Religious education
Neither of my parents are at all religious (although they aren't actively anti-religion - they left it to my brothers and I to make up our own minds), so I never went to church. However, in primary school we had "Religious Education" classes, which instead of being classes studying comparative religion (which might have actually been interesting) were actually some guy whose job it was to come in and proselytise Christianity at us for an hour every week. The guy who we had was one of those noxious "appeal to the kids" types who had an earring and collected basketball cards and told jokes and was totally cool, etc.

I never had any time for evangelism, especially when it was being pushed on me during taxpayer-funded education time, so I used to just tune out when he was talking about Jesus and answer the word finds and puzzles in the propaganda booklet he gave us. The upshot of this was that every so often he'd say something like "OK gang, turn to page 14 and do the crossword there. First one to finish gets a lolly!". Since I'd completed all the puzzles weeks earlier, I just sat there for a few minutes pretending to write to make it seem plausible, then put up my hand and claimed my prize.

So basically, from a young age I came to the conclusion that the only benefit of religion is that it can be cynically manipulated for personal gain. I should have been a Borgia.
(oball needs Satan more than he needs me, Fri 20 Mar 2009, 1:11, Reply)