Raising children - Can explanations for the existence of religions explain away the existence of God?

Many atheists claim that religious people try to satisfy psychological needs and therefore believe in gods or a god. A bit like addicts craving for their drugs. In reality gods are a delusion and when scientists complete their analysis of religious behavior proper therapies can be developed and the need for believing in gods will gradually go away. Tough cases will have to undergo rehab treatment. Stopping religion is like trying to cure a disease. If we don’t treat every symptom, some atheists claim, the disease could come back in our own children. So to atheists psychological explanations are key. They will also help parents to protect their children.

Here are some excepts from a very interesting article written by Jason Flora I recently read:

“The reasons for not wanting to teach my children to believe in a religion are clear: I want them to be open-minded, and I want them to be self-reliant. I want them to understand the world as it really is, as nearly as possible, without resorting to a mindless ‘because God made it so’ as an answer to confusing information. I want science to be their guide. There are many reasons, too many to list here, to keep God safely away from my children, but the most important reason is that to teach the existence of God to my children would be to lie to them.

A more difficult question is how to raise my children so that they do not feel the pull of religion. While it’s easy to just never mention God except to say that He doesn’t exist, I think that more thought than that should be given to the child’s social and psychological well being. Religion appears to satisfy three important aspects, and my assumption is that these aspects are somehow inextricably linked to the psyche of the human animal. A sense of community, a set of myths, and rituals are at the core of almost all religions. If these things were not important, religion would not have developed in every single culture in the world. I think that a suitable substitute for each of these things must be found to satisfy a person’s innate desire for religion, especially for a child (...).

I feel that the most important parts of raising a child, with or without religion, is to be moral, confident, and informed as a parent. These other aspects, community, myth, and ritual, speak more to the psychological needs of the child. There is a psychological need for religion, and it is not yet clear what makes up that need. While it is easy to declare all aspects of religion bad and therefore useless, this may not be enough to raise a healthy, religion-free child. The atheist parent needs to realize that being atheist is about more than just making religious people look stupid; it is about helping one’s child to develop into a moral and well-adjusted adult, one that doesn’t evangelize about atheism the way that Christians or Mormons do about their beliefs. After all, one of the worst things about religion is the believer’s need to tell the world how right they are and how wrong we are. Laziness breeds religion, and if we as parents are going to stop the proliferation of lies, we must arm ourselves with information and careful thought. Stopping religion is like trying to cure a disease. If we don’t treat every symptom, the disease could come back in our own children.”

http://www.atheistparents.org/articles/2002/03/02/fulfilling-the-psychological-needs-of-the-atheist-child

So my questions are:

1) Can explanations for the existence of religions explain away the existence of God?

2) Is it logical to conclude from these psychological needs that religions are in fact a disease (as claimed by Jason Flora)?

3) Is it logical to conclude that – unlike atheists – religious people are neither open-minded nor self-reliant?

4) Would you consider a parent to be open minded when he or she tells kids and adults that laziness breeds religion and religions are the proliferation of lies? If yes, how do you define open mindedness?