Physical punishment is easier than patience. It is easier to teach children the ten commandments and invoke the boogeyman if they are bad, than to spend time to teach them any kind of science, math or rational thinking. It's easier to scare them into bahaving properly than to justify good behaviour via philosophy or science or logic. This is why religion has a hold over people, and from generation to generation, and why people perpetuate wrong religion at the cost of better understanding. The parents don't have a high education, can't answer children's questions, and feel that swatting the kid is a quicker remedy for misbehaviour than anything else.

Children and adults have fundamentally different behaviours, and to different degrees. Children are direct, results of actions have to have simple consequences. This is where religion comes in to discipline the child. Adults on the other hand have responsibilities, have to solve complex problems, and so understand the idea that people to some extent can learn from their mistakes. This is where compassion and generosity come in. Somehow religion has been able to do both these things in spite of indoctrinating people with profoundly flawed reasoning.

It would be a breakthrough of incredible proportions if science could be used to scare children into behaving properly, or something to that effect. Then this behaviour could be cultivated with increasing age into a correct understanding of the world without confusion, and lead to an older generation of intelligent and compassionate people. It would directly supplant religion.

If anyone knows how to do this I'd like to know.