Educated versus Popular Religion

While I agree with almost all of this, I'd like to point out that (using your analogy) people aren't always criticizing the science in a science-fiction book, although that does happen sometimes. A lot of times they are criticizing other people's claims that the science in science-fiction novels is real science and not fiction at all. So from that viewpoint, it seems that many people agree with what you're saying, even if they don't consciously realize it at first.

This whole idea of PR vs. ER reminds me of Daoism, and the differences between Philosophical Daoism (which I would equate to ER) and Religious Daoism (which would be PR). Of course, where Daoism differs from the major Western religions in this regard is that religious Daoism has deities (many of them, in fact) whereas the philosophical Daoism has none. In the Western religions, you don't see the belief in God vs. non-belief in God as a difference between PR and ER (although one might be able to make the argument that this would allow yet a third category...?). There are those that equate the concept of the Dao to the God of Western religions, but I don't think this is entirely accurate because the Dao is meant to be symbolic, and not an actual entity, at least in philosophical Daoism (which does not believe in anything "mystical"). Not sure if all this is completely relevant or not, but it got me thinking.

Daoism is also spelled Taoism sometimes - maybe you've seen it like that before. It's one of the two primary religions of China and Japan, along with Buddhism.

They are different romanizations of Chinese into English. Taoism is the Wade-Giles romanization, which has been around for a while. Daoism is the modern Pinyin romanization that was standardized by the Chinese government. Incidentally, they are both pronounced the same - with a "D". There are (at least) 2 different spelling like this for most Chinese words when rendered into English. For example, Peking (Wade-Giles) is the same as Beijing (Pinyin).

I agree with the distinction you made between the Eastern and Western views. In fact, philosophical Daosim (the "ER version") has no problem with followers also following other religions, such as Christianity. However, most Christian churhes will not tolerate their followers studying Daoism as well. I have seen this first-hand, on both sides, through several friends. The concept of tolerance is built in to almost all religions, Eastern and Western. It just seems like it is ignored a lot in the Western religions. Perhaps this is has to with Ifen's comment that the ER version is venerated in the East (and this is true for both Buddhism and Daoism), whereas it seems to be hidden away in the West.

It would be the first one - the bird.