I was brought up Catholic, and attended Catholic churches. When my mom married for the first time (my real dad, though I knew him they never married) we started attending Protestant churches. My mom’s prior boyfriend (of a few years) was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I was definitely exposed to the concept of Christianity. Shortly before I gave up on all religion I did something on my own, something that I never did before, read the Bible (a more than century old AKJV one) for myself. I had some difficulty trying to comprehend it, and the old english didn’t help.
I guess what motivated me to research these various denominations of Christianity (trinitarian and nontrinitarian), along with the good book itself was the fact that even as young as seven I was highly sceptical of what I was taught. I didn’t even believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the tooth fairy at that age like other kids did. I went along with it though so I wouldn’t be seen as an outcast, or at least so I wouldn’t get in trouble for questioning my beliefs. I became convinced at about the age of sixteen that what I was taught pertaining to religion was a farce, so not only did I abandon Christianity altogether, but I became a hardcore skeptic towards anything considered mystical.
My latter trend as a hardcore skeptic continued until my late twenties when my brother got killed by a drunk driver. After some strange events that followed his death, and talking to others that had similar experiences I started looking various topics up such as ghosts, afterlife communication books, automatic writings, mediumship, Spiritualism, Buddhism, etc I shifted my stance from hardcore scepticism to open-minded scepticism. Then when I realized that there were scientists who’ve researched mediumship, esp, etc with positive results I went from being an open-minded sceptic of the paranormal to accepting the evidence for psi and survival of our egos upon the death of the physical brain. After reading even more research from doctors who were experts on the issue of brain death insist that near death experiences could not be attributed to hallucinations I had become very convinced how wrong my scepticism was.
I consider myself to be a nonreligious theist. If I had to pick any certain religion (or philosophy) that best resonates with what I’ve researched about the afterlife and our purpose of existence it would be Theosophy. I do find many teachings of various religions to have some truth to them, even Christianity. Prior to reading more about Theosophy, Buddhism was the philosophy/religion that seemed to match my beliefs the most. I’m still open-minded about these topics, and I don’t claim to have absolute truth, but I try to go with what the scientific empirical evidence tells me.