I'd like to think so... but pretty much every place humans are you find religion. I think that people want explanations to understand things, and when they don't hve answers... they make stuff up (religion).

I remember watching a documentary where birds were fed by pressign a lever which would or would nto release food based on a random number generator. Several birds developed elaborate rituals wh9ch they repeated consistently totry to get the lever to release food. It was basically witnessing the development of religious ritual based on a confirmation bias of the few times the lever released food. Humans are animals, and sadly we would do the same kinds of things.

The only way I can think of off hand to really avoid religion is to consciously devlop criticl thinking skills and rational fact based reasoning. It does help to have parents who are nto religious and who are rational thinkers.

I wasn't exposed to religion until I was 9 so was skeptical and questioning.
The beatings taught me to not verbalize the questions but failed to quell them.

I did try to believe and tried alternate belief systems but just couldn't do it.

Belief in a supreme being is a social construct.

without the influence of others, get enough humans together and they'll devise some religion or other.

g

Without the influence of others , we have no language and therefore no concept of the word atheist!

We are born human. Without the influence of others and society everyone will be dead. Gods are inherent in human nature. If two atheists moved to the moon and had children, they would have to train their children out of god-belief, or the kids would grow up believing. It’s the default position.

We are born without particular beliefs, and since atheism is the lack of beliefs about deities, in that limited sense we are "born atheists". However what we are not born, is to be critical thinkers. Our propensity, absent lots of self-discipline and training, is to engage in rampant confirmation bias and agency inference ... which is very religion-friendly. And while its influence is fading, religion still does a good job of asserting itself all over the place. And of course there are other forms of intellectual suicide even apart from religion. Conspiracy theories, tribalism, romanticism, and a lot of other bullshit is looking for people with broken bullshit detectors.