, the whole bit. I mixed chemicals, I blew shit up. I dissected things. I think it was the logical, step-by-step aspect of science that struck a chord with me. The idea that for every action there is a reaction and every piece of knowledge gained adds to that great composite Body of Knowledge that might someday explain everything. And I really wanted to know everything. My goal was to put as much data into my brain as I possibly could. I loved school.

But on Sundays I used to go to church. Baptist church. Baptist Sunday School. I enjoyed riding the brightly colored bus, singing jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so at the top of my lungs, but the Sunday School experience itself was difficult for me. I couldn't get my head around the whole leap-of-faith thing. I was expected to abandon all critical thought, interpret the bible literally and decide to believe all manner of what seemed to me to be nothing more than fables. I was very shy and I didn't want to be a problem so I tried to emulate the Sunday School instuctors. They were always so confident and smiling, like they secretly already knew everything. They Believed so fervently they had a light in their eyes and a kind of glow about them. I wanted to be that confident, I even got baptized looking to see if maybe it would put that glow in my eyes. I got nothing but wet.

So then I started asking questions. Simple stuff at first. I distinctly remember asking the pretty Sunday School teacher in the flowery dress where all the water from the great flood went. She told me it ran off. I asked where it ran off to, and she smiled condescendingly and told me it ran off into the oceans and streams like water always does. When another time I asked about dinosaurs and fossils, I was completely blown away by the answers I received. I was told the earth was only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs never existed. Fossils were put there by the devil to make men question their faith. The proof was right there in the bible for any fool to see. The bible says god created everything and the bible is right because it's god' s word. I hadn't yet learned the term circular logic, but I recognized bullshit when I heard it and persisted in my questioning. Over time the patient smiles went away and was rather sternly told that it wasn't my place to question the lord, he does not answer to us, we answer to him, blah blah blah. My inability to accept dogma at face value was, it seemed, a defect or weakness on my part.

I took the hint and stopped asking questions. I stopped going to church not much later. I chose to live in a world of science and logic over a world of superstition and magic. A world of no certainty over a world with no room for doubt.