Your give-away in this passage is the phrase "and be satisfied with the answers." That may apply to you, but not to all of us. The middle road may be "a road to nowhere", but for me it hasn't ended yet.

I tend strongly to a bottom-up philosophy but am open to a possibility of an ideal realm, not of an omniscient, omnipotent God, but of gods more like those of the ancient Greeks or Norse, who may have grand designs and good intentions, but ones that are flawed in their execution.

The "Devil" may not just be "in the details"; the details may be the devil.

I can be satisfied that the dichotomy of whether "reality is top-down or bottom-up" may never be resolved, but as of now I find the bottom-up hypothesis more interesting and satisfying than the top-down hypothesis.