I'm not totally convinced objective reality exists either. This kind of existential question cannot really be answered. You presumably think, as I tend to also, that what we describe in our scientific understanding exists independently of us, and it is there to be discovered, understood, and awoken to. But we can't really know that we're not "imagining" in a similar way as your derisive description of religion. Further, if objective reality exists, it's very, very vast, and we are very small, our senses and cognition limited, and we are likely unable to comprehend it.

Really in all cases, religious and secular, we make the best guesses available to us. I think we need to be humble about all of this.