Last weekend, I went to my parents' house to swim and hang out with my 7-year-old nephew and 3-year-old niece. Their parents (my sister and brother-in-law) are conservative, pro-life Catholics who are sending my nephew to K-12 Catholic school.

My brother-in-law is a science teacher. Recently, he must have told my nephew about the Big Bang and how it created everything. His eyes really lit up when he was explaining it to me. (Catholics accept the Big Bang, evolution, the real age of the universe and Earth, etc. But they also believe if you eat a magic cracker, you will go to Space Disneyland when you die.)

I started talking about how stars were exploding like crazy back then and creating new stars. I also said how it's cool that some of my left hand probably came from one star and some of my right hand probably came from another star (a watered-down version of this Lawrence Krauss talk).

He then started asking who created God (I resisted the urge to say "man created God" because he's not my kid). Then he asked who created the person who created God (and so on...turtles all the way down). He asked why people believe differently and that if there really was only one God, then everybody should believe in just one God (again, I resisted the urge to simply say "geography").

He's not my kid, so I didn't want to intrude on or influence his parents' decision to raise him with Catholic mythology. However, I am very proud that, as a 7-year-old, he is already starting to think about these things that took me until I was a teenager to realize.

For now, if he asks about religion, I think I'll just gently prod him in the right direction without being overt about it ("yeah, it is weird how there are thousands of religions in the world!"). If he asks science questions, I will absolutely answer as honestly as I can given he's 7 years old.

TLDR: My 7-year-old nephew is being raised by my Catholic sister and BIL, but he's starting to question religion and starting to understand science. Good times!