[MaryAmanda]

Personally, I consider myself (at the moment) to be spiritual and not religious because I got rather turned-off to religion. While I was in high school, my family went to a small, Southern Baptist church. Before that, we'd never been to church regularly. (My family moved a lot when I was a kid, and my folks used that as an excuse to not attend a church regularly...as a result, I wasn't exposed to it much as a child.) At least at the particular church we went to, it sounded like they were trying to scare the congregation into believing. What really upset me, though, was their steady belief that everyone who didn't believe just like they did (other Christians included) was going to Hell. Perhaps it never occured to them the billions of people that this would condemn, but it occured to me and struck me as nonsense.

So basically, the general...I can't think of a good word for it, but something along the lines of 'ignorance'...turned me off to organized religion for a while. I've never doubted the existence of God, I'm just hazy on the details for the time being.