Religion Is a Human Thing
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God has no religion, as the Indian activist, Mahatma Gandhi once said. Religions, in whatever form, represent humanity’s sincere attempt to grapple with the unknown and to understand the true nature of a dimly perceived spiritual reality—a supermaterial dimension. Religion, rather than being ordained by God, is merely a human attempt to know God.
Religions define a set of beliefs about the nature of God and the universe, but these beliefs do not necessarily represent any truth about God, partial or otherwise. And any claim that God is uniquely identified with a particular religion is merely wishful thinking. Religion is the human contemplation of spiritual reality, just as astronomy is the contemplation of the stars, and physics is the contemplation of the atom.
If science gets something wrong or discovers a greater truth, we don’t throw out science altogether—we fix it and change our thinking. And just as we don’t know everything in the study of science, so it is that God cannot be perfectly defined or understood by any religious formula, dogma, or creed.
The true essence of an infinite and eternal Creator must be far beyond the time-space boundaries of human comprehension. Nonetheless, like science, our understanding of the character of God is relatively true—it is always evolving, just as we are evolving. Religion, like science and philosophy, is the ongoing search for truth.
We cannot judge God by the regrettable actions of religionists. All organizations, whether political, economic, or religious, can be either good or bad—it’s neither fair nor logical to tar all with the same brush.
There is no reason why religion cannot be progressive in every way. A religion should eagerly pursue spiritual truth, not attempt to formally define it. It should encourage the highest moral conduct, not a submission to ritualistic behavior. And it should be an intellectual quest for advanced spiritual meanings and divine values, not a slavish adherence to fixed dogma.
A religious group should be able to enjoy the liberty of freethinking without having to become “freethinkers.”
– The Urantia Book
The fact that religion and spirituality are so prevalent in human society strongly suggests they are more than culturally determined phenomena. Indeed, if numbers lend any weight to truth, it’s more likely that the persistent and prevailing spiritual drive so evident in so many people is actually an integral and very real part of the human psyche, if not a reflection of reality itself. Religion, far from being a social aberration, appears to be quite natural and not a thing apart from the whole of human experience.
Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus.
– Karen Armstrong
True enough, some religious ideas are ignorant, superstitious, mythical, and delusional. But these defective traits are purely human shortcomings that affect all institutions, political, economic, or otherwise, not just religious ones. On the other hand, religions instill high morals, selflessness, charity, fellowship, and service—traits that are not necessarily inherent in the principles of economic or political institutions
Spiritual and Religious?
Despite the growing aversion to traditional religions, we cannot entirely divorce spirituality from the long history of religious thought any more than we can separate religion from spirituality. A religion is no more than a system of spiritual attitudes, beliefs, and practices. By definition, any spiritual creed, cult, doctrine, or philosophy is religious in nature.
While spiritual beliefs vary widely, a notable difference is whether they embrace a personal God. This raises the inevitable question of whether Universal Intellect, Cosmic Consciousness, or Supreme Mind can function without personality, as some Eastern religions imply. Could any Supreme Being do anything without first deciding what to do? And if this intelligence is volitional, conscious, and self-aware, then it must be personal.
Read: Personality, Ego, Spirit, and You
Another important distinction in religions is whether spirituality is a religion of the spirit—one that is always open to new truth, spiritual insight, and freedom of expression, or a religion of the mind—one that upholds a fixed, authoritative belief system that demands conformity without question.
Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents.
– The Urantia Book
A Religion of the Spirit
There are advantages to separating ourselves from institutional and authoritative religions. But this is true only if we can define a personal religion that completely satisfies our spiritual longings—one that sets out clear spiritual ideals, rewarding spiritual practices, and attainable spiritual goals.
In our ongoing process of spiritual discovery, it’s neither necessary nor desirable to discard all religious beliefs. In fact, most religions carry bountiful seeds of truth, even if some truths remain deeply buried in sterile doctrines. Prudent spiritualists seldom reject all religious motivation just for the sake of rejecting all religions. This would be akin to throwing out the good with the bad, the relevant with the irrelevant, and the useful with the useless.
Spiritually liberated people are free to draw the best from all religions without having to adhere to the religious authority, dogmatic principles, or prescribed rituals of any specific religion. Indeed, a religion of the spirit is not necessarily a matter of doing something—of performing the correct rituals and prayers—but of being something—being morally good, honorable, and faithful.
Spiritually motivated individuals promote positive and progressive spiritual values in their everyday lives. For all such people, religion is a personal spiritual experience, or a personal experience with a personal God—a higher Being with whom they can personally interact. It’s a religion without traditional beliefs, without preconceived notions, and without prejudice. It’s a religion of the Spirit—one that stimulates genuine spiritual progress.
The religion of the spirit leaves you forever free to follow the truth wherever the leadings of the spirit may take you.
– The Urantia Book
Do We Need Social Religion?
Despite a growing aversion to traditional religions, there is a great need around the world for socialized religion. And by that, I don’t mean another institutional or authoritative organization to tell us what to do or what to believe, but rather a simple religious philosophy that acknowledges and accepts universal spiritual goals and values, including the recognition of a Divine Source of existence and, on a planetary level, the social value of spiritual fellowship for all humanity.
A socialized religion should be greater in scope than any national identity or any particular religious doctrine because its objective is to inspire the whole of humanity to reach out for divine values—to make truth, love, goodness, and beauty the ideals of everyday life, not just for ourselves but also for our families, communities, and nations. When we are filled with the Spirit, we look for the commonalities among us, not the differences.
Traditional religions will survive as social organizations only when they begin to appeal to the most advanced spiritual ideals—ideals honestly reflected in their actions and policies. To succeed, they must emphasize understanding, tolerance, cooperation, and beneficial goals. Only through messages of love and compassion can religions ever hope to address the inner longings of those who seek true spiritual contact.
Progressive thinkers have lost interest in pointless rituals, repetitious liturgy, mechanical prayers, and sacred writings. Instead, they desire real spiritual progress by contacting a real spiritual domain and by living real spiritual lives. They yearn to extol the supreme values of living, such as improving self-control, growing in wisdom, elevating the ideals of family life, encouraging friendship, and helping neighbors. They desire to cooperate, to be good people dedicated to the loving service of their fellows.
The purpose of socialized religion cannot be to support political agendas, debate economic systems, protest climate change, or advocate social policies. No doubt these are important concerns, but they are material and social concerns, not spiritual ones.
The most important and valuable task of religion is to promote spiritual growth and divine values for the individual. When the majority of people come to revere the higher ideals of living, we will soon see politics, economics, and society change for the better. It’s the moral caliber of the people that defines the moral caliber of institutions and governments. Real change begins with the individual.
What can you do to promote world peace? “Go home and love your family.”
– Mother Teresa
This is not to say socialized religions should entirely ignore what is going on in the world. All religions should speak out against injustice, immorality, and violence whenever they occur. They should keep pace with developments in all other social institutions, not by actively participating in them or by taking political stances, but by persistently upholding universal moral values and providing spiritual guidance.
In these times of rapid social change and increasing social complexity, it’s easy to lose our moral bearings. Only a worldwide spiritual devotion to more meaningful ideals of living and a greater sense of morality can bind us together peacefully as we face a constant barrage of new social challenges.
Social and national divisions must end if we truly seek world peace. True world peace begins only when all social groups and all nations of the world begin to help one another rather than compete for dominance.
Without world peace, you can forget about all other global progress.
– Hans Rosling
Only with peace can we turn our minds to even greater things—only then can we begin to unite on a planetary scale by realizing the liberating truth that we are all spiritual brothers and sisters of One God. And by “One God,” I don’t mean a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu portrayal of God. We are all praying to the same God. We just have different ideas about the true nature of that divine Being.
We cannot impose our views on others by forcefully asserting yet another religion of authority. Instead, a worldwide social religion should promote spiritual unity for all by enabling and empowering individuals to progress in their own way, on their own path of spiritual discovery.
As long as any religion claims to be the only path to God, we will never have peace. As long as so-called religious people kill or persecute others in the name of God, opinions about religion will forever remain besmirched and darkened. Such evil cannot survive in religions that honestly promote mutual love, compassion, and understanding.
Those who sincerely try to live spiritual lives know in their hearts that the true values of life embrace qualities such as love, kindness, truth, education, service, beauty, compassion, goodness, health, respect, tolerance, and cooperation. These are spiritual values originating from the Spirit of God within all of us. And by revering these progressive ideals, we not only transform ourselves but the entire world.
Benefits of a Personal Religion
Social religion has important purposes and functions, but if a spiritual life is to be personally meaningful to any degree, religion needs to become a personal spiritual experience.
True religion resides in the individual, not an institution. It’s time to take the religious experience out of the hands of organized religions, personality cults, and fanatical factions and put it where it belongs—in the hands, hearts, and minds of average, spirit-seeking individuals. Only when religion becomes an individual, living experience that is both genuine and spontaneous, can it ever hope to outweigh purely intellectual notions about God and spirituality.
Indeed, if we accept the truth that religion is a personal spiritual experience, then there must be about 8 billion experiences on the planet today (world population 8 billion in 2025). But no matter how many unique approaches or different definitions there may be, there is only one destiny. A religion of the spirit does not require a uniform approach but rather the recognition of a universal and divine goal—the perfection of spirit and the divine embrace of an infinite and eternal Source.
There are many spiritual paths and thousands of religious beliefs, and they certainly do not agree on all points. But it would be unreasonable to dismiss any notion of God, spirituality, or the supernatural simply because we cannot reach agreement on such phenomena. It would be equally illogical to claim there is no such thing as love because psychologists cannot agree on how to define it, or that neither reason nor logic really exists because there are over 1,200 contending philosophical approaches according to Wikipedia’s List of Philosophies (2025).
A personal religion has no rules other than trying to live a righteous life—to live God’s way. Prayer is important, but spiritual living does not necessarily mean you have to go to church to pray in the pews. Meditation and contemplation are important, but this does not necessarily mean you have to meditate on a mantra or contemplate God in an isolated monastery. Neither do you need to be ordained by the church or hold an academic degree in theology to know God or live the Spirit Way.
See: Prayer—The Breath of Spirit Life
The essential thing to living a spiritual life is to deepen your insight into spiritual and divine values and, once identified, to cultivate these values within yourself—to adopt these values in your everyday life. It’s a process of making them an integral part of yourself. And you do this by recognizing in your mind and accepting in your heart all that is spiritually true, good, and beautiful.
See: Four Divine Values of a Spiritual Life
I cannot prove the existence of God to you or to anyone else. It’s impossible to formulate a logical argument that proves the existence of either a spirit domain or an Eternal Spirit, just as it’s impossible for anyone to disprove their existence. Those who claim to know beyond all doubt that there is no God, cannot possibly know. There is no objective method to either verify or dismiss the reality of spirit.
Objective methods are premised on objective reality—all those things in the outside world that, by means of the physical senses, everyone can observe and agree on (an empirical approach). But the very perception of that objective reality is a subjective (inner) experience, and only subjective experiences can validate the presence of God in our lives. Everything we know comes to us through personal experience, whether it’s intellectual knowledge, insight, experiment, or spirituality.
Subjective reality is not only real, it is really important.
– Daniel J. Siegel
No one can honestly discredit another person’s subjective experiences. If I am injured and feel pain, I cannot prove this pain to anyone, but no one can deny that I feel pain. Even if someone touches me, I feel their touch but cannot share that feeling with anyone else, not even the person who is touching me.
In the same sense, if I feel the presence of God in my life, even if I cannot prove this to anyone, I know it myself because I am experiencing it. No amount of intellectual force nor any web of sophistry could convince me otherwise. I know that I know. Only our very real personal experiences can ever validate the existence of God, regardless of what others may think or say.
Those who know God have experienced the fact of his presence; such God-knowing mortals hold in their personal experience the only positive proof of the existence of the living God which one human being can offer to another.
– The Urantia Book
