I appreciate the clarity with which you've articulated your understanding of religion, but I disagree with almost everything you've said. Since the disagreement is not really about facts, but rather attitude or orientation, it might be pretty hard for me get you to see it from my perspective, but I'll try.
Here's the main idea: you see a fundamental gap between science and religion that in the past simply did not exist.
> Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God.
This may be true of many people today, but it is an essentially modern understanding of God that cannot have been held by anyone before the Renaissance. Before the scientific worldview existed, there simply were no gaps for God to reside in. What did God mean to people then?
Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind[1] is a wonderful intellectual history of the West starting from the Greeks. You would probably find it interesting. It traces some of the philosophical roots of Christianity back into Greek thought, and it traces the philosophical roots of your modern worldview back into Christian thought.
And before you dismiss me as a religious weirdo, I am a lifelong atheist who has studied a lot of math and physics.
Here's the main idea: you see a fundamental gap between science and religion that in the past simply did not exist.
> Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God.
This may be true of many people today, but it is an essentially modern understanding of God that cannot have been held by anyone before the Renaissance. Before the scientific worldview existed, there simply were no gaps for God to reside in. What did God mean to people then?
Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind[1] is a wonderful intellectual history of the West starting from the Greeks. You would probably find it interesting. It traces some of the philosophical roots of Christianity back into Greek thought, and it traces the philosophical roots of your modern worldview back into Christian thought.
And before you dismiss me as a religious weirdo, I am a lifelong atheist who has studied a lot of math and physics.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Passion-Western-Mind-Understanding...