But what If I'm looking for the truth rather than something that would make me feel good? Choice number 3 has also a few thousand choices, which god should I chose? Does anyone pick his God based on research or rather indoctrination and luck? That is the problem with religion and gods. Sure it's better to believe in god than believing everything is pointless and nothing matters. I was a nihilist for some time but then I realized that nihilism is also a form of ''religion'' because the only truth is that we simply don't know. We don't know if something happens after death or what the universe really is or why we are here, that's my point of view now and many times I look at the stars and I wonder too if there is something up there but I can't just blindly believe in things.
It sounds to me like you are doing exactly what you should be doing which is searching for truth.
In the very recent past we were all enveloped from childhood in an unquestioned and unchallenged truth structure. This is no longer possible.
The enlightenment and the rise of reason has dramatically increased the burden on man with regards to our beliefs. Now we are forced to deeply explore our faith down its foundational first principles or failing that risk being cast adrift and picked up by whatever foolish ideology or branch of nihilism we stumble across.
Blindly believing in things is not the goal or even desirable. What we need is a fully integrated system of belief and representation.
Recently I have been watching the Biblical series by Jordan Peterson.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1373864.msg30641980#msg30641980He approaches the topic in a very different manner then I did in our back and forth a few months back. It makes for very interesting material and may be helpful.
I agree, Jordan Peterson is a very smart man and his approach is definitely different than 99.9% of believers on why they believe in what they believe. For example, he does ''believe'' in evolution unlike your friend badecker and he is definitely a hardcore christian, if only every religious person was like him the world would be a better place. However asserting that morality comes from an outside source without proof of any outside source or even that it is an external source and not an internal source without any proof of either is ludicrous. I will point out that it was society and not religion or your god that determined that slavery is immoral. This would indicate that morals are a construct of society and not a greater being that can't be proven.