At what age should a child be introduced to religion?

[emjay]

Sorry, how does this follow from what I've said? You don't become a Christian just by being aware of the existence of Christianity... and I wouldn't have become a Christian as a child without the active influence of my parents. Ie I wouldn't have become a Christian just by what I passively picked up from society... media... school etc.. unless I was specifically curious/interested which I was not.

The thread topic, as I understood it, asks "At what age should a child be introduced to religion?" 

"Introduced to" casts rather a wide net, I think. When a child asks "why do those women have their faces covered?" or "why did the new President put his hand on that book?" the answers will involve religion. Giving the child an honest and age-appropriate answer will include introducing them to religion. 

Maybe you were thinking about a more targeted sort of introduction -- the sort of introduction in which there is a danger that the child will believe the religion is true.

Okay, fair enough, my bad I guess. It is a wide net indeed and the issues of education and indoctrination can bleed into each other, and where they do that's obviously of most concern to me, but if the question is just strictly when a child should be introduced to in the sense of becoming aware of religion, then that's not really a contentious subject for me and you're right, in that sense, contact with the world will do that job of introduction... but I don't think that poses any danger of indoctrination unless it is pervasive and targeted in some sense. My aforementioned Middle school for instance could be considered a Christian school, and it in turn reflecting the 'Christian Nation' culture of the country, in the sense that we had RE classes, sung hymns at Assembly, and participated in various Christian festivals throughout the year, but none of that is what I'd consider a danger of indoctrination, and indeed I have nothing but fond memories of it all... if I had children I'd have no objection whatsoever to them going to a school like that, but I would have an objection to them going to a specifically religious school that intended to pervasively and targetedly teach religious doctrine alongside or even instead of the normal curriculum... that sort of school I wouldn't touch with a bargepole, on principle.

But narrowing that net again, I probably should have been more clear; my response to Orbit was meant to implicitly follow on from my earlier post to you, and that in turn was asking, based on a possible misinterpretation of your parody, if and if so how, you and/or God would justify bringing up a child in a specific religion, as a theist, given the difference in how the beliefs are arrived at. But if that's not what you had in mind with your post, or you consider that off-topic, then again my bad for jumping to conclusions.

Religious people believe their religion is true. When a Shinto priest teaches his children that the rocks and trees have kami in them, he is not, in his own view, indoctrinating them. He is teaching them what's true.

No doubt flat-earthers would like us to wait and not teach our children the earth is round until the kids are about age 12 or so, and are old enough to make up their own minds. Then the education should be given in a balanced way by neutral, government-approved education specialists. But I don't think so -- if a kid asks me what shape the earth is, I'm going to tell him what I think is true.

Yes, that's what I meant by saying I thought it was unrealistic to generally expect otherwise... the nature of passionate belief, whatever it is, whether mainstream or complete outlier, well evidenced or not, is to consider whatever it is fact/truth and potentially pass it on with the same conviction. But I'm just saying that though it may be unlikely/unrealistic in some/many cases, especially when people are too far down the rabbit hole so to speak, I think it's still a nice ideal that people be mindful enough to preface their statements with 'I believe', escpecially when they know their beliefs are contentious or part of a multitude of views on a subject. I know in practice it would be unlikely, if not awkward, to be able to do that all the time, but imo even some of the time is better than none of the time. I'd like to think I'd do the same thing as an atheist if I had kids, and likewise if they expressed genuine and willful curiosity about religion.. ie what in my other post I considered the more justifiable route to faith... then I'd like to think I'd answer their questions objectively without hesitation or judgement, and ultimately be happy for them to become a theist if that was what they wanted and they got there of their own accord.