As a teenager, I had been growing away from the beliefs of the church, but one of the main things that caused me to question Christian Science was that the year that I left home to go to college, a boy who I knew in my Sunday School, whose name was Michael Schram, who was 12 years old, died at home of a ruptured appendix.

I was afraid to admit feeling ill because even when I was 4 or 5, I knew that my father viewed sickness as a sign of weakness, of sin, of disobedience.

My father was a particularly zealous Christian Scientist, but young Christian Science children, who have little choice but to believe what their parents are telling them, are taught that illness originates in errors in their parents' and, eventually, their own thinking.

Christian Science is often inherited, and like many inheritances, it comes with family secrets. The religion encourages secrecy. Members of the Church tend to hide their illnesses from one another, even within families. My father has never once, in my presence, admitted to feeling ill.

When Whitney Houston died, I felt great sadness. My sadness, of course, was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing, your body would drop into a chair, your head would tilt up, a small smile would creep across your face, and inside you knew that there was a higher power somewhere: gifted, beautiful, spiritual.

If faith is lost, there is no security and there is no life for him who does not adhere to religion.

A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified.

I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.