I'm a lifelong learner, philomath, and lover of the Enlightenment—the 18th century intellectual movement that essentially made the world the better place that it is today. As an advocate of classical liberal values and student of the human condition, I am dedicated to deepening my understanding of life by reading widely. I struggle to come to grips with the ultimate reality of things, thus I remain a skeptically optimistic, albeit often wavering, philosophical theist...which pretty much means I'm an agnostic who would love to find a believeable proof for God, but haven't yet. In our postchristian and postmodern age, I can't help but be intellectually and spiritually nourished by the wisdom and worldview of the Classical World—namely the ancient Greeks and Romans—to which our civilization owes so much.

I was born and raised in San Diego, California, and I consider the beautiful beach town of Coronado to be my home. However, my family roots are in South Carolina, and I graduated from The Citadel, so I consider South Carolina to be home as well. I traveled all through Southeast Asia when I was in middle school, and spent a summer in Europe with my sister when we were in college. I travel to Dublin, Ireland, for business on occasion. I also served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for four years, most of which was spent in Hawaii. Not long after that, I spent four years in the Middle East-which was an eye-opening and life-changing experience. In was during my time over there that I began my heart-wrenching search for religious and philosophical truth, which was followed by many years as a tormented believer. That didn't turn out as I expected, since I ended up giving up on altogether. However, I did spend many years as the only white guy in the room in various countries around the world-which is an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.

All of that having been said, I consider myself to be something of a unique mixture of a laidback Southern California surfer dude and a Southern gentleman. Mixed in with those qualities is the fact that I'm a former Marine who respects the military virtues while at the same time being an intellectual person who strives to have empathy with others. I'll say that I'm a bit of a seeker since I spent roughly the first half of my life believing in one only to change to another for about sixteen years-and now I have no formal all. It was during my time living in the Middle East, from 1993 to 1997—which were the early years of the Internet, that I first came in contact with skeptical, freethinking, and atheistic writings...and I've been hooked ever since. Overall, I'd myself an agnostic humanist. There are some issues—such consciousness, abiogenesis, human uniqueness, and quantum theory—that make me think that there might be some higher power out there. However, when it comes to debates, I nearly always find myself siding with the atheists and skeptics.

I'm a keen tracker of the on-going debate between science and , having concluded that while science is amazing, awesome, and our best systematic way of determining what's true (in most cases), it has its limits. On the flip side, it's obvious to me that theists—especially those who adhere to the Abrahamic faiths—continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel, apologetically water things down, or engage in intellectually dishonest hermeneutical gymnastics in order to buttress their ever-problematic beliefs. While often enthusiastic about debating a -level metaphysical and cosmological need for God, they are often stuck defending the indefensible since, when it comes to their holy books, the devil is very much in the details—hence their need to resort to the aforementioned hermeneutical gymnastics.

I've been in the Central Florida area for 20+ years and, although I like it here, still really don't consider it home-but it continues to grow on me. I could be convinced to move elsewhere and don't expect to live here the rest of my life...although I might. My pictures are real-and I've been told by several women that I actually look better in real life-and I'm not on here to games, but to find my like-minded teammate and soulmate for life.