self-contained set of more or less internally consistent rules.
I guess you haven't read the bible. It is not remotely consistent with itself or with our reality.
that's even more reason to try and understand the rules of their fantasy and be capable of making arguments within then
Why can't we treat the root cause instead of symptoms? There is no god, no magic, grow up and focus on reality, kids are dying every day because adults want to pretend magic is real.
The rational/irrational boundary is not in the being able to understand and operate with a set of self-contained rules in a fantasy setting or not, it's in believing or not that said fantasy setting matches objective reality as we perceive it.
Right. Rationally, christ is not real. The bible is fiction, but people are pretending it's not. Why? Because the bible itself repeatedly claims it is not fiction, that the only path to salvation is reading and understanding incomprehensible fables. This does not happen with Lord of the Rings. People necessarily cherry-pick because the bible disagrees with itself. They follow Jesus's example of "make shit up when it suits me".