I speak as an agnostic, but I think you have to distinguish between strict literalism / fundamentalism and religious belief more broadly. Literalism / fundamen

I speak as an agnostic, but I think you have to distinguish between strict literalism / fundamentalism and religious belief more broadly. Literalism / fundamentalism is something that's hard to believe in without willful denial of huge parts of reality. You have to believe in a young Earth and a lot of other incredibly improbable or impossible things. Details will vary by your religious belief but I'm not aware of any that don't contain total falsehoods when interpreted literally. Not all Christians or members of other religions are literalists. In fact I'd say it's probably not even the dominant position theologically. Its popularity in America probably biases many peoples' views. More philosophical forms of theism don't suffer from that problem. Theism broadly defined amounts to the idea that there is some consciousness or analogous entity or process behind the universe. The root of theism is the same as thesis and theory. It amounts to saying that the universe is or was created by something teleological or with some goal or idea in mind. This is probably an unfalsifiable idea, so it goes beyond what science an deal with, but it's not impossible to entertain rationally. Edit: I also have to point out that non-belief in God does not imply or necessitate rational beliefs. I see a ton of atheists that hold extremely irrational beliefs about all kinds of things. Atheism just says what you don't believe, not what you do.