Is religious education child abuse?

Since they were created, most religions have depended upon strong and early children indoctrination to stay alive and thrive. The entire process probably started with a cultural education mixed with a variety of beliefs, many of them stemming from thoughtful observations and the rest from superstition and purely manufactured beliefs. One very legitimate question is whether it is morally right to exploit innocent and gullible minds to instill irrational beliefs into them? Does that form of education belong to passing on a certain form of culture and values to the next generation, or is it downright exploitation and abuse? Since the sectarian character of most religions has proven to be a dangerous and to divide more than it unites, it is a desirable form of intellectual heritage? I personally don’t believe so. While it may be late for parents who have already chosen to give their children a religious upbringing to stop everything on its tracks, parents who are about to rear their babies might find it appropriate to think twice before they start introducing dimensions of knowledge that are unproven, biased and that could damage their offspring minds and ineffectively influence them. There are so many proven truths and facts to know about life, on this planet and the universe, and yet so little time to acquire all this precious knowledge that it seems both irresponsible and unfair to inject extraneous, totally unproven and often noxious knowledge into innocent minds at the expense of the countless necessarily tools humanity will need to survive and thrive in full harmony with itself and its environment.