My husband and I were both raised as atheists. ( we went to a Jewish Humanist Sunday school) But we wanted our kids to have more knowledge of the religious side of our heritage and make their own decisions. We sent them to a religious Jewish preschool and Sunday school. When our daughter was in kindergrten she came home from Sunday school and asked us how people know there’s a God if they can’t see Him. We’d never discussed our own views at this point. I told her that they " believed it in their hearts" And she looked the way you look when you’ve just figured out a difficult problem and said “OH I get it now, they make it up!” My husband, who is a scientist, take on this was that some people are born with a predisposition to this kind of thought. My mother who is a strident atheist was super proud of this. I don’t know. I have more respect for religion than my parents did. I’m sure if we’d been people who were affirmative in our own belief our daughter might have had a different take on things. But it’s interesting to wonder. I do think there is some predisposition to certain kinds of thought. I do think racism is learned but I think some people are predisposed to be scared or mistrustful of other people in general and especially those that look different than them and others like the young man in the article are predisposed to like and find commonality with other people. You can overcome that predisposition with a good or bad environment, but if the predisposition is strong enough it may emerge anyway.