If religions were about truth you could ask them ANY question

But, they won't let you ask ANY question will they?

And this is how you know that religions are not based upon Truth.

Because they cannot withstand philosophic enquiry.

Would you buy a house if people wouldn't quote you a price?

No. Because then they could charge you anything. This couldn't work.

But, the same is true of religion when they won't let you ask certain questions.

This is how I got in trouble with the religion I was raised in. I got to be 21 and started asking questions. And people wouldn't or couldn't answer those questions and so asked me to leave finally because I was asking these questions and was a youth group leader and influential in my church and so was my family.

The first question I started asking was "How come certain people say they are celibate but then it appears that isn't the case". I at the time naively believed that if one said something was true it actually had to be true. But, it wasn't.

So, this was one of the first things I learned about religion. "People don't say the truth in religion."

I suppose you could say also: "People don't say the truth at work".  or you could say: "People don't say the truth in relationships".

But, what I find is eventually the truth comes out and then "Where are you?"

So, since the truth always comes out eventually, not saying the truth ends lives, careers and belief systems.

It's not that I have always been 100% honest with everyone I have met either. I mean sometimes it is fatal to tell someone the truth and then it's just not a good idea unless you want to die.

For example, I remember counseling juvenile offenders in San Jose in the 1990s who had 7 felonies each (at least) without using a gun. You had to be very careful what you said to them because they all had serious forms of PTSD mostly from living in ghettos in places like Oakland and San Jose and had mostly been shot at and knifed and beat up in their lives and abused by parents and siblings and people in general in their lives. You had to be VERY careful what you said to them on many different levels. So, truth though it is important in most social situations can be fatal in other situations where people have had different experiences than you have had.

But, in a religion don't you expect truth from people who believe like you?

The problem is that you can ONLY expect CERTAIN kinds of truth and not others in any religion.

It's like a Country Club game that people are playing where they only talk about certain things I found growing up where you say only SOME things that are true and the rest you don't.

So, truth is ideal but not possible in some situations if you want to survive them physically or emotionally or spiritually.

But, this takes a long time to understand and most people are not fully capable of this until their 30s (IF EVER).