Religious people seem to effortlessly navigate between two modes; reality-based, fact based thinking, and mystical spiritual religious thinking. And the latter is never refuted by the former.
For example. One often hears from the pulpit, references to Adam as the first man, and Noah, with his story.
These are accepted in the believer’s mind without ever noting or pointing out that the bible has Adam living around 4000 BC and Noah around 2000 BC. With what we know about the age of the earth, these people clearly point to a bible belief that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
I read an interesting article called “Monism and Religion” in Hitchens’ book, The Portable Atheist; article by Chapman Cohen. It states that “Every Theism involves a dualism or a pluralism, while every non-theism is… a monism.” and that the final outcome of monism view of the universe always leads to atheism. So churches will instinctively shun monism — i.e. any philosophical position that … the variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality.