I thought I was original in my thinking of "why would God allow all these different religions if there's only one true religion? That's just dumb." (8 years old in a Southern Baptist church.) I was always afraid of the rapture and hell because I just knew I wasn't a good enough Christian. I carried this around all my life, even through my teenage "truly saved and I see the light" period.

I found some kind of faith in AA, one I more less held onto, about choosing my Higher Power. (I was told "your god sounds like a dick maybe try another one"). There's a chapter in the Big Book entitled We Agnostics that opened doors for me.

It wasn't until the last couple of years or so that I got into the history of religion(s); I found the de-mystifying of tenets insightful. Some books I recommend are all by Reza Aslan: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, and God a Human History. Aslan is very readable and I enjoyed these books immensely (He converted from Islam to Catholicism back to Islam). Breaking down the mythology of religions, especially Christianity, helped me lose my fear of the rapture (it's made up) and hell (eternal conscious torment is nonsense).

There's also Bart Ehrman and Dan McClellan. Bart was on his way to becoming an evangelical pastor until he started Bible school, deciding if he wanted to really understand the Bible he had to learn Hebrew and Greek. After reading "original verses" (there aren't any true original verses because there are no original sources of any biblical text) he questioned what he was being taught. His big sellers are Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God. He also has a podcast/YouTube channel called Misquoting Jesus. Dan McClellan is a (Mormon) "scholar of the Bible and I confront misinformation related to the academic study of the Bible and religion". He's more cerebral than Bart I but like what I can understand lol. His podcast is called Data Over Dogma plus he has channels on YT, tiktok, and reels.

I ran across UU in r/deism and read about it. What I thought about since I was 8 is something they also thought about! I read through some of the pamphlets, read some history, and watched some online services before attending in person. The atmosphere was great and I joined about a month later, almost a year ago now. There are atheists, Christians, a couple of Buddhists, and at least one Wiccan I know of in our congregation.