I posted this as a reply...
...much further down the thread, but I think it stands on its own (in an expanded form) as a post for this QOTW;

My experience of organised religion involved my first stepmother, who followed a perverted version of the Baptist faith. Dad was non-committal, so of course I followed her. I believed.

Beatings were frequent - but only when my non-believing father wasn't around. After all, you have to beat the sin out of a child - and you mustn't let the infidels stop you in your holy mission.

Hi Jan! Yes, I remember how you punched me in the kidneys for having the temerity to be ill and throwing up on my bed!

Dad only found out about this years later, after she had left us to take on with some other single-parent family that needed 'fixing'. Pity that kid.

So I was faced with cowardace, violence and hypocracy all in a package that guaranteed me to be a nasty little misogynist until the day I met a wonderful woman who, if you assume that the sky-fairy has a purpose for everyone, taught me that people can be responsible for the most remarkable acts of magnificence and beauty.

She died five weeks after we were married from the motor neurone disease that she'd suffered with for five years. And I might have hated any God that there might be for taking her away from me, but the 18 months I knew her for made me a better person. Able to function.

Whatever I might worship, and however I do it, it won't be because some effete, money-grabbing, self-interested control freak shitstack connned me into believing that it's in compliance with their ridiculous vision of their violent, emasculated "Lord".

If I worship anything at all, it's the glory of the truly righteous human.

And that is how I learned that, through an abuse of trust, organised religion had not given me a gullible moment, but gullible years.
(Guizmeaux, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 20:11, Reply)