I was raised as a Catholic, but my family was never really super religious. We went to church occasionaly at easter or christmas kind of thing. But then I went to catholic schools and was an alter 'boy' too.
It actually took me quite a long time to stop feeling quilty about not believing (I was 14 or 15 when I broke free of that). I probably did believe until my teens, or at least just went along with it cause I did not know any better. My main exiting thought was that there are so many religions in the world, how could I possibly say my one was the right one? Now I feel kind of sullied by the whole experience.
In some ways I feel rather anti-religion, but I'm not going to tell someone they should not believe in a god(s), only that I don't. Looking back it seems bizare to me that I ever believed in it all and ate 'flesh' made of ice cream wafers and had some dirty ash crossed on my forhead, or handled that 'holy water' with any reverence, or prayed to some gaunt dead guy on a cross wearing thorns on his head and a loin cloth, I even won a cup at the end of year at school because of my 'religious knowledge' for debating in competitions against other schools the meaning of parts of the bible, how embarrassing. That belief certainly made movies like the omen and the exorcist that much scarier though. I did enjoy the singing in church, nothing like a good sing-along.
You can probably tell I feel a bit bitter about it. I'm not sure why. I think it is because that religion made me feel so guilty - guilty about being queer, guilty about masturbation, guilty about hating someone, furious that I could be bullied by so called catholics, angry that I grew up in a family where dad was manic depressive and often became violent yet that was ok cause we ate waffers on a sunday.
What's your story Nero?