An interesting topic Matt that I do not think many people consider. I had done a little lesson on this awile back, so with your opening: If you grow up in an Islamic family, what are the odds you will end up a Baptist? If you grow up in a Baptist family, what are the chances you\'ll end up a Catholic? If you grow up a Catholic, what are the chances of you becoming a Conservative Jew? If you grow up an Orthodox Jew, what are the chances you\'ll end up a Reform Jew? The examples are endless. Why is this? How can we explain how people - specifically in Christianity - end up with drastically different understandings of the exact same book? In my case I grew up in a non-christian home that was christian (lol). My grandparents had a bible under the coffe table and condidered themselves christian even though we never once went to a church. They taught me nothing of the G-d of Isreal, but I learned plenty of the god of yourself. I ended up attending a polytheist baptist church for the better part of my christian life then ended up attending a polytheist Messianic congregation. I consider myself blessed not to be shackled with a religion from childhood that I would now have to overcome. It has left me free to pursue \"Truth.\" What we are convinced is the \"Truth\" is influenced by how we learned it. In fact, in religion how we learned it generally determines what we learn. Likewise how we accepted it determines what we accepted. Please do not miss this, how we develop our religious beliefs, largely determines what those beliefs are! Here\'s the point. All your religious beliefs were aquired though some sort of conditioning. We get trained to believe certian things and rewards and punishments were used to guide us down certian paths we have allegdly chosen. It would seem very few christians actually converted to christianity. This same scenario would apply to all faiths. Most people simply take on their family\'s traditions much like ancient peoples adopting of their familys idols. Besides this, there are other reasons why people become christian, and almost all have nothing to do with unbiased reasoning from Scriptures. But by far, the most prominent scenario is family tradition. By this means we are conditioned to accept certian religious world views. For instance, your mother and father were baptist; therefore you are as well. All you ever would hear or have in-depth knowledge of would be a baptist world view. Any knowledge of other faiths would be filtered through this baptist bias your parents held on to. Rarely would anyone ever venture outside of this to independently learn. Without realizing it you would be conditioned to be baptist and view everything from that paticular angle. Another reason would be location. This is the bible belt that I live in and the odds of me walking into a baptist church when I sought the L-rd would have been extremly high. If I grew up in Boston or Mexico, the odds would have said that I would today be a catholic. Or if I grew up in Jordan, I would have bowed to allah a time or two so far in my life. So, the question on the table would be: Why do you belive what you do?