by Jonathan Young

Created on: May 23, 2008

If religious parents had the power to end hereditary religion, they would most certainly do so. But religion belongs not just to individual families, but to communities, nations, entire empires: for the vast majority of people who have lived on the planet, and who live here today, religion has transcended (and often trampled) the will of the individual.

So it goes without saying that the task of ending hereditary religion belongs to children raised in religious environments. No matter the brainwashing a person has been subjected to, they will still retain a capacity for independent thought. In more liberal countries, a spark of independendence can be encourage by supportive communities with different ideas about life, the universe, and everything; in theocracies like Saudi Arabia, a monolithic culture of indoctrination will make keeping that spark of freedom alight a much more difficult task. But people are curious, and so long as questions remain about the origin of life and the nature of the universe, individualists will go about trying to answer them in defiance of status quo answers.

In the United States and elsewhere, separation of church and state guarantees people the freedom to believe whatever they like. Granted, the U.S. political system includes one major religious party, but voters are always free to choose the slightly less religious party, or a third party with no particular religious ties. The democratized world also offers an amazingly diverse media, including websites supporting every conceivable lifestyle and set of beliefs, plus several websites advocating inconceivable ideologies, for those difficult-to-satisfy contrarians amongst us. Because of the Internet's diversity, it may well be the easiest time in history for an indoctrinated child of a religious family to modify or abandon his or her beliefs.

The role of religious parents, in the midst of such diversity, is to choose their words and actions carefully. If a prodigal son or daughter leaves the flock, parents can either subject their wayward offspring to a series of manipulative psychological offenses intended to shatter their free will and self-image, or refuse to become a living manifestation of the "abusive parents from a flyover state" stereotype. Reverse psychology doesn't work in reverse, after all, and the survival of the relationship itself may be at stake.

For those looking to abandon religion in general, instead of modifying or swapping their faith, atheism offers a plethora of psychological advantages that will make any ex-believer feel like a chronically intoxicated demigod. Atheism's primary offering is the knowledge that you are an individual rather than a tiny gear in some distant, silent, invisible deity's grandfather clock. Atheism destroys all hierarchies, all prior ideas about morality, and all religious control tactics, and returns the individual to a natural state of skepticism and curiosity. And once the individual has regained the ability to question everything, regarding nothing as sacred or beyond the reach of intellect (the talent that made us all annoying, as children), the world begins to look like a much more interesting place.

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