This Identifies my own feelings but it does not justify going out and joining a religion, praising or worshiping a deity or supporting those who attempt to force such behavior on the rest of us. The universe is a fundamentally mysterious reality; so leave me alone already!

Whoa, is my dad getting more agnostic?

"...that in order to explain the universe we encounter in ordinary experience, we need to posit the existence of a fundamentally mysterious reality beyond the empirical world."

Not at all. In fact to posit the existence of a reality beyond the empirical world is to posit something behind that, and then that, and then that...

The absurdity eventually forces us to get back to reality.