Midare said:Mind you, no book can meet the second need Religion fills, community.
That's what things like the OUT Campaign and other grass roots groups dedicated to providing a community to the non-believer are for.
Midare said:Or is that cruel?
Cruel? Yes. Good for them? Also yes.
Personally, I think they just need to make philosophy, debate, and rhetoric required courses for basic schooling. Children need to learn the alternative to religion, critical thinking to question it, and the tools used on them by religious leaders to dupe them into belief. We should also have the historical facts about religion taught plainly and without cherry picing in history classes as part of the curriculum.
It's simply unrealistic to stop indoctrination by law. We can certainly frown upon it socially, but I simply don't think that this is going to happen with all the religious freedom stuff out there (especially in the US). ...and because theists generally fiercely protect their right to proselytize their children. :x
This certainly won't free all children and won't do anything about people already beyond school. But it will help society slowly move in the right direction as intelligence spreads and religion diminishes. I don't think creating a set of moral rules or anything will help. You can't make this sort of thing easy without making it a dogma. You can certainly show some basic morality without religion, but I think that is being done. Look at all modern literature in all forms of media. Video games, movies, books, and everything all has a large amount of secular morality about friendship, kindness, and all those other basic things. And the overall message is almost always "the good guys win." We just need to become the good guys and give people the tools to understand that through education. I think the literature background for that is already in place.