no, personal gain is not the main point

Soon after finishing the previous post, I found myself easily anticipating one of the reactions it could provoke. Clearly I'm able to slide right into that well-worn supernatural mindset like a pair of old loafers. The reaction I imagine comes out sounding like, "Pfft. I can see what happened to you. You think that you became disillusioned, but you really were discouraged. You weren't showered with blessings and floating on a cloud, so then you retaliated by throwing your arms up and storming out. God didn't march to the beat of your drum. The cost of living a virtuous life wasn't adequately paying off, so you cut your losses. Mysterious doctrines weren't presented to you in an obvious manner that you could test through experiments. What a shame that religion wasn't simple and easy enough to fit your egocentric demands."

This reaction shows something about how religious followers approach belief: it's a matter of character  not analysis (in fact, they may advise someone to stop thinking so hard and "choose to just believe"). They're eager to shift blame from the content of the belief to the vices of the unbeliever. They're content to assume that personal gain drives people to dismiss their beliefs. 

Moreover, the flaw of greediness fits their ingrained preconceptions about everybody outside their group. Of course, they say to themselves, it's only natural for someone who's not living by the light of truth to view beliefs as a means instead of an end. Reasoning too much about the beliefs' outcomes is nothing more than fixating on what someone can get by having the beliefs. It indicates that someone is on the wrong track entirely. That's the secret of how anyone who once said they believed could go on to fail to be convinced by the beliefs' accuracy.

Unfortunately, in addition to oddly shaming the de-converted for the error of taking their beliefs' claims too seriously, this reaction misses the main point. The aim of contrasting the list of grandiose claims to the claims' tight restrictions isn't to whine about how little the claims amount to in practical terms. It's to thoroughly establish the pattern of the restrictions: each one is verrrrrrrry similar to the kinds of restrictions that would be necessary for beliefs that spring out of cognitive biases and communal/ritual reinforcement. True, the restricted claims are still about overlaps between reality and the supernatural realm...but the overlaps are so curiously subtle that someone might reasonably suppose that the overlaps aren't there at all. Or the overlaps are dependent on the lenient mindset of the believer or on the thoughts and actions of other people who conform to the beliefs—thereby making the beliefs real through human rather than divine intervention. 

The actual observed fulfillments of the amazing claims fall short because they don't provide objective signs of the supernatural, not because they're minor ("thank you for a close parking space, ruler of the cosmos"). A supernatural realm of wondrous claims that merely touches ordinary life in ordinary ways is hard to distinguish from, well, ordinary religions that have been created by humanity for millennia. Some have placed greater emphasis on what the religion supposedly does for you, and some have placed greater emphasis on what you must do without expecting a lot in return. Neither strategy successfully stands up to scrutiny.