Religious upbringing as potty training.

[Sauwelios]

@Sauwelios

@Jr Wells

There is actually a lot of evidence that animism (hence religious tendencies) is the natural state (default position) for children (without being indoctrinated by adults or parents).

There is also ample evidence that making potty anywhere is the natural state for children.

This analogy (no pun intended) could be extended to say that indoctrinating children with monotheism is like potty training them: teaching them that they can only worship that god, that they can only answer their natural call for projecting gods or spirits there, on that real or imagined being–for example Jehovah–, is like teaching them that they can only make potty there, in that place–for example the toilet bowl.

Indoctrinating children with atheism would then be like teaching them that they cannot make potty anywhere, that they have to hold it… And indeed, Nietzsche famously wrote:

[size=95]“There is a lake that one day ceased to permit itself to flow off; it formed a dam where it had hitherto flown off; and ever since this lake is rising higher and higher. Perhaps this very renunciation will also lend us the strength needed to bear this renunciation; perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, aphorism 285.)[/size]

[Amorphos]

So the infant mind is susceptible. So we should just pander to that rather than make it less susceptible? In other words, i agree with your position here.