• I agree with the first sentence, seriously disagree with the second. The shape of the Earth is a testable hypothesis, we have the technology to just go look.

    As you go down the rabbit hole of consciousness and existence itself, with a purely rational and materialist mindset, the most reasonable and conservative hypotheses approach the descriptions of deity. Certainly the more specific claims of various religions are as you described, conspiracy theories, but the entire concept? Wholesale dismissal of the generalized God hypothesis strikes me as evidence of rationality applied incompletely, arbitrarily cut short.