Every so often I get asked how I know that my religion is right. My answer is: I don't know if it's right. Then of course they want to know how it is that I believe in my religion when I don't know whether it's right.
That's a fair inquiry. Most of the people who ask me those kinds of questions are genuine; they're not trying to trip me up and make a fool out of me. They are honestly curious. So I tell them, in so many words, that though I don't know if my religion is right, my conscience tells me it is; in other words: I cannot shake the conviction that the religion I believe in is right.
Why does anybody believe what they believe? Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Bahá'í, Hare Krishna, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Catholic, Baptist, Judaism, Voodoo, Wiccan, Jain, Druze, Native American, etc, etc, etc. The answer? Because it grips their heart-- the core of their being --which is very different than persuading someone with logic, debate, and reasoning.
People brought into a religion by logic, debate, and reasoning can be taken away by logic, debate, and reasoning. But someone whose heart is gripped by their religion, is not so easily removed regardless of how strong the opposition's argument.
Back in the early 1980s,I attended a special class called "How To Witness To Jehovah's Witnesses" taught by a lecturer who had been in that system for nearly three decades.
The man didn't train us to hammer JWs in a debate because even if you best them scripture for scripture, they will not give up on the Watchtower Society. Their mind's unflinching premise is that the Society is right even when it appears to be totally wrong. They are thoroughly convinced in their own conscience that the Society is the voice of God, while the oppositions' voices have no more validity than that of a squeaky little gerbil.
I encountered that very attitude with a Catholic woman on the old Beliefnet forums. The woman admitted that she was unable to refute my arguments; but nevertheless, I am an obscure nobody rather than an authority recognized by The Church so she didn't have to listen to me. Fair enough.
It seems unjust to me that God is set to lower the boom on people who are honestly sincere in their religious beliefs rather than just stubborn. The Pharisees opposed Jesus' teachings primarily because they hated him. For them it was a personal matter rather than a matter of conscience. I can understand slamming them; they deserve it. But I have trouble understanding how sincere people deserve to be slammed.
For example Matt 7:21-23 where number of people are predicted to be amazed that all the while they truly believed themselves on the Lord's side will be turned away as his enemies.
That disturbs me because my eldest brother was a Friar who conscientiously devoted his life to teaching and defending Roman Catholicism. I do not doubt my brother's sincerity for a moment; yet there's a very real possibility that his life's work will have been for naught while the atheists and the agnostics have been right all along.
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Notice the rearrange of the 1st part of her statement and I am not taking away from her statement but viewing it from a different position as you would view a picture in a gallery. And everyone knows what the name "Immanuel" means. 
