i was raised in an extremely religious household... spawned right in the middle of the 'bible belt'.
like so many, the indoctrination started
very young. i had religion force-fed to me while strapped into my highchair.
as i got old enough to form critical thoughts of my own, i began questioning everything. neither my parents, my sunday school teachers, nor my pastor could really answer my questions, and people began to get really alarmed by this... ending up causing me a
lot of grief throughout my childhood.
when i was about 13, i started studying other religions... which later led to my studying the evolution of religions, themselves.
the things i learned through this, coupled with what i learned through studying science, the geologic columns, the regurgitation or retelling of many of the same myths throughout different religions, etc. all led me to
not believing in a god.
however the fear (of hell, getting 'left behind' behind to experience the horrors of revelations, etc.) that had been, literally, programmed in me from the time i was a little girl was much harder to shake.
it came down to a dream.
i dreamt i was in an airplane that was going down. in the dream i cried out asking god, if he did exist, to forgive me my sins and 'come into my heart'- you know the rhetoric. this disturbed me, upon waking up.
i felt like a hypocrite... holding on to this possibity of last-minute salvation, 'just in case'.
that is NOT how i live my life. i am very much a blatantly honest 'what you see is what you get' type of person.
so i did some more research, and came away more certain than ever.
i no longer have that little "what if" fear in the back of my head controlling me.