How Religion Cures Cancer

Should we aspire to be whoever or whatever we want to be, or to conform to a mold largely shaped by our parents, or on a larger scale, even the culture we inhabit?  

Some people honor their parents by dutifully and obediently subscribing to their parent's points of view, especially about religion.  However different their own point of view may be from that of their parents in the particulars of that religion, many people are nevertheless taught to "honor their parents" by continuing the family tradition of being one religion or another, be it Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Conservative, Socialist, and so on. 

But the real way to honor one's parents, and indeed the only way to honor any parent, is by learning to how to shed such points of view so one can think more critically for oneself. For it is only by doing so that a person can ever achieve any true sense of independence, by being nimble enough in their minds to avoid the snares of charlatans selling the snake oil their different utopias or salvation. 

  

In the movie, Dead Poet's Society, with Robin Williams, we see these two points of view clash over whether to teach children to think for themselves or to honor their fathers by following their sacred traditions, whatever they may be, and thus subscribing to the point of view that "Father Knows Best," even if he understood the complexities of the world a whole lot less than we do, and thinks we live forever, even if "you only live once." 

In his book, Summerhill, A. S. Neil sums up what often happens when the latter is imposed, and how the former is the only cure:  "Every child has a god in him. Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil. Children come to my school, little devils, hating the world, destructive, unmannerly, lying, thieving, bad tempered. In six months they are happy, healthy children who do no evil". 

The "demons" that "believers" are forever fighting against with their religions, in this sense, are in fact manufactured by those same religions, which those religions all claim to provide the only cure for. Religion, by comparison, is like a cigarette that causes lung cancer, being sold by tobacco sellers who, because they claim to be a religion and are thus protected by the first amendment, have a Constitutional right to insist that their product is the only thing that can ever cure lung cancer.