Do we still need religion?

Many people are skeptical of religion.  Religious institutions are corrupt and rife with scandal and abuse.  People who self-identify as religious are, at worst, hypocritical and judgmental.  At best, they are no more moral or spiritual than anyone else.  What many religious people say about what they believe, both in the media and in person, seems irrational and unjustified.  And most troubling at all, religious people disagree amongst themselves about the content of religious truth.  They disagree about who god is, and how many gods there are.  They disagree about how to know god, and about what god wants from us.  Rather than being a platform for consensus, wherein people contribute to a shared pool of knowledge that grows and becomes more concrete over time (like science), it seems to be stagnant and divisive. 

            And yet.

            Religious belief seems to come back and back again, like interminable movie sequels wherein the same villains and heroes just keep coming back from the grave to haunt another generation.  It’s not that the kinds of ‘religion’ currently in vogue (nationalistic, science-denying, wealth-obsessed) are worth resuscitating.  If you want to get sense of what religion is really about, you would be better served by visiting a Comic-Con, rather than a far-right Christian rally.  The point is that there is a domain of human experience, desire, fulfilment that can only be expressed through language that is traditionally understood in terms of ‘mythology,’ ‘magic’ and ‘mysticism.’  The social and economic structures of the church, or the Islamic State, or of professional sports for that matter, are secondary expressions of an underlying dynamic.  To understand the dynamic, you have to dive into the data. 

            To me, there is a strong analogy between dogmatic atheists and climate-deniers.  There is a dramatic preponderance of data, from various scientific fields, all of which can be understood as evidence of man-made climate change.  But the data can be confusing.  How does a record-breaking snowstorm support the idea that the planet is getting warmer?  And what do coral reefs have to do with the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?  It is a matter of professional expertise to tell the story of how all the data makes sense- I certainly couldn’t put the pieces together in a particularly persuasive way.  Nevertheless, for someone to simply throw out or ignore all the data, simply because it seems confusing to them or because it contradicts their own financial or political interests, is reckless, if not downright vicious. 

            In a similar way, there is a preponderance of data pointing to the spiritual dimension of human consciousness.  As in the sciences, this data is not accessible to everyone equally.  There are various reasons (personal, social and economic) why some people become experts in the field, and why such experts have become rare.  But the data is there.  And if you happen to be inclined to explore it, the data is colorful, complex and varied.  In other words, it is interesting enough that one could spend many lifetimes exploring it.  There are dragons and talking snakes, mysterious friends and lovers, miracles and tragedies, dramatic victories and equally dramatic betrayals.  Yes, you may say, but these are not real.  Don’t worry about whether or not these things are real.  At least, not at first.  Just think of it data: a wealth of data about what we experience, imagine, tell stories about, dream about.  It’s data about human desire and fulfillment, communication and community, and above all, data about how the human mind works, what it actually does, and why. 

            What I want to offer here is not so much a theory of religion, but a way of understanding it that simply puts it in a different context, one that will, I hope, organize the data in a way that makes sense, especially (but not exclusively) to people with autism.  Now, people with autism are not, so far as I know, more or less religiously inclined than neurotypical people.  In fact, autists may have more reason than others to be skeptical, to the extent that they have been more less intentionally excluded from mainstream religious communities.  Nevertheless, I want to make the case that a certain kind of spirituality is not just helpful, but really necessary for authentic and healthy cognitive functioning in an intrinsically hostile (or at least radically indifferent) social and economic environment.