Edan wrote: Edit:... If we leave parents to educate their children on religion, some will never do it, hence why I believe schools should teach religion.
RyuJin wrote: my parents didn't force any religion on us....they told us to keep an open mind, do the research and choose for ourselves....
I may be speaking out of turn here, but I have noticed a surprisingly large number of people who grew up atheistic and/or non-religious because of these reasons, who (when they got older and decided they "wanted" a religion) had the hardest time wrapping their mind around the concepts of theology later.
I think there comes a certain mythic understanding with a basis in religion; like the laws of Faerie, they're odd, and they don't always make sense, but they're rather consistent. It's almost like initiation into a mystery. When we gain this initiation at an early age, we are far more receptive to its more nonsensical qualities, allowing us to accept them so that we might later look at them non-literally as we age. Many people raised without these get stuck, as adults, on the nonsensical bits, not having had the benefit of experience with which to look at them from different angles.
Furthermore, neglecting to teach about religion in schools is a dangerous, dangerous path. While I don't endorse the teaching
of religion in public schools, religion has influenced every other topic from history to politics to war to art. Nothing humanity does is untouched by it; even the non-religious are noted for being "secular". It is very necessary to understand the basics of religious history in order to properly interpret world history.
