I never say anything that I wouldn't want made public.

And yet my performance in our contest was so below "grade" that I guess you refrain from publically citing it in order to spare my "arrogant", "vain", and "conceited" sensibilities?  Perhaps the only thing we can agree on here is that your motives for thus refraining are prototypically Christian.

Hope you find some friends to play with you.

My interest in religion doesn't derive from the social needs or personal problems that have helped drive you and so many others variously to it or away from it. (You still seem to harbor a lot of hostility, so I wonder if you really got all that you bargained for when you chose to be "born again". As you say, "Don't hate me just because I'm confident.")  I've been corresponding with you just to see if there's any chance that the influences or arguments involved in your deconversion could ever lead to my own deconversion.  All you've said (and not said) so far has been very helpful in answering this question.

P.S. On iidb.org you wrote "I have dozens of essays, composed throughout high school and college, that will verify my atheistic, anti-Christian position."  I still would love for you to (e)mail or fax me the one which you think did the best job of dealing with the meaning of life. If (as I suspect) none of them dealt with this issue, then I'd still be interested in whatever you thought was your best atheist work. Better yet, why not post it on your site (along with whatever authentication you have availalbe)? I can't throw a stick without hitting an ex-atheist or ex-Christian polemicist who likes to brag about how good his game was when he played for the other team. You'd be the first (AFAIK) to actually back up such claims.