Throughout life I have been fairly amenable to some kind of spirituality. Though never a Christian, as a child I liked the personality of Jesus and the biblical story. I also believe that the Christ ideal with compassion at its heart points in the right direction for any sophisticated morality.

My affinity has never been to the extent, though, of being conventionally religious, put off as I am by all the paraphernalia surrounding that kind of association. In recent years the put-off has gone further till I am now annoyed by the traditional religions and often think how unenlightened people are in the various ways they engage their spirituality.

How I view this in a broader context becomes increasingly clear. Consider pious believers for example: they seem almost like children holding out for the tooth fairy. There's a look on their face as they sing a hymn, the profound hoping against hope their prayers will have some kind of deliverance. I feel sorry for them in a way, a bit sad they are, and above all, immature. And there's the key. The world requires a mature spirituality, one that rediscovers a more appropriate mythology, one that connects better with other areas of acquired knowledge, intellectual and scientific. As I've been saying, emotional intelligence is the answer. Its absence is the great deficit at the root of many human problems.

Yet I can see why traditional religions evolved as they did. People are dealt difficult cards, cast into an indifferent universe, subject to its violence, its contradictory forces, faced with an almost infinite amount of unknowns and unknowables, the uncertainty of future events, of history and origins, unsure of everything beyond the immanent. Add to this an evolved consciousness with its heightened awareness and the knowledge that death is up ahead, don't know where or when or how but at which point everything of value will be taken away, that with death comes pain and suffering. With all that you have the makings for mental stress, emotional problems and depression.

With that it is no surprise that various kinds of alleviation were necessary and religion with all its myth-making and story-telling served the purpose. It found its footing in the suspending of disbelief where the mind and imagination are nourished by images, stories or sounds that are able to resonate in a meaningful way. It is this same capacity that gave rise to the high value of art and music down the ages. Whether such ability for entering the realm of the “numinous” is hard-wired or merely an evolutionary response to adversity is a further point. Suffice to say, almost any kind of faith or belief helps. How true that belief might be is another matter, and secondary.

But that said, it has to be recognised that in the thousands of years since the traditional religions were established, knowledge has expanded exponentially. An enormous body of intelligence has developed about ourselves, the world around and the universe beyond. In more recent times knowledge about psychological processes has emerged, how the emotions work, what is needed and not needed for healthy development. Traditional religious values which hitherto catered to the emotional life have become less relevant. Yet there is still as pressing a need as ever for managing feelings, for their appropriate nurturing and soothing, a job not done very well by identification with ancient myths. Who in all seriousness is going to accept that God creating the world in seven days is historically and factually accurate when evidence is to the contrary? It is metaphorically valid maybe but not tenable by any credible intellect.

When the biblical account is found wanting for its ontological accuracy then its moral validity comes into question too. Soon the whole edifice of mythical religion gets shaky. Before long new ideas are required, ones suited to intellectual progress. The good idea for me is an evolved emotional intelligence with an attached moral philosophy, one that would eradicate or at least reduce the downside of historical spirituality - its divisions, its absolutes, its tribalism and tendency to factions and squabbling over dogma. A new creed could do away with all that trouble while still providing the requisite psychological comforts.

So in sum: Modern day religion in a contemporary context is inadequate. But some sympathy is needed for how it came about and for its historical benefits. Something of that order is still necessary but needs to be more appropriate in light of acquired knowledge and intelligence. I think this is to be found in a proper understanding of the psychological constitution, a consequent emotional intelligence, and a moral and social philosophy that emerges from that. A proper philosophy of the human psyche would be the first moral philosophy in history that was coherent, workable, beneficial and readily acceptable across all humanity.