As we understood more of the world, pantheons grew smaller and smaller. There are still religions around with many gods, but their roles have drastically changed away from being banally associated with natural phenomena and towards spiritual stuff or other things that most humans can't adequately explain (yet, or because they just lack the education).
There are practically no religions around anymore that have a god whose purpose is like "this guy brings the tides" or whatever, for good reason.
Catholic saints are pretty much exactly this, “lesser gods”, just not called that.
However the norm for most of history is to find some way to ratify the two believes even if they contradict.
Ancient Jewish writers like Philo simply wrote a whole bunch of stuff about how every part of the bible is to be interpreted as some Platonic way. He was very influential on Christianity. Ironically he had basically no influence on what became modern Judaism and his interpretation were all rejected.
And this is not just between science and religion. Even within religion this is a problem, because they are simply contradictory.
Its literally possible to believe in all of the bible, because it contradicts itself. And trying to reason your way around all that nonsense requires tons of scholars coming up with elaborate explanations on why everything is actually not nonsense. Usually you have some elite set of priests who guard the interpretation.
Today, there are whole field of Christian fundamentalists apologists who have whole universities field with smart people who do nothing then trying to 'read' the bible in ways that is not contradicting even if it very clearly is.
The simply fact is, unless you view the bible purely allegorically and massively change the interpretation totally from what anybody who actually wrote the bible might have believed you can't have a modern scientific worldview and be a Christian. But at that point you can just base your worldview on Lord of the Rings or whatever you want because its your morals driving the interpretation, not the other way around.
So its easy and reasonably consistent to believe in a Prime Originator who started the universe and then just let laws of physics work, but that is very different basically all religion.
How can you go around telling people what they can and can't believe? What does it mean, in your opinion, to "be a Christian"?
> But at that point you can just base your worldview on Lord of the Rings or whatever you want because its your morals driving the interpretation, not the other way around.
You say this like it's a bad thing, it isn't, but in any case religion doesn't work that way. A Church of Tolkien hasn't been around for hundreds of years to be passed down from generation to generation.
It might be logically consistent to mock one religion or another in this manner, but it isn't kind, and it certainly isn't going to change people's minds.
For many religious people, family is the most important aspect of their lives, and for better or worse religion has woven its way into the fabric of family bonds.
I appreciate the deep and sincere regard for rationality and science that atheist viewpoints bring to the table, but I think the more evangelistic expressions fail to appreciate the wildly interesting tapestry of traditions that are the religions of the world.
People will believe whatever they want, that's never going to change. Others might feel they don't have that freedom. Why waste time trying to change minds about something as immutable as religion, of all things? Better to build up than to tear down. We're all stuck on the same planet, might as well make some friends while we're here.
