how can any one religion make a valid claim to be the fundamental truth?

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However, if religion is true and valid, they all can't be correct. They can be similiar but only one is the correct genuine truth and the other's are artificial.

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Ah, but you seem to be missing an option there.1) Religion is all total nonsense.
2) One religion has the genuine, 100% truth and the rest are nonsense.
3) Added option - All religions are reflections of that genuine truth, and no one religion has ever quite gotten it.Think of it as having all shades of grey rather than just black and white.The Rockhound

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If they are all reflections of the ultimate genuine truth, then the truth itself impossible to describe or understand.

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Does that mean that we should just stop looking then? Hell no. The journey is more important than the destination. People spend their whole lives reaching out to find the ultimate truth without ever finding it; and even if they do, they might not understand it. But someone else might - and because we are all different, there are many, many different ways to make the journey - hence many different religions. Claiming that only one path is the right one is a bit arrogant.

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I believe that if option 3 is in fact the correct option, then the genuine truth that they all reflect is that there is no truth at all. That's fine but it does not explain the deep hunger that humans have for truth if it in fact it doesn't exist. That's illogical.

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That's a very pessimistic opinion. I prefer to believe that if there is an ultimate truth, there's at least 6.2 billion different ways to find it.

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So even if no one religion has ever quite gotton it just right, they're not even emulating from the same source document.

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Who cares? Do you really think a book is going to tell you the truth? Or that a book written by someone else will tell you how you can find the truth? No one ever said that getting to the ultimate truth was going to be easy. Looking for some package deal, like one religion that has it all, is just silly.What if your religion is the wrong one?Option 3 is a viable alternative even if you hold the opinion to the contrary. You have not shown that it is not, so far.The Rockhound (btw sorry about the late reply)

Like I said - intellectually there is only two ways to rationalise all the religions we encounter in the world. Either no god exists, and all religions are false, or they are all true and simply reflections of the same thing - in which case all gods exist, in a way.