He said religion is rather like trying to get to an island in the middle of the sea. There are many boats you can choose from. You choose the skipper in whom you have the most trust, and the boat which seems most seaworthy. You may laugh at your neighbour who chooses the rowing boat – but then, how do you know your engine won’t break down, and he will reach the island first? So you cannot condemn him, instead you must respect his choice.

At the end of the day, all religions worship the same God, though they may see Him differently. The important thing is that you choose your boat and commit yourself to the journey. If you try to “hedge your bets” by taking two boats at once, you will only end up in the water.

Every major religion (and most sects within those religions) has arisen from a charismatic teacher – whether it be a prophet claiming divine inspiration, or a messiah claiming divine origin. All these teachers must have believed absolutely in the message they preached: it’s unlikely that a charlatan seeking fame or fortune could preach a message convincing enough to last through many generations.

If we claim there is only one “right religion”, then we are saying that some of these prophets or messiahs, however strongly they believed, were misguided. Perhaps their divine revelations were not divine, but mere hallucinations. Or perhaps they were the work of a devil, not God.

The problem is, how do we know which teachers were really divine, and which were not? It’s obvious that their followers were totally convinced of their sincerity, or the religion would not have survived for long. How can we, at this distance, being unable to meet the teacher, have any chance of judging?

We cannot rely on the scriptures. Even those that were written by the teacher himself are full of ambiguities – as can be seen by the number of sects that arise in all religions, each disagreeing with each other on the interpretation of the Holy Book. In the case of Christianity, the Bible was not even written down until many years after the teacher had ceased preaching. If it were any other text, we would agree such a delay would inevitably lead to some distortions.

For all religions, there is no historical evidence, written by independent historians at the time, which proves anything one way or the other. What logic can we use to judge which teacher got it right?

The answer is, that we cannot. We are mere mortals, and do not have enough knowledge to judge which religion God meant us to follow (for, remember, all the major religions worship the same God – it is the way they worship that differs). We can only choose whom we wish to believe whichever one makes most sense to us. For that reason, we shouldn’t condemn others who choose to believe differently.

Thumbnail photo thanks to Renato Souza on Flickr.