I was raised strict protestant. We went to church whenever possible.
In my teenage years I started having doubts, and by my late teens declared myself an atheist . . . at the time I knew nothing of the distinction or lack of between an atheist and a strict philosophical materialist . . . because in truth, I've never been a philosophical materialist. The main reason for this ties in more with Art than anything else: both the appreciation of beauty and the process of trying (and most often failing) to produce it. The process isn't linear, moves in jumps and starts, involves something I believe/know to be immeasurable and is something I've never believed could be accounted for in mechanical terms whatsoever . . . Obviously, the materialists are more than ready to produce an arguement that says otherwise, but I find the vast majority of that shallow and rather crude. A second reason for my inability to be a materialist stems from hallucinogen use . . . some are receptive to this; some aren't. I consider them capable of allowing one to experience something immeasurable, something that defies the materialist worldview, and aside from this, I've also had a couple profound telepathic experiences while on them.
I briefly majored in piano performance and then philosophy, but mistakenly ended up going with anthropology. This was my first real introduction to staunch materialism. I remember a woman who was my professor telling us the evolutionary reasons we "think we love" our children (due to evolutionary needs of passing on genes, etc.). It wasn't so much that I found it (morally) offensive, but rather stupid. I had yet to hear scientistic stuff labelled reductionist, but I certainly found it absurdly reductionistic. My professors and fellow majors all seemed to think that if we had all the info on all states of things, that we'd be capable of predicting everything, including humans and human culture. Robots, we were. I started making notes on the whole situation and felt somewhat vindicated later to find that other prominent philosophers had thought some of the same things (though had developed them much further). So, I sought out philosophy of science stuff, epistomology stuff: those tgat were critical of science. I found a few. If one would've asked me about death at the time, I would've told them that obviously consciousness, being some form of energy, survived, but I would've added that I highly, highly doubted that that consciousness would recognize itself as you/me. In other words, my plight wasn't any better than that of the aetheists because for all intents and purposes, I, as I knew and thought of myself, would die. It'd all go black and that would be that . . . even though I thought that my consciousness as some form of very subtle energy "lived on."
Years later I found parapsychological stuff, including NDE research. I was floored. Why had I never heard of this stuff? For a while I went back and forth on whether or not the stuff was correct. I'd think so for a while, then I'd read some criticism and not really know who or what was correct. Eventually I realized that, yes, on the whole, parapsychological studies had proven hands down, time and again, that something more was going on than could be accounted for with normal materialistic thinking. For this reason, I really like "Randi's Prize," by McLuhan, because his journey mirrored my own in a lot of ways with that back and forth thing.
I also realized a few years after college that people were rightfully critical of evolution exclusively by natural selection. My professors never mentioned that there was any reason whatsoever to be critical . . . I might also mention that while in college, I was a "good leftist." I read Chomsky and Zinn and Klein. I believed that most of what appeared to be conspiracy was really just business as usual . . . Then after realizing that 9/11 involved complicity, it became hard to see talk of politics or current history that doesn't touch on this as anything but useless. It's the same with science: if the parapsychological isn't acknowledged, then, well, they're leaving out not only the most interesting part, but the part that changes the whole situation. But as a (soft) science major, we didn't even touch on that stuff for an hour.
I found Skeptiko about 2 and a half years ago and have listend to every episode and wished there were more. I think what Alex is doing is great: the approach, the guests, the interviews, the amount of 'push' during the interviews.
It's an area that's wide open for anyone who'd like to join in: there's a huge shortage of those calling for attention to these views and ideas, but oddly there's almost no one out there doing it.