I’m Melvin.

Hi I’m Melvin. I feel like I can be resourceful here.

I went to BYU, and I also have a master’s degree in applied mathematics from a school on the East Coast. I’m a data scientist and I start work on housing data on Monday.

My journey with the church’s claims probably runs in a different order than most here. I started reading apologetic material proactively, long before I experienced anything approaching a faith crisis, just because I found it to be fascinating.

I had a really good religious education at BYU, and sometimes I wonder why others couldn’t have the same. I didn’t seriously consider the possibility that God didn’t exist until after graduating. When I began exploring the question, I was influenced a lot by Kierkegaard, who I believed rationalized my spiritual experiences as legitimate evidence for the divine. (But I don’t swallow Kierkegaard wholesale; I’m not a fideist.) Then I learned about the fine tuning of the universe, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, etc.

I am an Asian born in Asia and my family emigrated to the states when I was a child. I mention that because although Asian-Americans people aren’t particularly more religious, as Alister McGrath has noted, the “war” because science and religion isn’t a thing in Indian, Japanese, and traditional Chinese societies. Also, that means I’m comfortable with the “magical” worldview, although I have no direct experience with it myself. So things like sticking your face in a hat don’t seem bothersome. It also means I’m a more comfortable with authority.