So I'll summarize because I think it'll be more effective than answering all of y'alls points one-by-one.
I was baptized an Eastern Orthodox Christian around 1998. I didn't believe in God then. Instead, I desperately wanted to believe. I wanted what they promised: eternal life in eternal joy. I stayed with it because my then-wife was/is Eastern Orthodox and I respected her views. They had an answer to every single theological dilemma: free will vs. determinism, why God in the OT behaved radically different from the one in the NT, slavery, etc. All of my questions about Christianity had answers. I was stunned when I learned that they bend over backwards to not judge anyone, because I was raised to judge, pretty much, in the Baptist church. Instead, they view church as a hospital where we fix ourselves and not others.
Also, Eastern Orthodoxy has been around for ~1600 years. Since the beginning. Only two other religions can make the same claim (Catholicism and Oriental Orthodoxy). That is key for me.
And even better, they don't claim exclusivity. We believe that it's possible for a Baptist, or a LDS, or an agnostic, etc, to find God and go to Heaven. We don't believe that we are automatically granted a ticket to Heaven upon baptism. Instead, we believe that all throughout our lives we are to seek our salvation in fear and trembling.
Six years ago, starting around I think November 2016, God revealed Himself to me. It was all crazy coincidences. A psychologist might call this all confirmation bias plus hallucinations. Maybe it was.
But when the Simulation Argument website went live, and after I read the Tao of Christ which was recommended to me by my spiritual father, everything clicked together. (Side note: some agnostics started converting to theism just based on the argument, and that's a fact.)
The point is, the Simulation Argument made some of them leave agnosticism and move in the direction of Christianity. Not to Christianity, mind you, but taking a step that could end up at Christianity, or Deism, or Islam, or Mormonism, or anything with a Creator-being.
That is because, I suspect, there is only one optimistic conclusion from that argument: that our shared reality was created for some kind of reason, inscrutable perhaps or perhaps even scrutable. And keep in mind that "Simulation" vs "Reality" is meaningless to us if free will exists.
Note that I'm an eternal optimist because I like it. It works for me.
What religion is the most optimistic? Well, it seems to me that eternal life in eternal joy would be. Christianity isn't the only religion that has that. The ones with multiple "gods" made no sense to me. I want to pray and worship perfection. There can be only one perfection. Two perfect "gods" (or three, ha!) made sense only if those "gods" are completely alike in essence.
Further, the best selling book of all time is the Bible. I don't think that a loving God would be hard to find. I do think that a loving God would be hard to obey, though, because we're all imperfect, and, when there is no evidence (PLEASE don't ask me for evidence; all the evidence is evidence that cannot be successfully conveyed with mere words.) This is all personal experiences after committing yourself with a baptism or something like it.
Those who give up their life for the Christian God will find it. That is what happened to me.
Baptism to me seemed like a silly ceremony. What is does, though, is force one to examine every bit of personal suffering through the lens of the religion that demands that everyone be baptized, unless it's a deathbed conversion (like the thief on the cross).
Now we are at Pascal's Wager. What bet do I want to place? Because I want to bet. If I choose the wrong religion, then that's on me, and I can live with going to Hell if God doesn't like how I evangelize or whatever.
I want to place a bet. So I placed it firmly on Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Why not? I'm happier and happier all of the time now. I am attempting to perfect myself (and that has no end; "perfection" can happen only after an infinite amount of time, it seems to me) and it's working, as measured by me and those who take the time to know me in-person (anyone in Portland, Oregon?). Virtually all of my prayers are being answered, but only if I am open to any possible answer at any possible time, because a perfect being could only answer a prayer at the perfect moment in time and that's not necessarily when we want the answer, or when we are truly open to the answer.
An answer like: transwomen ARE NOT women. Seems like everyone here but me is not willing to believe that.
Broad is the path to destruction, Jesus said, and narrow is the path to life. A narrow path to life isn't necessarily a "little world". I was on such a broad path until 2016. Fortunately I was able to turn around and follow the narrow path of (what non-fundamentalist-Christians would call) transphobia, homophobia, racism, and sexism. I'm afraid of no man, but I am deeply afraid of bad philosophies.
Lastly let me remind everyone that the map is not the territory. I may not be speaking with words that you currently understand as I do. That would be because I'm working off a different map. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is on-point here. Some people like their chains. Or I'm chained to Jesus Christ. Doesn't matter who's in chains.
So, I'm necessarily happier than any of you. I love my life and I actually do want to live forever, and I 100% believe that I will, in eternal joy. So I'm not rushed at all. I also believe that polygamy will make a return, and I just love the idea that I will have as many wives as I want. I find young women very easy to what you would call grooming. In your view, I'm a con-man, I think.
So what? I'm happier. I want to be happy more than anything else and I get to take my own sweet time to get everything I wish for. And please note that my happiness depends on my loved ones also being happy. Anyone here hear of compersion? That's what I'm about.
And if I'm wrong, then I don't wanna be right.