This is really interesting to be reading this now. I've been struggling with some ideas for a while now about this topic. For a long time, I guess I was what you would call "religious". I mean, I wasn't exactly a model for humanity or anything, but I believed in all that stuff. Recently though, I started thinking about it and I think the reason I did was mostly because I was afraid not to. I was always raised with it, and I guess it's like Santa Claus- if you stop believing in him, you don't get presents anymore. So you push back those doubts as long as you can. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that whatever I had been told my whole life, I would probably feel the same way about. What makes this different? What is there to show that Christianity is true, and other religions, or no religion at all, are false? If you were told your whole life that everything was ruled by a giant mouse and if you stopped believing in him that he would eat you, you'd be too scared not to believe that as well. But really, I've seen nothing to suggest that there is anything controlling our lives aside from ourselves. The kicker is, when I finally admitted these things to myself, I realised that I had always believed them, and I'd always had doubts about what I'd been told, again it was just that I was afraid to think that. I mean, for example, I was always terrified of what happens after you die. If I had really believed all that, I wouldn't have had to be afraid, because I would have known that I would go to Heaven...or Hell. But I always wondered "what if you die and everything just stops?" and it was the most frightening thought I could, and can, imagine. But I've accepted that everybody does die eventually, and at least now I'm not afraid to live while I can.