All Fish Have Bones, and many of the faithful harbor doubs. Dick Sonnichsen grew up a good Catholic kid, eating fish on Fridays, most often out of a can. It's a long way from the mountains of Idaho to the ocean. Sonnichsen was educated in Catholic elementary and high schools and faithfully attended Mass and myriad Catholic Church functions and ceremonies for decades. He learned, ". . . we were all sinners and only through contrition, humble obedience to Church rules and regulations and the benevolence of our Creator would we ever enjoy a pleasant afterlife." Eventually, he decided that there was "something wrong with this picture," and began to explore his motivations for and the origins of his beliefs. What he discovered is the subject of All Fish Have Bones, an in-depth look at the dogmatic, patricentric, outmoded and virtually unprovable doctrine of the Christian Church, and Catholicism in particular. In All Fish Have Bones, Sonnichsen tracks his life journey from committed Catholic to skeptic, explaining in detail why he has come to be an "unbeliever" along the way and what it has done for him emotionally, mentally, and, yes, spiritually. Sonnichsen reveals his logical approach to debunking the myths of religions - Christianity in particular - in favor of the realities of common sense and science. The good life is not about "being good" by meeting the rigid yet illogical demands of an unknowable Creator. If you harbor doubts about your religious beliefs and feel confused and alone in your disbelief, All Fish Have Bones is a book you will want to read that can help resolve your uncertainty.
About the Author: After graduating from Forestry school, Dick Sonnichsen worked in the woods for a year before being drafted to serve in the U.S. Army. He served in the Counter Intelligence Corps from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation and served for 30 years as a Special Agent investigator, Inspector and senior executive. He retired as the Deputy Assistant Director in charge of the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Audits. In 1996, he received the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Government Service from the American Evaluation Association "in recognition of his career contributions toward making internal evaluation both valued and useful." After retiring from the FBI, he did management consulting work and taught evaluation and social science research methods at the University of Southern California Washington Public Affairs Center as an adjunct faculty member. He has written one book and co-edited two others on evaluation, written numerous articles on internal evaluation and chapters for eight books. He has been a member of the American Evaluation Association, the International Working Group on Evaluation, served on the editorial boards of three evaluation journals, and has spoken and presented evaluation papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He received his undergraduate degree in Forestry from the University of Idaho and Master's and Doctorate degrees in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. Dick has three adult children. He and his wife, Sally, divide their time between North Idaho and Maui.