Answering your child's questions: Aren’t all religions basically the same?

I don’t know if you’ve ever done this thought experiment. Humour me for a moment.

Given your nationality, place of birth, childhood, parents/grandparents, etc., what’s the likelihood that you would have ended up believing what you do? Go ahead and put a percentage to it. Were you over 75% likely to believe what you do about Jesus?

Now flip the starting point: how likely is it that you would believe what you do had you been born in, let’s say, Gamjam district, India, where over 99% of the 3+ million people identify as Hindu?

There are thousands of religions out there, alongside belief in no form of god. How can you know that yours is right? How can our young people be sure that their beliefs are not simply part of a very human mechanism of control, and traditions passed down from early civilisations?

Curiously uncurious

It’s hard to miss the inclusive and non-discriminatory vibes in the air we breathe. Youthscape’s No Questions Asked research interviewed some teenagers and drew the following conclusions about the attitudes of some young people to belief:

1. First, questioning is seen as disrespectful—either showing a lack of faith or being offensive to someone’s views.
2. Second, a core belief underpinning acceptance and tolerance is that we are all the same, and so differences should be minimised.
3. Third, beliefs are considered private and rooted in personal experience.
4. Fourth, religion is seen in what people do, not in abstract statements about beliefs.