Kick if you agree with this assessment about the influence of religion on people.

[Rozlee]

151. I'd feel better about religion...

if it wasn't something that was taught to us from early childhood. The different faiths teach their beliefs to their young at an early age to inculcate their beliefs into the child's mind and form his stance on everything, usually delineating the world into categories of black and white. It's only as we grow older that we start to perceive areas of gray, if we're lucky. But, that all depends on the particular rigidness of the dogma being taught. It breaks my heart to see my grandson being raised in WV after my son's divorce by fundamentalist relatives who admire the Duck Dynasty stance against gays and embracing the narrow-mindedness of evangelical right-wing religious beliefs. Young minds are malleable and everyone thinks that their theology is the One True Faith.

Is it any wonder either, that so many people turn from faith when so many religions insist on literalism and contort themselves into pretzels of illogic to explain the discrepancies of their doctrines or to demand blind faith of conviction or certitude in the face of the absurd, inconsistent and often cruel aspects of their creeds and tenets? I became an atheist when my mind rejected the constant loop of irrational dogma in relation to the observations of the world around me. The Inquisition, the caste system, cruelty to humans and beasts, the indifference to genocide, xenophobia and persecution of women in most religions, the mass killings of the First Americans and pre-Columbians and its justifications by the religious of the time and even today. Yes, yes, I know. Many faithful organizations give to the poor and disadvantaged. But, many times throughout the world, even today, the poor as looked down on as deserving of their suffering by a judgmental god(s). Entrance to the afterlife is assured by bribing one's deity with good works, instead of striving to learn the meaning of what is good. The young have no choice but to have their minds molded into the faiths they are born into. It would be nice if they had a choice in life to decide as they got older or had the opportunity of learning of many different faiths and of the concept of no faith at all and from there, made a life choice of the philosophy they would choose to embrace as they came of age.