Same thing happened to me. I grew up reading a lot and only attending church occasionally. I couldn’t join a religion now because quite frankly I simply don’t believe. And without belief, what’s the point of joining a religion?

I love that definition! Quite frankly, the reason I’m a Zen Buddhist is because Zen doesn’t even bother with the issues of a god, salvation , or an afterlife. It only focuses on what’s right here, right now, and let’s the rest happen as it may.

I think that was when I started to seriously question ‘Religion’. I’d been told that I’d feel all sorts of wondrous things. That didn’t happen.

I looked around, and thought about it a little. Each year, I did that some more. Each year, I became more and more convinced that Organised Religion – of any denomination – is simply “Do what I tell you, because I tell you,” and that more suffering had been caused by people using their Religion in this way than anything else.

Now I call myself an agnostic – small ‘a’. I’ll listen. If you can show me that it works, in an independently verifiable and repeatable manner, I’ll believe you. Otherwise…