From Wundery, I'm Rufus Kiskum, and this is a special bonus episode of the next big idea. I grew up in a religious

household. I remember when I was seven or eight years old holding hands with my

father and brother and sister during what my dad called Bible stories,

basically religious ceremonies that he would conduct in our living room,

and feeling what I thought was the force of God,

a kind of fluttering electricity flowing through my hands, wrists, arms, and

torso.

By age 11, as I was preparing for a church confirmation process, I decided that my religious education

didn't square with my emerging understanding of science. What did make sense

increasingly was that we were the accidental byproduct of a swirling of fluvium of energy and matter

that was unfathomable in its breadth and beauty.

Well, I'm not sure those were my words at the time, but that was the general idea.

At 12, I called myself an agnostic, and at 13

an atheist. But there was a sense of loss there. I felt a loss of ritual and a loss of

certainty,

both certainty about where the world came from

and where we could find a foundation for a moral code of some kind.

I think I've been looking for the shared conviction,

the passion, the community of religious belief

without the religion part ever since.

A few years ago I discovered an unconventional thinker, a neuroscientist,

meditation guru philosopher, and unabashed atheists

...