Haggis quotes one of my favorite
bumper stickers in a writeup above:
"Going to church has as much chance of making you religious as going to a garage has of making you a mechanic."
I agree: it depends on whether you go there and pay attention to what's said, or whether you just go every 5,000 miles because you're supposed to.
I never saw much point in going to church "because that's what people do on Sunday"; I wasn't interested in the subject, and didn't want to spend the morning being told I'd go to Hell if I didn't believe the tenets of one faith or another.
I approached religion academically, through The Sociology of Religion and other books in that same vein. I was curious what being religious meant to others. That, along with a wonderful assignment -- to attend services with a religious group with which I was unfamiliar, and report on the experience -- sparked my own personal interest in religious questions.
Mind you, I'm not so much interested in religious answers. What I enjoy is thinking about religious questions. If I wanted answers, I'd go to church.
So I guess you could say I change my own oil.