We know that one strength of the pernicious religion meme is to require proponents to pass it forward and indoctrinate their young. For sure that's memetics 101 but with modern population growth rates that will only just about maintain numbers over time, if not do worse, depending on the defection rate as participants mature. The much more important factor seems to be the virallity and how many non-religious people each of their members can recruit.

As such I'm wondering what people think are the most powerful ways religion manages to exploit to recruit new members, and what we as a society do to make those ways less effective.