When I was 16 years old, I became a believer. To be specific, I looked over the evidence I knew at the time, and decided that the Big Bang must have been caused by an outside agency, which I figured should be called "God." At that point, I became a deist (though I had never heard the term), and began a search for the right way to understand this thingy I had started to believe in.
Being young, and quite ignorant of the wealth of materials on the subject available, I made several mistakes at this point. First, I informed my parents. They - having made the decision to not interfere with my beliefs, for some reason - expressed disappointment, but had no other reaction that I can remember. My next mistake (and a major blunder it was!) was to start visiting the churches of a couple of my friends. My understanding at the time was that Christianity was the way to go, it being pretty much the only game in town. After all, it was Greensboro, NC during the 1970's.
I revisited this situation with my sister, recently. I would like to think that my religious phase would have been somewhat short-lived if only my parents had introduced me to some of the material available in those days on the subject of religion. In particular, I would think that a home full of atheists would have had Bertrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian," which would have helped me straighten out my thinking, I hope. In response to my question about why our parents had not been more helpful in ending my religion phase, she said that they had thought it important to let me make my own decisions.
Now, I have followed that idea in my own life as a parent. I have supported my son's decisions in his life, so long as I thought that there was no harm in them. The big difference between me and my parents is that I have insisted that decisions be made in light of as much information as possible. In other words, it's fine to make decisions on what you're going to believe, but *do your research first!* It was this attitude that prompted me to investigate atheism when I discovered that my son was moving in that direction. I started looking in on the alt.atheism newsgroup, as well as a few of the Christian newsgroups. I bought the book "Atheism: the Case Against God." I did quite a bit of research, hoping to get a better grasp of the issues for myself, in preparation for talking over the issues with my son.
That attitude eventually led me completely away from theism.
But this brings up another thought for me. Often, I hear of people who became Christian at the age of 8 or 9 years. This often happens in Protestant churches - the ones that don't participate in infant baptism, of course. I'm not sure what the deal is in the churches that do the infant baptisms. But I have often heard a person say, with pride, "I gave my life to Jesus when I was 8 years old." My son was one such person, by the way.
What I am concerned about is how reliable can an 8-year-old's decision-making process be? In my opinion, my decision-making ability was still pretty much undeveloped at the age of 16! No child that I've ever heard of has the ability to analyze the issues involved in a reasonable manner. The fact is that children that young are still very much dependent on their parents. Any decisions on religion will be made in light of that dependence. In other words, it is a decision made under duress. No child would profess at such an early age a religion different from his or her parents - that would be an unthinkable leap of independence in a person who is virtually incapable of even desiring independence.
Of course, such decisions are supported by the church. Why? If asked, they'll say it's the only way to ensure that the child will get to heaven. Get them packaged up for God as quickly as possible, and make every effort to keep them from having contact with any other thoughts or ideas until they're set in the religious mold for life. A more practical interpretation of this attitude is that the priests are more concerned with making sure every child is properly indoctrinated as early as possible, in order to make sure there's a continuous supply of believers who will continue supplying the churches with money, labor and new members. The issue of letting each person determine what they believe by weighing the evidence and deciding based on rational consideration is not an option.
Why might this be? I think it's because reason, when used on the issue of religion and in light of the evidence on all sides, will most often lead to atheism. In a priest's view, such a thing must be avoided! Which is why no priest would turn away a small child who wants to "dedicate his life" to the priest's religion. That sort of thing is music to his ears. This is also why you'll never see church give its members an open, honest look at the truth of the religion. The church leaders know that their religion would never stand up to open, logical scrutiny.
So the beat goes on. Children are indoctrinated with their religion from infanthood on up, doing everything possible to ensure that all ages are an age of faith, and that children will never grow into an age of reason.
