I have always been the type to write letters to the editor. One thing led to another, and in the early '80s, I got the chance to publish some satirical opinion pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

During the time I worked as a full-time journalist, though, I had to keep my opinions to myself. Starting in 2003, when I was working as executive director of the Center for Rational Solutions (later, Nebraska Citizens for Science), I was hired as a paid columnist for the Metanexus Institute to explore the connections and disjunctions of science and religion. What a thrill.

I'm not sure any of that work survives, and I'm not sure it deserved to, but my work as an opinion writer continued. About 2009, I got a gig writing for the Huffington Post on religion from the perspective of a science-writer and humanist. Later, The Humanist Magazine took me on as both a columnist and their science and religion correspondent.