How Can You Know if Your Religion is Right?

I've been playing around on Yahoo! Answers and I thought my answer to the following question might be worth posting here.

Question:

How are you sure that your religion is right? There are many religions that all teach different things, and some people do not practice any religion at all. How can you be sure?

My Answer:

One of the most important criteria is that a religion has to make sense out of the world; it has to fit our observations and deepest intuitions about it. So, if it tells a historical tale, like the Book of Mormon does about the Americas, that had absolutely no archaeological, genetic, or documentary verification, then that would be a big strike against it. Or if it claims that the world is an illusion, like Buddhism, in spite of everything in your experience (and the actual behavior of Buddhists) indicating the contrary, then you'd have a big rational barrier to deal with. Or if, like Christian Science teaches, it insists that there is really no such thing as evil, in spite of all the horrors to be witnessed in the world, then you might conclude that the religion's founder was out of touch with the truth.

Important themes that any belief system must wrestle with are things like origins, purpose, morality, and destiny. A worldview needs to be able to answer questions like, "Where did it all come from?", "What are we?", "Why is there evil and suffering in the world?", "How should I live my life?", "Is there any meaning to life?", and "What should we be striving for?"

Many belief systems either fail to give much of an answer to all of these or they give unsatisfactory ones. For instance, paganism deals quite a bit with the world itself, but isn't much good with explaining where the whole cosmos came from in the first place. Eastern religions don't give much traction for asking the "what are we" question, since there's supposedly not really any individuals to ask it ("we" are part of the One). Many systems cannot make much sense of why humans would find themselves in such a sorry state (i.e., there's no "fall of man" type of doctrine). And the issue of morality is a vague or even meaningless concept for others.

Atheists don't get off the hook simply by rejecting religion. They've also got to answer these questions. Unfortunately, most of their answers are "don't know," some form of raw speculation, or some kind of subjective construction. For instance, what caused the Big Bang and why the laws of physics are so finely tuned for life is just an invitation to a science fiction discussion for an atheist. And trying to ground an objective ethical system without any transcendent source for moral principles is something that most astute atheistic philosophers have abandoned. And, while not really a logical strike against atheism, answering the question, "What is the meaning of life?", with something like, "There isn't really one; we make up our own meaning," is very unsatisfactory to those who believe that the universal human drive to ask the question suggests that a real answer must exist. You might just as well tell a hungry man that food is a figment of his imagination and that he go satisfy his odd craving with whatever he sees lying around that looks interesting.

The bottom line is that I think Christianity is the best historic, philosophical, scientific, and intuitive fit for the world I find myself to inhabit. The fact that some of what it teaches does not fit my preferences is no strike against it, since I also understand that truth can sometimes be inconvenient and painful, but it generally works out for the best in the long run.