About the Author

   I received a B.S. in Physics from Santa Clara University, and a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Santa Cruz.  Around the time I was completing my Physics masters, I switched to a Neuroscience project, so my Ph.D. is as much in Neuroscience as it is in Physics.  My thesis topic was classification of the retinal ganglion cell types of the guinea pig retina.  I am currently working as a Bioinformatics Specialist at the Salk institute, in beautiful La Jolla, California.  At present, my job primarily consists of software development for neurobiological applications in the visual system. 

    You will see this affects the style of the site and of my arguments.  I was born into a Catholic household, but I absorbed the instinctive atheism of the wider culture at a young age.  I have also always been a natural skeptic.  That is, I error on the side of disbelief on most topics, both natural and supernatural.  I demand rigorous arguments and strict structure before I believe anything.  As time passed (about thirty years) I thought about God, read others thoughts about God, starting writing this website, and eventually came to the understanding that the Catholic Christian understanding of God is founded in reason and experience (including the experience of the church fathers); not blind faith.  During the course of my journey I have gone from atheist to strong agnostic to weak agnostic to deist to Christian to Catholic Christian.  Even though I never stopped attending church, it is difficult to say that I was always a true believer.  Now I am back where I started, but sure that I made the correct decision.

    I decided that I should also make my work available to the world wide web for three reasons.  The first is so that if my work has real value to others, they will have access to it.  The second is to keep me honest.  I have to make the arguments good enough so that other people will accept them.  Finally, there is nothing quite like trying to explain something to the world to motivate you to really understand it yourself.  My name is Matthew Grivich, and you can e-mail me if you so choose.