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[Shade-o]

Most people follow the religion of their family and immediate community, since it's simply what they grew up with and were exposed to by their parents, friends, teachers, and priests/whatevers. Unless they have unusual circumstances or are exceptionally evaluative of themselves, they won't ever change. It's basically passive, benevolent indoctrination by imprinting on them the values and mores that define a culture. Like learning to read and write to get a job, you should learn to love and fear X to have a good afterlife.

[Shades]

It's basically passive, benevolent indoctrination

Passive sure, benevolent is debatable, especially when:

you should learn to love and fear X to have a good afterlife.

You should learn to fear X? How is that benevolent?

[Shade-o]

Well, if you fear and obey X, you won't go to the bad afterlife. Saving an innocent from eternal pain/annoyance/ironic punishment is pretty benevolent.

[ECrownofFire]

I never followed my family's religion at all, really. I went to church for a while only because my parents told me to. After a while, I just stopped going, and only going to the Youth Group. Now I've stopped going altogether. My parents don't actually know about my religion and beliefs. I don't really want them to know either. My mom would probably be fine with my religion though, she even practices a few things from other religions. Not sure about my dad, I don't even know what religion he is. Some days I think that if I actually paid attention in church I would have turned out differently, but I'm not so sure about that now. Could never really bring myself to believe in all that.

It's basically passive, benevolent indoctrination

Passive sure, benevolent is debatable, especially when:

you should learn to love and fear X to have a good afterlife.

You should learn to fear X? How is that benevolent?

Fear can be a good thing. How do you think humans would survive if they didn't fear things that could eat them?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't see it as benevolent, myself. Your life shouldn't be filled with insubstantial fears. Although, that would be pretty much the opinion you'd expect from an ex-christian.

[Shade-o]

Also, I meant benevolent on part of the indoctrinators, who are simply trying to explain how the world works. What goes up must come down, 2+2=4, water is wet, and not all dogs go to heaven.

[ECrownofFire]

Insubstantial fears can be a good thing as well. I'd be afraid of ghosts too

[Jackrabbit]

I still say it isn't the same. Gay people are gay by nature, atheists are atheists by choice.

I can choose to be gay. Reluctantly. Think... Little Britain.

Yes, of course you can.

Hey, can you choose to have eye-arms? I bet you can! :O

Alright, I'll admit I know that was a joke but I still think your harping on about how you can believe anything with a bit of practice is very similar to Armok's claims of eye-arms and trans-space-timey-wimey-whateverthehell.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The indoctrinators might believe that they are benevolent, but filling a young child's mind with ideas such as sin and eternal hellfire for those outside your faith will serve to make them fearful and hateful, respectively. People seem obsessed with putting their own religious ideas so deeply in their child's mind that it cannot be removed easily, and I see this a a form of unintentional emotional abuse.

Insubstantial fears can be a good thing as well. I'd be afraid of ghosts too

...what? I don't really understand your point here.

[ECrownofFire]

The indoctrinators might believe that they are benevolent, but filling a young child's mind with ideas such as sin and eternal hellfire for those outside your faith will serve to make them fearful and hateful, respectively. People seem obsessed with putting their own religious ideas so deeply in their child's mind that it cannot be removed easily, and I see this a a form of unintentional emotional abuse.

Insubstantial fears can be a good thing as well. I'd be afraid of ghosts too

...what? I don't really understand your point here.

Ghosts are insubstantial. Haha, very funny, right?

[Shades]

Fear can be a good thing. How do you think humans would survive if they didn't fear things that could eat them?

Teaching people about dangers is different from instilling fear. Learning about the dangers of something might make you afraid them but that is your response to the danger, fear will happen if you can't cope with the dangers not if you can. Fear of something you can't do anything about is never a good thing, there are very few things that fall into this category lucky.

I might know the dangers of lightning but I know I can avoid it, if I was somewhere up high and flat and unable to I might fear but I could probably cope. I also know that a planet killing asteroid could easily hit the earth without any amount of warning, and that there is nothing we could do about it anyway, it's not something I fear because I can't do anything about it. If I had always been taught to fear such an event I would be crippled in my ability to function as a person.

Instilling fear is something only terrorists or abusive people do to gain control over people.

[Shade-o]

Well, for a believer it's a matter of afterlife and death. They learned that eating cuttlefish on Tuesdays leads to being eternally prodded by rusty spoons, so naturally they pass that on to Jr. They only wouldn't if they didn't actually believe that, or they wanted Jr. to go to Spoon Hell. It's much like "Look both ways before crossing the road, or else you might get hit by a bus and sustain severe crippling injuries."

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Which I would be fine with, except for the fact that Spoon Hell has never been proven to exist (unlike death-by-bus), and so Jr. spends his whole life avoiding cuttlefish on Tuesdays. That's a rather mild loss, but some real religious restrictions are not.

[Shade-o]

And thus you have struck at the very core of all supernatural beliefs. They are, surprisingly enough, quite common.

[Shades]

Well, for a believer it's a matter of afterlife and death. They learned that eating cuttlefish on Tuesdays leads to being eternally prodded by rusty spoons, so naturally they pass that on to Jr. They only wouldn't if they didn't actually believe that, or they wanted Jr. to go to Spoon Hell. It's much like "Look both ways before crossing the road, or else you might get hit by a bus and either sustain severe crippling injuries, or just die."

Even if you believe in an afterlife, teaching what will give you a happy one is not the same as instilling fear for an entity. Unless of course whatever entity allows them into the afterlife is an abusive one and wants sufficiently cowed people it can control. So abusive it even gets it's representatives in this life to pass on the fear it causes.