Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

Offered as a test, a child’s recoil is a rough instrument, since children are also shocked by surgery and by arithmetic. What it catches is still worth catching: any teaching that requires you to override a simple moral reaction has to justify itself very carefully. Cruelty explained by sophisticated reasoning remains cruelty, whatever system it sits inside.

The test works on political and institutional doctrines as readily as religious ones. When something you belong to asks you to accept a practice you could not describe honestly to a ten year old, slow down. The instinct may turn out to be wrong, and it deserves a real answer rather than an impatient one.