What were you taught about religion?

I posted this in response to another comment but chose to move it to stand on its own.

As with many others, my childhood religious influences were conservative, my parents, extended family and most associates all Christian.  However, my curiosity and dissatisfaction with what I heard from all of them led me to read anything and everything I could find.  Now, with time, I realize how the vast majority of people take literally the cultural myths and metaphors giving birth to the many and varied religious traditions.  Are they lies or are these stories from people simply not mentally matured beyond the place where everything is literal and nothing is symbolic?

I believe it is the process of a maturing mind and spirit to come to the realization that religious traditions grow from the need of a particular people at a particular time to connect with that which is greater, that power and source not understood.  Stories will arise to try to explain what appears mysterious.  As in the case of the Abrahamic religious traditions, tribal legends and stories, along with cultural influences of place and time became woven into the fabric of the religious traditions.  Lies?  Perhaps.  Symbolic and metaphorical?  Definitely.

It is up to each of us to sort out what makes sense for each of us, to explore and to discover until we have enough knowledge and understanding to put something together that works for each of us individually.  All I can do is thank my parents and grandparents for empowering me to use my mind, to think for myself, apart from and regardless of their own religious belief.  They got more than they bargained for.  :-)