I think we have a natural tendency to believe just about anything we're told, especially if we hear it from someone we trust. Sooner or later we learn that some sources are more reliable than others, and with any luck we begin to acquire the habit of critical thinking.
We're not encouraged to think critically about religion, though, and for good reason. Religions make claims that just aren't plausible if we stop to think about them. Our own religion never seems ludicrous, but other religions usually do. A Christian, hearing about Muhammad's Night Journey, will shake his head in bewilderment. How can Muslims be so gullible as to think that Muhammad was transported to Jerusalem, and then to heaven, and conversed with long-dead Patriarchs? The Christian finds it absurd, though he himself may well believe that Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and Mary all ascended bodily into heaven, that Jesus was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, walked on the surface of a lake, rose from the dead, and is bound to return in glory any time now. It never occurs to him that a belief in the Night Journey is no more implausible than his own beliefs.
Believing what we're told can be a very useful trait, especially when we're young. A child using a towel for a Superman cape is better off believing his mother when she says he can't fly off the roof, than finding out for himself. Don't go swimming alone; don't take candy from strangers; don't play with matches. We're encouraged to take a lot on faith when we're children, and for the most part it's better if we do. However, we also pick up a lot of nonsense: Santa is watching you, your face will freeze like that, you're making Baby Jesus cry. Even when we grow out of the most obviously false beliefs, we look back with nostalgia to a time when we believed whatever we told, and it seems like a more innocent, happier, finer time.
If we've been brought up in a religion, and find consolation in it, it takes an act of will to think critically about it. If we've been brought up to think that Jesus was born of a virgin, it may seem horrible to entertain any other idea. So on some level we have to decide whether we're going to entertain our doubts or not.
We can also come from outside a religion and decide to join it for reasons that may have nothing to do with its truth claims. In that case, we just have to suspend our disbelief. The more we immerse ourselves in the new religion, the easier it is to tune out the doubts. We start out saying, "I don't really believe that, but that's not the important thing about the religion." If we find enough meaning, beauty, and consolation in the new religion, though, we find ourselves believing the most implausible things after a while.
People sometimes think the Bible tells us to become like little children because children are sweet and innocent and pure. I don't know how anybody can think so who knows any children. Children are selfish, violent, cruel, and undisciplined, and it takes years of careful training to turn them into people fit for adult society. The sense in which a religionist needs to become childlike lies in unquestioning belief and uncritical acceptance. Asking the obvious questions is not a good way to maintain a belief in the virgin birth or an infallible scripture.
If, despite ourselves, we can't sustain our belief in the truth claims of our religion, we can still choose to find meaning in the religion and to accept those truth claims figuratively, symbolically, or "spiritually." In some cases this may be because we stopped short of asking the next question.
A surprising number of people are active in religions whose teachings they don't really believe, but they're trying to believe -- "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!" -- or they don't believe all of it, but they still find meaning, beauty, and consolation in the religion, so they keep their doubts to themselves.
For an adult who lets himself think about religion, sustaining a satisfactory level of belief is hard work, and so is breaking free of belief. So I think that when it comes to religion, both belief and disbelief are choices, though in many cases they're not quite conscious choices.
Imagine a believer, perhaps one of you here. I suspect that she and I may have asked a lot of the same questions. I think that on some level we've both made choices about what questions to ask, how to ask them, and what types of answers we're willing to accept. Her choices have led her to belief; mine have led me to disbelief. Regardless of who's right or wrong, choice has had a lot to do with where we both ended up. Even if many other people's choices may have been less overt and even less conscious, I still think they've been choices.
I don't think there are many religions that hold up well under critical examination, but there are a lot of people -- the majority, apparently -- who think there are important reasons for not thinking critically about religion.
It would be very easy to say I could never go back to faith, that I just can't believe those things any more. But of course I could. If I were sufficiently motivated, for some reason, I could make my way back to the Church, and though it might take a while, there's no reason I couldn't be looking back five or ten years from now and laughing at my "atheist phase." Likewise, our believer -- if she were sufficiently motivated -- could make her way out of the Church, and find herself looking back on her "Christian years" from the point of view of an unbeliever.
Whatever happens will happen because of choices we make, for reasons that aren't always clear to us at the time. Perspective, as somebody said, is for later.
