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Part I

Children can and must be saved from religious fear mongering, wish mongering, and psychological manipulation. As Richard Dawkins relates in his seminal book, "The God Delusion", evolutionary forces predispose small children to uncritically accept what they are taught by adults. He and Daniel Dennett, among a growing chorus of researchers and children's rights activists, argue that preying on this natural vulnerability amounts to child abuse and it must stop. This issue is shaping up to be the most profound civil rights battle humans have ever mounted, because if childhood indoctrination ends, very likely so does religion as we know it today. Few activists are willing to state this fact so boldly. Just challenging the right of parents to control the religion of their children is inflammatory enough. There, we got that out of the way.

Evolutionary theorists conjecture that humans possess an uncritical state of mind during early childhood because as youngsters we have so much to learn in the formative stages of life. Our very survival depends upon unquestioning obedience and on rapidly assimilating everything we are taught by the adults around us. If we are fortunate to have adults who are wise and benign, this situation produces a good outcome; children survive with properly functioning mental capacities and an intelligent world view. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous adults who are all too ready to hijack children's vulnerability. This is not the worst part.

Child psychologists who study the long term effects of indoctrination during early childhood find evidence that early indoctrination can be extremely difficult to undo later in life. (Counseling is available. ) St Ignatius Loyola, canonized in 1622, founded the Catholic teaching order Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Saint he may be, he is condemned for the doctrine, "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man". Although widely attributed (and many versions exist) to Saint Loyola, historians disagree that this was Loyola's original insight and attribute the idea to another early Jesuit, not Loyola. In any event, there were no child psychologists alive during Saint Loyola's time to clue the Jesuits about the power of early childhood indoctrination. There didn't have to be. The truth is plainly evident to any reasonable observer.

Regrettably, such was the power of the Catholics in those days that there was no countervailing objection to the Jesuits doctrine. Had anyone even had the

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