Children and religion

My parents never went out of their way to talk to us about religion, except that we knew that my father grew up in a household dominated by his Scottish father's Presbyterian faith, spending long hours in church as a child, which he hated. But he was a low-key guy and didn't go on about it. He was just determined not to subject his children to that sort of thing. It's still not clear to me if he thought of himself as an atheist. 

My mother grew up in a family that rarely went to church, though she remembers enjoying singing in a church choir as a teenager, which she described as more of a social activity than about religion. Toward the end of her life, I remember her saying emphatically that "I just can't go for it!"---"it" being any kind of religious interpretation of life.

Hence, religion simply wasn't on for us as children. Like all children, we had many other interests and activities: school, sports, radio---and the advent of TV in the early 1950s---and reading. My parents always had books ---the Book of the Month club!---and magazines around and encouraged us to read.

I'm still a serious reader, and nothing I've experienced or read since childhood leads me to think that religion is a valid interpretation of life. I post anti-religious videos and material here not to annoy the faithful among my readers---if there are any---but because I think it's obviously an important issue for everyone and that if you accept religion---any religion---you get everything wrong about life.

I was never exposed to any anti-religious literature until as a young man I read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. 

Christopher Hitchens makes the case for unbelief succinctly below: