Religion starts from an early age. We are taught, essentially, from birth that God is real and that we shouldn't question it. From that point, once we are old enough to start having any type of comprehension, we are force fed ideas that go against nature so as to support the religion we are born into. From there, once we start questioning said religion, we're taught that questioning will lead to eternal damnation. By the time we're adults we have had so much brainwashing into believing that there is a God and that our religion is correct that it is a part of our identities.
So let's start from where it really matters - when children are old enough to begin developing the framework of reality. Mind you, this is before they develop that framework, but rather *as* they are developing the framework. Teaching them that God is real from that point is essentially telling them to believe things without any evidence, that knowledge is not as important as faith.
To put it in a different way, imagine if we replaced religion with the notion that musicians were Gods amongst the living, or that the universe wasn't real and that we are all just a computer simulation, or anything else incredibly outlandish. Could you imagine a child telling other children that the world we live in isn't real and we're all a part of the Matrix? Of course, if believers of that mindset were the majority, it wouldn't be considered crazy at all.
But let's think for a moment about what that does to a child's brain. The nine year old I am around daily believes I am going to go to Hell because I don't believe in God, and so I will run through the other possibilities of various religions or the lack there of. Maybe when I die I will be reincarnated as something else, or maybe when I die my body will decompose and become part of the earth for plants to thrive in. Or maybe I will become part of the vast universe as a spiritual essence. Of course, she has been so indoctrinated that all those other options seem completely insane to her and I am for sure going to Hell. Essentially, by indoctrinating her from such an early age has made her ignorant to all other possibilities. And definitely the most probable, which is the only one that has any factual basis behind it, of me just becoming a fertilizer for our planet.
Then let's go a bit further, to the next age range, the one in which questioning religion lands you in eternal damnation. Now the child has the foundation that God is real built into their very own idea of what reality is, but what if it isn't? Well, by convincing a child that questioning that belief will lead them to spending the rest of eternity on fire, or getting fucked in the ass by a fire filled pitchfork, or whatever the fuck else kind of crazy shit they get brainwashed with then they are also being taught to not question anything. And yes, that questioning is annoying as all fuck when you're the one trying to explain a complicated subject to a 7 year old who sees life as a completely black or white thing, it is still absolutely vital to foster that ability for them to improve upon the future.
Which brings about one of the biggest consequences of being taught not to question things. Religion, in and of itself, harbors no real threat. It is just giving up on the idea of having answers, which, works for most people. But the damage done to ensure someone believes a religion is psychological and can take lifetimes to fix. So being taught that questioning religion will land you in Hell will create such inner turmoil in a child that it will start distorting their entire perception of reality even more.
Imagine if we taught our children that taking a shit made them impure so we had to ensure they shit as little as possible, for if they shit too much then they will burn for all of eternity instead. You'd induce a thought process of how much shitting is too much shitting, and have the children take extreme perspectives. Well, they won't shit at all and end up dying from having the shit poison their bodies. Or you'd have the opposite, where the child believes that they are going to go to Hell because they can't meet the exceedingly difficult task of holding shit in when they have diarrhea. They begin to accept their fate of eternal damnation so why not shit in the corner of a parking garage?
Seems stupid, huh? Except that is what happens in our youth's heads when they are taught questioning things will lead them to Hell. That's why the stereotype of Catholic School Girls exist. It's why Westboro Baptist Church exists, equally. We consider these two extremes as the outliers of society, but are they really? The only reason I can imagine is because it is too much work to be on either extreme of that list and, as humans, we're generally lazy as fuck.
What would happen instead, then, if we taught our children that religion is just one of the possibilities of reality? What would happen if we taught our children that questioning things could lead to deeper understandings of everything around us? What would happen if we let children develop their own ideas of reality based on the factual evidence in the world?
Well, for one, I'd imagine religion would cease to exist within a matter of a generation or two. Which if fine by me as I definitely feel that religion is one of the most destructive things in the world.
It has encouraged the likes of the Republican party and Donald Trump having been POTUS, after all.
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