Was always a heavy reader. Read the bible more or less cover-to-cover over the course of being raised Christian -- the occasional sermon caught my attention, but mostly (and not to be reductive) it was kind of for the same reason you read the ingredients on a shampoo bottle when you're in the bathroom. There's a book right in front of you when you're bored, and in that case, no-one gets mad at you for opening it up when you're supposed to be paying attention.

Especially once I learned a bit of history, it just reeks of plain old human storytelling. We say this, to get the result or impression of that.

It's not even that I didn't learn anything, or lack a fond relationship with religion (e.g., I've worked and studied at Catholic institutions after undergrad for years now, just by happenstance), but there's just a tradition of religion reflecting what people want to say, rather than the other way around -- and especially now that I'm older, I frequently don't like what I see when people use it in that way.

By my reckoning, if a higher power does exist, in the way that's impossible to understand and ineffable, we're all talking about what we want, rather than what it wants.

If that's the case, perhaps that's the point, but it certainly isn't codified in something we wrote.