This is going to be long.
And I'm sure it will lead to other questions.
I'd honestly question the notion of this generation thinking for itself. It's the first generation entirely born out of rampant advertising in all forms and it's not entirely reasonable to think that that doesn't have it's consequences. Advertising isn't simply the hit and run ads we see on TV and magazines and billboards. It exists in long form through entertainment and the parody of information called 'news'. And it's amazingly successful. It is shaping ideologies.
You're right about religion in a sense. Religion is man made, or at the very least man corrupted to mirror everything else man discovers has an impact on human lives. Find anything that people will respond to en masse and it's instantly a commodity, using truths, lies, myths and analogies to propagate a system of leaders and followers. Haves and have nots to seduce with multiple forms of the carrot and stick approach.
The popular notion of the church is exactly what is described above. It's a congregation born of psychology and marketing strategies and the biggest perpetrators of this are the largest and most popular religions. They misrepresent faith in God, knowing full well that people will, as you'd said above, have no time to invest in proper study and will be easily misled. But really a simple study of the bible would have masses questioning just what the hell each and every 'denomination' thinks it's doing saying half the shit it says. Questioning the teachings and behaving the ways that they do.
If you're going to believe in God, does it make sense that you can leave the understanding of Him in the hands of total strangers? If there is a God, a God that made you, set limits on you and will abandon you for ignoring them, does it make sense to give Him such little attention and take it on faith what others say about Him? Especially when it's obvious they're getting rich off of it? But this is what we have. We don't' have a generation devoid of faith, we have a generation of misplaced faith. Counter clerks proclaiming science, despite never spending a minute in a lab or on an archaeological dig, taking on faith what sounds plausible because it's sold in the wrapper of 'anything but God'.
That's fine, because God is the exact opposite of church. He doesn't tell you what to think. He doesn't demand you worship him. He gives each of us complete and total autonomy. His argument is presented via his word, historically and archaeologically through a small number of people, but universally heard. You can choose what ever you like and the eternity without him is part of that choice. Jesus intentionally describes himself as the good things in life as a message. He is light, truth, water, physical sustenance. Reject him, you reject the source of those things. He made you, he sustains you if you want to reject him, he's not throwing you to the center of the earth, you are letting go of the very thing that sustains you.
Understand the Son bit for what it is. Jesus is God. God didn't copulate, have a son and send him to earth to clean things up and force you t worship him. It's a metaphorical characterization to speak on terms man would instantly recognize, but unfortunately people are taking it too far and relating to God as though he is a man. Jesus is God, not a creation of God. He came down to live amongst those He created and to make it painfully obvious that one, everything the prophets said was of divine origin and two, that man cannot govern himself no matter how big he feels about himself.
And your idea of worship is limited by the world view which has been given you through the above mentioned advertising. We think of worship as foot licking and ass kissing, yet over and over God in the bible makes it clear that you can't flatter him. Doing right is worshipping God. Being charitable, not wasting whatever gifts and talents he had given you is worship. bringing others to a greater understanding of him is worship. Eternity won't be a big slob languishing with an innumerable host to feed him grapes and cool him with giant feathers. That's the earthly image of being worshipped.
Anyone being honest will have to sometimes answer 'I don't know' when it comes to every question concerning God, but we know whats critical and what's pertinent and first and foremost, God requires faith. It seems the easiest and probably would be, if you were living in isolation, but for us living in the world with oppositional ideas and opinions it's the largest test you'll ever face.