DAY 10
CHALLENGE
“Most people accept whatever religion they are raised in. This means there’s no particular reason to believe in religion. Further, it would be unfair of God to damn people simply because they believed what their parents taught them to believe.”
DEFENSE
The fact that people tend to accept the beliefs they are raised with does not give a reason to reject belief altogether. Also, God takes into account the way people are raised.
Children have a natural tendency to accept the beliefs they are taught by their parents and their culture. This is essential to our education, since we do not have the opportunity to personally verify the vast majority of our beliefs.
This is true across all subjects, not just religion. For example, people tend to accept the ideas about the natural world that are prevalent in their culture, but this does not mean they have a reason to disbelieve in the natural world or how it works. Rather, it means they have reason to accept what they have been taught unless and until a superior case is made for another view.
Similarly, people have a reason to accept the religion they were raised in unless and until they encounter a superior case for another religion. Christianity has nothing to fear in this regard. Of all religions, it has made perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough study of the arguments and evidences that support it—a field known as Christian apologetics. This book is one example of that.
If most people remain in the religion of their birth, it is because most do not undertake a detailed study of apologetics and thus do not encounter the powerful evidences for the Christian faith.
Nevertheless, God takes into account the background with which a person is raised. He does not automatically damn people because of what their parents taught them. The Church holds that “those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation” (CCC 847).