I was about to respond with something very similar. I grew up LDS, and while the religion is filled with contradictions, their conception of God by itself seems much more tenable than generic Christian belief. It is official doctrine that God (or "Heavenly Father") is a physical being, bound by the laws of the universe. My father-in-law, a professor at an LDS university, believes that God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Few Mormons would go that far, but it is still consistent with doctrine.
I would like to argue that there could be a more tolerant view of religion/theism here on Less Wrong. The extent to which theism is vilified here seems disproportionate to me.
It depends on the specific scenario how terrible religion is. It is easy to look at the very worst examples of religion and conclude that religion can be irrational in a terribly wrong way. However, religion can also be nearly rational. Considering that any way we view the world is an illusion to some extent. Indeed the whole point of this site is to learn ways to shed more of our illusions, not that we have no illusions.
There are the religious beliefs that contradict empirical observation and those that are independent of it...
A) Could it be rational for a person to hold beliefs that are independent of empirical observation if (a) the person concedes that they are
irrationalnot empirically based and (b) is willing to drop them if they prove to not be useful?B) Could it be rational for a person to hold unusual beliefs as a result of contradicting empirical observations?
As a least convenient world exercise, what is the most rational belief in God that you can think of?