Maturity
Religious beliefs are a strange thing and cause people to act in strange ways. Otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people can have their minds turned inside out when their faith is questioned, either by a skeptic or by a scientist. A key problem with non-allegorical (i.e fundamentalist or supernatural) religious beliefs is that they generally have a static view of the world. Because the world can be seen in only one way, when seen through the religious lens, such beliefs revert the mind to an immature state where things are black and white and fixed. When the world provides evidence that goes counter to those beliefs (as it always will), instead of incorporating those new understandings, adherents instead will either twist reality to conform with their bias or they will ignore it altogether. It is, in short, a kind of insanity.
The allegorical position is one way to prevent such religious insanity while maintaining a spiritual orientation. It also has the advantage of allowing for a maturing state of mind that doesn’t have to be cordoned off from the everyday world. This is important because maturity is an aspect of the progressive perspective. By maturity, I essentially mean a state of mind that is increasingly complex, flexible, and cohesive. Non-allegorical religious beliefs tend to reduce all three. But the allegorical perspective allows for multiple points of view, a changing environment, and an ever-shifting understanding of the universe that allows for a spiritual path to be deeply integrated with the natural world.
The allegorical and progressive orientations also encourage a less vitriolic view towards out groups and even helps to break down the concept of in and out by promoting a view of connectivity. This is also a sign of maturity; the ability to grasp the reality that all beings and things are integrated parts of the natural world is both reflective of and promotes a complex, flexible, and cohesive mind.
A mature mind is a rational mind, at least in its every-day state. It is able to tolerate and absorb new information, even when that information goes counter to existing prejudices about reality. The immature mind behaves differently—it is intolerant of new ideas (especially when those ideas do not conform to religious beliefs), it attacks instead of questions, it blocks out rather than takes in, it separates and denounces when it could connect and embrace. Such a mind is provincial rather than ecumenical. It is irrational—it must be, because too often the world refuses to conform with its assumptions, and only by abandoning reason can it square beliefs with reality.
A mind that is open to and curious about the world as it is is by definition a progressive mind. Such a mind recognizes that our knowledge is imperfect, that there is always more than meets the eye, and that truth is filtered by one’s bias. This perspective is not incompatible with a spiritual path. However, there are only two basic ways to possess both: either they have to be separate and compartmentalized (resulting in reduced cohesion and flexibility) or the religious worldview has to be in harmony with the laws of the natural world as we understand them using the best tools at hand. This latter choice is, of course, one benefit of religious naturalism.
But the degradation of mature, rational minds is all too often the great cost of unbending supernatural belief or religious ideology. This world has long suffered under the yoke of such thinking, and only by promoting and developing a maturity of mind can the world escape the chains of ignorance, cruelty, and fear.
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