Typecasting

I've been a member of several institutions over the years. In no particular order, these include:

• a youth group;
• a football supporters club;
• a professional engineers association;
• a computer users group;
• a short-wave radio club;
• an astronomical society;
• a political party;and
• a church.

These and most community groups and organisations can be divided into two broad types:

• Type I Institutions: into which people join of their own accord, after due consideration. Individuals can examine the aims and benefits of membership and make up their own minds whether to join or leave.  
• Type II Institutions: into which parents "enrol" their babies, who spend their childhood being pumped full of the particular religious beliefs of their parents. The institutions and the parents call this forced indoctrination "good".

There are no prizes for guessing that the first seven on the list of organisations which I belonged to are Type I Institutions and that the last one is a Type II Institution. 

Type I Institutions stand or fall on critical analysis by prospective members. 

Type II Institutions are given unfettered access to children's minds at a young and impressionable age; and the survival of the institution is vitally dependent on it. They are 100% reliant for their survival on the brain-washing the children of their adult members. The day that parents stop indoctrinating their children into religion will be the day religion dies.

Together with fear, brain-washing is the only reason that their institution has survived the centuries. What a damning indictment of their dogma, which would not withstand the scrutiny of any eighteen year old who was brought up to understand critical thinking. 

What new adult in his right mind - after being granted the first eighteen years of life shielded from religion - would decide to subscribe to an organisation which professes belief in a virgin birth; magic events; a great flood; post-mortem survival; angels; a magic guy in the sky etc.?

Type II Institutions preach the loudest about morality, yet their morality includes brainwashing children! 

Would it be acceptable behaviour for Type I Institutions like political parties to demand that parent members enrol their new-born babies as party members? Or a football supporters club; a professional engineers association; or an astronomical society?

Clearly it would not.