I feel like many Western folks would laugh or gasp at this, while at the same time, we (especially in the US) are inundated with equally superstitious BS from a

I feel like many Western folks would laugh or gasp at this, while at the same time, we (especially in the US) are inundated with equally superstitious BS from a young age. Christians will tell you their beliefs are about love and therefore are harmless, but the Bible they claim is both inerrant and an example of the purest love actively glorifies, and even explicitly commands, murder in multiple places. And then there's the more subtle dangers of teaching people this nonsense: recent studies have shown that children brought up religiously are less likely to be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality (as tested by comparing mundane stories with stories of wizards, for instance, and asking which one is probably real). And more egregiously, telling children they will go to paradise when they die is disgusting. I have a personal anecdote on the matter. My dad is a fundamentalist Christian, a young-Earth creationist who truly believes that the primary-school concept of Conservation of Mass disproves all the science showing the age of the Earth (because he has no idea how radiometric dating works, but is convinced he understands it better than physicists and chemists). Anyway, my brother-in-law let him start taking my niece and nephew to church. After a few weeks of church, My niece, who was then 8, was talking to me about something and then said, with a smile mind you, "Oh, well, it'll be good when I die." I was like, "What? Don't say things like that!" "Why?" she asked. "Because everyone would be very sad if you died." "But why?" she asked again. "They should be happy, because I'll be in heaven with God!" She grinned, and I was disgusted and terrified. I didn't know how to convince her that death was bad without directly contradicting her parent's decision to bring her to church. Religion, simply by the promise of an afterlife, makes young children happy about dying. That alone should be enough for people to chuck it in the bin, and yet, it's not. (By the way, this is the same reason so many religions with paradisiacal afterlife promises almost always have to outline that suicide is a sin. Because when you convince people that their death will be far better than their life could possibly be, of course they'll want to get there as soon as possible! But then you'd have no followers left alive, so you have to tell them "wait, no, but you can't do that because, um, then you won't get that paradise after all!") Theistic religions, and honestly any religion with any sort of afterlife, are fundamentally sick. And expanding that to all religions with beliefs in the supernatural, they are all BS and dangerous and have no place in a modern world built upon the efforts and successes of rational and scientific considerations.