Theism is literally childish

[I_am_not_mafia]

Hey, way to make it personal.  No one singled you out.  She is just looking hypothetically at what the fallout of religious indoctrination appears to be.

I am characterising the phenomenon of organised religion.

This is different to saying that theists are by nature immature, but religious indoctrination is counter-productive to the maturation process of becoming a fully independent adult.

The question I'd like to interest Mathilda in is this: why is religious indoctrination the way of the world?  What survival value favored human groups which passed along such beliefs to their offspring and how might religious practices have influenced the sort of mammal we've become, what we call our humanity?

I believe it is a symptom of how our brains work. Brains generally seek the easiest solution when presented with some need. Whether that's to maintain homoeostasis, or to achieve something that ultimately achieves this. We see this as progress in society as everything becomes more efficient and redundancy is eliminated.

But sometimes this can lead to taking a short cut that comes at a greater cost by hacking our own brains. Take stress for example. You can change your life-style to reduce stress and do some meditation, or you can pour yourself a whisky or consume cannabis. The former is the better method in the long run but takes more effort. Some people take narcotic drugs when their life is painful and / or tedious and this can form an addiction when the better method my be to seek counselling and face up to whatever trauma is affecting you. I fully agree that religion is the opiate of the masses, almost quite literally because a good church service can lead to the release of endorphins, opioids, seratonin etc and can lead to many of the same highs that are triggered by drugs. Religious attendance is essentially brain hacking. Outsourcing your moral decision-making process to reduce doubt and uncertainty is a similar shortcut to drinking a dram of whisky to reduce stress. But it's more similar to a drug addiction that affects that rest of society because organised religion always seeks to ensure your continued attendance through a conditioned fear of hell while at the same time using their believers to expand its power base by spreading ignorance.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. It just a matter of who picks up the bill.