The Utility of Spirituality

Let me start off by saying: there is absolutely no evidence or logical reasoning to back up any form of religion or spirituality. That being said, it would be unwise to reject these concepts outright.

I reconcile these two, seemingly contradictory, statements as follows: though there is no reason to suppose that religion or spirituality are true, there is reason to suppose that they are useful.

Reality can be a drab and dreary place sometimes. That is why movies, TV shows, novels, and video games are so popular: they offer an escape from reality into a more exciting/romantic/magical world. Religion and spirituality offer a similar kind of escape, except they go a step further. Rather than just considering an imagined world, as in fiction, in religion and spirituality we both consider an imagined world, and believe that that world is real.   

“But surely,” the skeptic might say. “It is foolishness to believe in something that we have no reason to suppose to be true.”

Actually though, it is only foolish if we place Truth as our primary value, itself a foolish thing to do. The shrewder person will place themselves as the primary value, and use Truth only as a tool in pursuit of their self-interest. If our self-interest is served by believing something that is probably not true, then too bad for the Truth: it is of no use to consider it in this instance.

This leads us to the question: is it in fact in our self-interests to believe in religion or spirituality? I would say no for religion, but most likely yes for certain kinds of spirituality.

By religion, I mean organized religion: with doctrines and churches and authorities and all that jazz. The problem with this is that it has been developed according to what best served the needs and desires of those with power over the religious institution, rather than according to what best serves the needs and desires of you yourself, as an individual. Sure, religions often offer a nice sense of community: a community that is supposed to be based on shared beliefs. However, if you desire this, you could just fake it: there’s no reason why you actually have to believe all of the religion’s doctrines in order to take advantage of a religious community.

By spirituality, I mean any concern with matters of the incorporeal, unobservable, scientifically-unreachable, spirit. Religion is a form of spirituality, but not its only form. This is because, unlike religion, spirituality does not require doctrines or churches or a community of shared belief. There could be as many forms of spirituality as there are spiritual individuals. With such an individualized spirituality, we can choose to believe in whatever we want, without concerning ourselves with what priests or Bibles have to say about it.

As such, we can choose our spiritual beliefs based on what we think would best serve our self-interest. For example, I have gotten into the habit of making major life decisions based more on my instincts and on what feels right in the moment, as opposed to basing them on a more rigorous examination of expected future outcomes for each course of action. Is this a good way of making decisions? One that will lead to a greater sum total of happiness in my life? Or am I just irrationally sacrificing my future to my present? I don’t really know: it’s impossible to say for sure.

It is in the face of such uncertainty, where injecting a bit of the false certainty of spirituality can come in handy. Perhaps my instincts and feelings are manifestations of the divine spirit in me, guiding me along my proper life path. If my choices lead to something unpleasant in the future, perhaps it is just a hurdle that I need to overcome in order to reach my ultimate self-actualization. If the unpleasantness compounds and leads to an early death, perhaps I will be richly rewarded in the afterlife for following my true path.       

Though there is no reason to believe that any of these things are true, one cannot definitively say that they are not true. The point is: why bother fretting over the future (once your choice has already been made), when you could just believe a comforting myth like this and relax? Belief in the myth provides us with comfort and assurance, and hence serves our interest better than strictly rooting ourselves to the concepts of evidence and rationality, which in this case would only create needless anxiety.

All that being said, it would behoove us to be sparing in our embrace of such myths. There is a time for myth and a time for rationality: if we wish to advance our self-interests the most effectively, we must use each of these at the correct times. Because, after all, it would be just as fanatical to totally reject rationality in favour of myths, as it would be to totally reject myths in favour of rationality.