Starting points

Let's get this over with early.  One acquaintance said that all would be clear if I turn my life over to Jesus.  Been there, done that.  I was raised with strong christian influences.  I was even in an understudy for the ministry.  I gave sermons in churches.

I began to doubt Christian beliefs in my late teens.  I became a physicalist in my 20's.  I switched my starting perceptions to the known physical reality.  I continue to do so today.  There does not appear to be any reality to gods, souls and the afterlife.

I was raised with a mother and older brother with mental problems. I did not realize until the early part of my time in the Navy that  I was adversely influenced by them.  I had certain behaviors and mannerisms which I had learned from them.  I studied some psychology while corrected some of those things which where adverse to the relationships and other things needed at the time.  I learned about how children are heavily influenced by their immediate surroundings.  Even thought processes are altered by local influences.  The most local influences in my early life were a mother and brother with mental problems.  I came to wonder why god created us in such a way that we can so easily pick up bad influences while young.  This was the first seed of doubt.

This got me thinking about the other major influence in my early life.  That was religion, specifically the Christian religion in the form of first Pentecostal and then Baptist denominations.  I saw the different religious influences while overseas.  I realized that most people's religious beliefs are heavily influenced by what is given to them as children.  They did not believe in my deities because they were raised to believe in others.  Someone in one of the countries posed a question about how I know that my religious influences are any more truthful than the ones which I reject.  I came to realize that I really did not.  I was conditioned to believe certain things.  Could I actually validate the beliefs as knowledge in real things?

I had done more than most Christians I knew.  I had read the christian bible, old and new testaments, in its entirety twice.  I had read it 2 more times while skipping all the begats.  But I realized that these readings were from completely, unquestioningly inside the belief.  They were also at the same time when I was being influenced by mentally disadvantages relatives.

I decided to step out of the believer's perspective and read the bible without assuming the truthfulness of what was written.  I eventually realized that the bible is not what I was raised to believe.  It is a compilation of written and verbal stories from primitive people who did not even know why the sun sets.  I do not find it to be useful in the morals department.  There are actually some things rather antithetical to ethics.  It's far from being historically accurate for either natural or human history.  I don't even find anything that's particularly good poetically. 

I tried out other religions but eventually realized that most of them have a common fundamental flaw.  They do not begin with knowledge.  They begin with a top down assumption that supernatural elements exist.  If that is flawed,  then most that develops from that assumption may be flawed.

So I switched to a more real perspective.  Starting from the known physical, I build up my knowledge from there.  So far, I find no evidence for gods, souls or an afterlife.  And I cannot approach it from faith.  That seems to simply be a variation of conditioning.