Conformity Excuses
overcomingbias.com
overcomingbias.com
Also, what do you mean by "the most abusive"? If we are talking the entire world, I'd guess that's how it works in >80% of religious families. Perhaps that number is lower in US, but not by much. Considering how abusive it is, I'd say the most families are "the most abusive".
P.S. in the first para by "normal" I mean that if you ask many random religious people of age 30+ most of them would consider that behavior normal.
I bet if you don't put any bad words in your question like I did in my statement, and simply ask "would you consider normal making child pray before he can eat?" even among well-educated religious people many will answer "yes". Try on your close friends, eye opening thing it is.
I was raised in a religious household, am 30+, and don't consider coerced prayer of the type that seems to be described [0] normal (in fact, I find coerced prayer theologically unsound.)
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised to find it fairly common.
[0] An expectation of respectful silence while someone else leads prayer, or an offer without obligation to lead group prayer, certainly. But coerced prayer is another thing altogether.
Do you have children? If you do, do you coerce them into your religion (btw what is it)? If you do, how?
Certainly childhood indoctrination (even if without this particular kind of coercion) is part of the continuity of religion (though adult conversion into, out or, and between religions is a thing), but I'm not sure there is any evidence that childhood coercion of the sort you describe makes religion stickier.
"Woops! Don't forget to [pray/wash your hands]!"
Hygiene and religion both start out as learned behaviors before the child is able to understand the principles.
Not that it would be very relaxing.
There is no logical or information theoretic perspective that justifies or explains conformance behavior. It's all pure biology.
So why do religious people stay religious when there is often a great deal of evidence against it. Its not as if the information is hidden from them.
Yeah, I couldn't get past this sentence, sorry.
How self unaware can you possibly be to not recognize conformity pressures in your own thinking?
If you'd read the very next sentence ("We are only rarely aware that we do anything, or avoid doing other things, because we want to conform."), you'd have realized that the author is making exactly the opposite point you thought. The whole article is about how conformity pressure does slip in, and how we make excuses for it to convince our conscious minds that something else is actually at play.