I should have better sense than to include a religion page, but evidently I don't. I can't think of a tactic more likely to arouse blind animosity than offending a reader's religious sense. Unless I insult your spouse, parents, or children. Politics is a subject almost as dangerous.
We humans have modeled many religions on primate social structure; we understand God as Ultimate Alpha Male. Readers who see God as female or gender-neutral may -- with my blessing -- mentally edit this text. For "Him" read "Her" or "It", etc. If your Deity has another name, substitute it where appropriate.
Religion -- like music, dance, sex, and poetry -- evades analysis, fades in harsh rational light; we do it better when we don't think about it. Read this as imperfect inquiry. If your soul's bell resonates to this sound, if your heart's feet dance to this rhythm, then bless you; enjoy! If not, then keep reading, elsewhere if not here.
Taking it on faith
Religious beliefs are unprovable. Faith is the essence of religion. Religion deals with our perception of things unseen and non-physical. We cannot by worldly logic prove or disprove existence of God or gods, Satan, angels, devils, or demons. If we posit that God has all power, then God also has power to obscure evidence of His existence. (I can't imagine why He would do this, but who except God knows God's mind?) Yet, living in the world, all we have is physical evidence and human testimony, and we know how easily humans can be deceived or deceive themselves.
Lacking hard evidence, we have faith and judgement. Often faith suggests one answer, while judgement suggests another. Faith sometimes asks that we ignore judgement, or suspend it.
Eye of the beholder
How does one reconcile Earth's multiple religions with God's one-ness and the rightness of one's own faith? Perhaps the problem is not God's nature but our perceptions of it. It may be that:
It seems a mistake to think that we understand all of God.
Autognosticism
I worked for many years as a mechanic. Mechanics deal with physical problems and physical processes; it is difficult to be both a good mechanic and a mystic. Would you take your car to a faith healer?
Living in and with the world
Religions may fail or prosper for practical not mystic reasons; societies likewise. If belief in God compels us to beneficial conduct, then it is our practical gain; if religion leads to foolishness, then we suffer. We see God's Will in life's events, but they may have mundane causes. In unsanitary ancient days, circumcised Jews probably were less prone to venereal disease than their intact neighbors; by dietary strictures, they avoided food-born pathogens. Christian nations likely have prospered not because God actively intervenes, but because Christian principles promote civilized behavior.
Enlightenment Deists held that God created the world but allows it to run by natural law. In this way they reconciled the world's physical nature -- being closely observed in the 17th and 18th centuries -- with older religious tradition. Seeking more personal comfort, some find little appeal in this picture of a remote, non-intervening God; however, it might explain His obscurity.
Paraphrasing Spider Robinson (because I'm too lazy to research an accurate quotation), "If a person who commits felonies is a felon, then God is an iron."
Absolutely
We seek absolutes. Navigating uncertain seas, we find comfort in the absoluteness -- the stability, the reliability -- of magnetic poles, north stars, and God. But over time, Earth's magnetic poles have wandered; in time, Earth's axis will point at a different star.
I distrust absolutes. How many gods do the world's people worship? How many religions do we follow? How many religions claim to be absolutely right, and how can they all be so? How much blood have we shed because we thought God's Will gave us a mandate to oppress and kill? How many crusades? How many jihads? How many pogroms? Certainty is dangerous. Our Constitution's drafters did no better act than to separate religion and worldly government.
The Good, the Bad, and the Earthly
Religion has mixed effects; it may both comfort and oppress us. On the good side, our religions may teach us humility, tolerance, and humanity; we may learn to see ourselves as part of something larger than ourselves (or our families, states or nations.) Less favorably, we may learn to prefer religious dogma over honest inquiry, mysticism over reasoned understanding, or conformal obedience over human individuality and indpendence.
We seem to need something like religion to damp our animal avarice. Can we find a religious outlook that encourages us to good conduct while appealing to rationality as well as mysticism? May we hope for spirituality that does not defer rewards into a hypothetical afterlife in an insubstantial realm, but moves us to responsibility for the world and our acts in it?
In that pursuit, we might consider these tenets:
It might look like this.
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