Okay, let's make it obvious so nobody misses it:
Religion and hunting are types of brainwashing. If your parents had never taught you, and you weren't raised with it, you wouldn't believe in it. Parents have that power; if yours taught you that blue was actually pink and you were hatched from an egg found in a cave, you'd believe blue was pink and you came from a cave. Why wouldn't you? That's the power of brainwashing (and parenting).
So, if you weren't raised with hunting ... never had to do it to put food on the plate, never around weapons, no annual trips by dad for deer or turkey or whatever ... you probably have certain thoughts about hunting. If you were raised with it, it's the norm and people who don't do it are wierd.
Ditto for religion. If you weren't raised with it, it would sound pretty nuts to you. Not any certain religion either; all religions. It all depends on what your parents taught you. You may be a devout catholic, but it likely wasn't your choice ... the only reason you're not a devout islamist or judaist or buddhist or pagan is because you're parents didn't teach you that. If you were raised without any religion whatsoever but with science, the thought of people worshipping an unseen deity or believing anything but science would be pretty funny to you. It all depends on what you had drilled into your head as a kid.
Religion has caused more death and destruction of "civilized" man than anything else in history, so why do we keep it up? Because it's how we were raised and taught to believe, and everybody else is wrong. Best thing that could happen to humanity? Don't introduce your kids to religion until they're old enough to make up their own minds; no more of this 6 year old altar boy and going to church on Sundays crap.
Even better, go a couple of generations without religion being passed down to the kids at all; don't let it be taught, or even disussed, make it outlawed completely. Then watch and be amazed as peace broke out when we didn't have all that nonsense to argue over. Well, at least we wouldn't fight over religion ... I'm sure we'd find something else.
Discuss!
EDIT:
Probably because this is an off topic thread, and politics, religion etc. have their own threads. Check them out. People write 2,000 word responses, proof, evidence etc. I try to stay away from that stuff.
Didn't see this until I was done RF. I have no interest in politics or religion at all, so had no idea such threads existed here, and even if I did I wouldn't go to them. Feel free to merge, or let folks discuss as it was a random thought generated by the eating dogs and hunting discussion.