Fear

[Astonished]

This is why the whole idea of 'freedom of religion' is such a fucking paradox. You're not 'free', your minds are being forcefully warped by parents and community to believe it and to condition you that you want it and to defend it from being attacked or threatened or taken away. So unless you're just genuinely that damn stupid and don't require any indoctrination whatsoever to come to the conclusion that a religious belief is rational or justifiable, you're not practicing religious freedom, you're ignoring the fact that you're a slave.

I hear you, but don't see it as a paradox because what is meant by "religious freedom" is (in theory) the freedom to choose any (ir)religion you wish. Although of course in practice it's the "freedom" to choose THEIR religion as opposed to all the incorrect ones (or that most incorrect of all, no religion).

It is the conceit of fundamentalists that the ONLY reason people don't choose their Truth is because they are deceived by Satan and his minions, sometimes willingly. Time and again their heads explode when presented with the stark fact that people simply DO NOT BELIEVE their fantastical, unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable claims, and do not find the failed epistemology of religious faith effective at predicting or explaining experienced reality. In short, there are many GOOD reasons NOT to believe, it is not simply a matter or ignorance or obstinance or the desire to be libertines. A fundamentalist will only admit for consideration, bad or duplicitous reasons not to believe. And they will only consider unbelievers to be bad AND duplicitous.

You don't see the fact that it's not a choice because it's forced upon them by their agents of indoctrination, i.e. parents/church leaders/other family/community/schools? It's one thing if the parents presented the idea and then shut the fuck up about it and left it up to the kid to do the research and come to their own conclusion, but they don't. There is NO choice in it whatsoever, save for those I mentioned, the hopelessly stupid that require no previous indoctrination to be duped (but I'd wager one of my testes that those are somewhere in the remainder eclipsed by the otherwise 99.999% who are indoctrinated.)