So since it seems many people have been acquainted with part 1, I feel it right to continue on with the rest.
Some of you may wonder how young I was when I first declared myself an atheist. I was probably 10 or 11. The reasons for this are aforementioned. However, my declaration I can declare hollow. I not only merely said it to one person, but I also said it without conviction. I still believed there was a God then. Maybe I just needed the attention.
Thus, unsatisfied with the Salvation Army, I began to research other religions.
I can recall fragments of it. I became rather impressed by Islam while watching a documentary about the Petronas towers. I enjoyed seeing people washing together, dressed alike, a simply praying. It was as far from the SA as I thought possible. I admired it immediately for an apparently simplicity and equality. However, at the same time, I felt that as a newer religion it was therefore farther from the beginning of all of us, and therefore likely more disconnected with the truth.
I've always had a historical consciousness, and as a youngster very simple forms of this consciousness were taking shape. I held reverence for what is old, rather than what is best - a shortcoming so common... anyway, my attraction to pedigree took me towards Judaism and Zoroastrianism, which I, now roughly 13 or so, began referring to as the father and grandfather of Christianity (as to a simple mind chronology matters more than the details. I unfortunately did not learn how wrong I was on this point until about a decade later.)
To be honest, I did a good deal more research on Zoroastrianism, as someone on a forum I frequented at the time expressed interest in it. I had heard that rather than a hell, their concept of punishment was a week-long bath in some purifying lava. This immediately spoke to my sense of justice, which had been offended by the notion of an eternity in hell, without redemption.
I never really found out if that notion of punishment was true or not, for I discovered a religion (or more like, the books on it) more concerned with ritual than other matters. Indeed, so much detail was given to such extremely lengthly procedures
that I immediately was turned off on the whole process of learning about these new religions. Perhaps it is ok to be pure, but my goodness are people ever impure in Zoroastrianism - I thought probably almost their entire lives!
I thought it elitist, and myself kind of snobbish for looking into these things. I suppose if I had known about Unitarian churches I probably would have (ever) given those a look. However, when it came to churches, and days when I was not working, it was at the SA with my mother.
So, I must admit that through my teen years I was a very half-assed seeker of some other "truth." As one could expect, I declared myself spiritual and coasted off of that for a long time.
