Percy:
You want your religion to make sense and not get caught up in fantastical and/or fraudulent claims, but religions are not rational social constructs. Is there a religion in the world based upon fact and rationalism? I don't think so. The best that one can do is accept the beliefs that one finds in one's heart, the ones that were there from the beginning and that no one ever had to tell you, and then find a church compatible with those beliefs. Maybe you're a little too liberal in your religious beliefs for the church you've chosen.
These are helpful comments.
I'd shade one point a bit differently. Religions are not
entirely rational constructs. Reason does play a role, though. A functioning religion does not contradict reason, but it often goes beyond it.
Religion takes rational knowledge and puts it together with sensory, emotional, and intuitive knowledge. It integrates the finds of reason with, as you put it, 'the beliefs that one finds in one's heart, the ones that were there from the beginning.'
Faith in a deity is of a piece with, and one form of, the faith that everything ultimately makes sense. It's a faith that reality exists behind all the phenomena we encounter and that these phenomena do indeed represent part of an overall unity. That's a faith scientists know well.
_________
Archer
All species are transitional.
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