A very serious impact of religion on millions of people's lives is what is unashamedly my biggest beef with religion. Tiny babies are signed up into religions the world over. No choice there. Typically, they will spend the next decade and a half, or more, being force-fed the dogma of their parents' particular faith. This will be reinforced strongly by religious miseducation in schools and by clerics performing religious rituals in religious buildings in which the children will be told that mythology is the unalloyed truth and will be made to chant prayers or sing hymns which are full of certainties. No choice there either. Now many of us who went through all this (and my personal experience was relatively benign compared to many) managed to shake it off as adults. Many do not. Any choice they may have in the matter is swept under the carpet. Next time you speak to a Muslim, ask them what the penalty is for apostasy, then still tell me if you think they have free choice.

Organised religions depend on this early-life recruitment. Of all the disagreeable aspects of religion, that must be by far the worst (at least since they stopped burning people at the stake for heresy or imprisoning scientists). We are confronted by obscene terminology such as Muslim children, Catholic children and Protestant children. But without it there would be no organised religion to speak of. Very few adults in their right minds who had been properly educated, as opposed to brainwashed, would willingly sign up. Otherwise intelligent and caring parents see nothing wrong with their children being taught that the faith they themselves happened, by sheer accident of birth, to be born into is the only true one.   

In the above I have not parodied or caricatured religion. There is no ridicule and there is no personal attack. I have not said that it's wrong to have belief. When I say these things, as so often I do, the usual response from believers is shifty denial. Seldom is any convincing justification put forward for these scurrilous practices. My view is that they know that there isn't any justification, but it doesn't seem to matter to them because their religious practices with their children, no matter how morally shaky, are generally wrapped up inside a warm and fuzzy community ethos. Well to me that isn't right. In fact, it's abusive. Free choice, which religion fears, would consist of neutral and comprehensive education about world religions, which I'd heartily support, and a no-pressure invitation to sign up as adults only. The right thing, but zero chance of it ever happening.