It seems fitting that my first post here be an origin story, of sorts.  Like any origin story, it is overly reductionistic and attributes a single cause to an overdetermined phenomenon.  There's an old Spider-Man comic that claims that even if he hadn't been bitten by a radioactive spider, and even if he hadn't caused his uncle's death through inaction, Peter Parker would still have become a superhero thanks to his engineering talent and strong moral fiber.  Nevertheless, I find it compelling to say that I became a skeptic (and from there a rationalist and consequentialist) because from an early age I attended two different religious schools at the same time.

From age six, I spent my weekdays at a Christian independent school.  From around the same time, I went to a Jewish "Sunday school" (and to Jewish religious services some Saturday evenings).  I imagine this is a rare, bizarre-sounding way to grow up.  In Jewish communities in rural Pennsylvania it's quite common.

This led to a predictable phenomenon.  Adults, teachers in similar positions of respect and authority, were (confidently and earnestly!) making different, contradictory assertions about extremely important subjects.  People whom I respected equally had vastly different concepts of how the universe worked, and I was constantly reminded of this.  The inference was inescapable: teachers were often wrong and I would have to use my own judgement.  I remember briefly theorizing that there were simply two different gods, the Old Testament one and the New Testament one (who was also Gaia), which would certainly help reconcile everything.

By the time I was ten, I questioned everything a teacher said, in any subject, to a fault (e.g., I refused to learn the backhand in tennis because I couldn't see the point).   By the time I was twelve, I confidently identified as an atheist.  My parents were still religious Jews, but they didn't really care as long as they could bully me into performing the rituals.  We spent more time arguing about AI, as it happened, than the existence of God (my parents were both Searle-ists).  By the time I was fifteen, I had decided to drop out of school and educate myself, etc.

I think I would have gotten there anyway.  But I find it appealing to speculate that I got there much faster than I would have if I'd received a secular education.  I'm curious whether anyone here had a similar upbringing.  Might this be a good way for atheists to deliberately inoculate their children?  Might it be a good way, in general, to ensure that children grow up instinctively distrustful of authority?  I realize that may be a negative trait in an ideal world, but in this corrupt one I think it's essential.