Someone recently argued that greater educational attainment in first nations is the driver behind a reduction in religious belief. I would disagree. I would argue instead that it is the indoctrination into the public educational system itself, as it has supplanted the village as the major societal definer & enforcer of acceptable norms of thought & behavior. And as religious instruction is all but left out of the curriculum & implicitly shunned, religious adherence declines. We are still human beings, evolved to mirror & conform to the will of the village. It is the counter village of the religious community coupled with the instinctual attribution of the unknown to supernatural forces that keeps religion alive despite its general decline.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.And what is wrong with properly funded public education?
Decades of republican attack on reality, and defunding. The result being shit buildings and over-crowded class rooms.
This is not the case in first world countries where they are learning how to read and write and do basic maths.
JacarC
Level 8
Mar 6, 2020
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LiterateHiker
Level 9
Mar 6, 2020
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Because they spend more time inside the educational system & they tend to have IQ's that are above average, meaning that they have an enhanced natural ability to apply critical thinking. Just my two cents. 
I have a master degree. In 4th grade, I was asked to skip grades 5 and 6. Go straight into junior high? I refused. My IQ is 146.
"Mom, I decided I'm an atheist," I said at age 13. "That's fine, honey," she replied. When I was in my 30s, Mom said she became an atheist in nursing college. "I realized a woman cannot turn into salt," she said and laughed.
Michigan has a hard winter when I was 13. Bored and restless, my brother, 10, and I read the World Book Encyclopedias. I was inspired by rational philosophers Descartes and Spinoza. They were anti-God, anti-church and anti-clergy. They went into hiding in the 1600s when heretics were burned at the stake.
Descartes and Spinoza inspired the Enlightenment Period of the 18th century in Europe. They valued reason and science instead of church dogma and superstitions. This movement advocated liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
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