I grew up in a very religious house (Ma is an assistant minister in the church) and for the longest time I thought I was absolutly sure in my religion. There was one time that Ma was sick and I prayed and she was healed the next day. But I still had doubts.
Every year the middle school/high school group does this big "amazing (g)race" thing over a weekend before it gets too hot outside. My team and I had been running back and forth along the beach for almost two hours. I asked them to hold up a bit so I could rest and they wouldn't. And then I go and whine "But I'm freakin TIRED!" Well obviously that was the wrong thing to say because at the next pit stop where we had to wait for all the teams to get in, I was made to apologize in front of the entire group of participants for my "Foul and sinful mouth". I tried to explain that, A: freakin was not a cussword, and B: it was a linguistic intensifier, I did not mean to blaspheme. They wouldn't believe me. And then our team was forcefully delayed, causing us to end up in next to last place.
Then in biology I made this awesome group of friends. If you can imagine the guys from "The Big Bang Theory", we were them, only in high school (I was Wolowitz). That's when I realized that all non-Christians were NOT after my souls to drag me down to hell with them. And then I realized that the 'miracle' I had performed when I was six had absolutely nothing to do with me praying. Ma had had one of those 24-hour flus (a/0!!).
After a lot of soul searching throughout the next two years I realized I pretty much fit the bill on my internal beliefs as a pagan. When I tried to tell Ma that, she ended up using it as part of her sermon on how all pagans were going to hell. When I confided in someone I thought I could trust about my suicidal thoughts, they ended up all across the congregation in less then a week. When that happened, I knew I had to get out of there.
AND THEN I watched "Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone". I'm fine with blood and guts type horror, psychological, not so much. There aint much light in the house and my ma has a bunch of angel statuettes scattered around the great room. you can probably imagine why this was not a good idea. I had to come to terms with the fact that I would die eventually before I could use the head at night again. I realized that I don't think I would go anywhere really after death.
Since then I have realized that I'm a pagan/agnostic/atheist combo. little bits of here and there stuck together to make one whole. When I try to explain this to any resident that asks at work, I get the 'you going to hell!!!!' look from them and a pamphlet. But I have a new job that pays more lined up and I am moving in December so I only got a couple more months to deal with this crap.
tl;dr summary: lots of crap + TV = pagan/agnostic/atheist
