Lets pretend all religions are equally possibly correct. If one goes by nothing but the numbers the chance of you being correct are 1 in 19 if you count the large religions of the world . From there if you add in religious sects and dead religions the chance goes down even lower.
So how do you figure which religion is the correct one if there is indeed a correct one?
I've seen people approach this issue in two different ways, one is simply that you feel a connection to a certain belief therefore you follow said belief. You seek out the gods you feel a connection to and go from there. Of course there is one big problem with this being that you relied on feelings to get you here.
You can feel a lot of things but that doesn't make them valid. You may feel it is for instance racist to criticize Judaism or Israel but that doesn't mean it is actually racist to do so. You may feel something is a religious experience but is in fact perfectly mundane. Mental gymnastics can only take you so far with your feelings.
Then you have reason. Some people try to reason out their beliefs and make sure they make sense. They'll argue and defend their beliefs to the very bitter end in some cases. Over the years they may even get very good at this.
Of course a problem arises here as well. You can not demonstrate that a god and even more painfully your own god/gods exist. You can not prove it and I know you can't because people have been trying for centuries now, millennia even and have as of yet come up with nothing.
"Ah ha!" they may say "But I can give you reasons it seems plausible that God exists!" There is usually a note of excitement among the younger apologists when they say this. The older ones may or may not even bother.
The issue here seems obvious to me. Any reason you could give still has to be taken with a certain measure of faith. The reason sometimes given is that life Is too complex to come from nothing. This of course ignores evolution but even then it's not really an argument for anything but a deistic god now is it?
I've heard just about every reason in the book now I think or at least a good portion of them. If you have another feel free to apply it here if you wish. I can't say I don't listen for good reasons even today.
In the end when I stop and think about it, the lack of evidence and the sheer number of religions makes it neigh unto impossible to determine what religion could be right. Of course many don't claim the exclusivity to the truth that others do but this is of little consequence.
So tell me , why would you think your particular interpretation of the spiritual is correct?
Because I view the Source and the History.
The oldest extant Faith that has the longest record of process would seem to be the one to examine first.
If one were to find that the largest, most influential religions in the world were offshoot sects of this Faith, then one might examine it further.
If one were to find that the Faith in question was really just a tiny tribe of people who never had any sort of massive adherence on planet Earth and that, this same tiny tribe of people does not even statistically exist today due to their small numbers of adherents, one might examine it further.
If one were to find that nearly every civilization and Western religion on Earth has tried to obliterate this tiny Faith tribe for thousands of years, yet it still exists in a strong fashion, one might examine it further.
If one were to find that this tiny tribe of people has had the most influential influence on all of mankind in terms of Law and Science and Government and Medicine and Technology and nearly every other form of modernism, one might examine it further.
If one were to find that the world today is obsessed on the borders and people and actions of this tiny tribe of people that does not even statistically exist, one might examine it further.
And, if it turned out that this tiny tribe of people was the only nation on Earth who ever reclaimed part of their original homeland and their original Holy City, after thousands of years of exile and that ALL of the countries that surround them have repeatedly attempted to wipe them out and that they have since become one of most militarily powerful and technologically advanced nations on Earth and that their original Faith Tradition keeps on growing despite having been for all practical purposes annihilated just 65 years ago, one might conclude that their particular spiritual interpretation just might be correct!
