I have often written that non-theism or ‘atheism’ is the natural condition of the universe into which we are all born.
Most atheists—perhaps all, because by definition—conclude the same, realising that non-theism is the default situation of a godless universe [although pace to Richard Dawkins, who prefers to cautiously allow that we cannot be entirely sure of this]. Nevertheless, whatever else, children are all born ‘atheist’ in the sense of not knowing anything of gods until elders start instructing them.
Religion is a taught fiction—which explains why there are so many religions and why so many gods.
Inevitably, indoctrination is directed first at unsuspecting and trusting children because they are the most easily drawn into the tangled web of belief and deceit that accounts for so much of our religious, social, world population.
When a believer asks me directly the driving question, I answer firmly that natural rationality and commonsense point to religion as being nothing but a giant fraud—and a deep-rooted long-lasting fraud at that.
By the same token, the gods that religions embrace are merely the deliberate poetic and literary inventions of story-tellers.
Gods exist nowhere but inside the heads of believers, and occupy and distort their valuable, limited, neuron-circuit space where unprejudiced clear brains should be.
Why does the human race go on suffering such beliefs, when in other so many other endeavours we benefit handsomely from the great works and discoveries of the scientists and engineers?
How long will it be before we break the cycle of worship and free the minds of our leaders who keep on believing the impossible about the irrational?
One would think that it is the duty of schools to teach the truth, the scientific truth, and nothing but the truth.
If this was done, science would win through, slowly but surely.
But not all schools do so. Many teach untruths under the banner of religious freedom---and religion is all lies. Again I say: Religion is nothing but a giant fraud.