Pop spirituality loves to reject organized religion - that way, it can avoid the new atheists' attacks on the "evils" of organized faiths (read: Christianity, Judaism, Islam) without having to answer them, while still maintaining a self-created spirituality that borrows more from existentialist self-discovery underpinings mixed with a mild dose of pseudo-mysticism.
In reality, though, this approach to the spiritual life makes no sense. In fact, despite its alarming popularity (how many times has someone said to you: "Oh, I'm spiritual, just not religious. I don't want a church telling me how to go about my spirituality), this position holds virtually no intellectual merit.
More after the jump:
This is for several reasons.
People who follow this type of spirituality, if pressed, readily admit that they do not know God. They are searching for the divine, and are using experimental methods to try and find it (i.e. sampling bits and pieces from different religions), in order to find what "works." What "works" - nominally - is whatever leads them to the authentic truth. In reality, what "works" is reduced to what creates a relaxed sensation of being fully present in the current moment - and this is mistaken for real spirituality.
People, however, never want to think of themselves that way. Some may, at times, speak as though they are a relativist ("I just don't think any one religion is right"), but we all LONG for truth. If it were available, we'd take it. If someone handed us a box labeled "ultimate truth," and we were guaranteed that this weren't false advertising, we'd all open the box.
The issue, then, isn't the desire. People desire truth - or at least want to think they do - and this is enough. If they desire truth, and realize they don't have it, wandering around blind makes little sense.
This leads to the second part of the argument: an analogy.
Imagine you live in Seattle, WA. Also imagine, for this argument, that God resides in Paris, France. Why? I don't know. Perhaps He just likes the romance of the city. Perhaps He likes the food. I doesn't matter - God is a mystery and you just have to accept that.
Now you, living in Seattle, have never met God (how could you? He lives in Paris). But you've heard that this God may exist, and you decide it best to try and find Him and see for yourself. So you march outside and start walking around. Seems rational, right? You want to find someone, start looking!
But how ludicrous this is! Who would do such a thing? You'd ask someone who HAS met God WHERE they met Him. They'd say "Paris... in France, not Texas." And you'd go "Oh! Thank you," and book the next flight to France. That's the rational thing to do. Wandering around outside your home would give you next to zero chance of finding anything except the stuff you're already familiar with. Since you know God isn't in those things (as you've not yet met God), continuing to look there dances dangerously close to the definition of stupidity.
Now, at this point, someone will realize what the game is (i.e. Paris = traditional religion; Seattle = me outside of traditional religion; the person I ask = a member of traditional religion who knows God), and will point out that when we walk outside, we DON'T have someone say "Oh, God is in Paris." Or rather, we then immediately hear someone else say "NO!! He's in Tokyo." And another say "Nuh uh - He's in Botswana." And we're promptly confused. Given the level of disagreement between organized religion, doesn't it seem silly to listen to one?
The answer is three fold:
1) Aren't relativists super fond of pointing out how much the religions agree? Yet at this point, they change their tune... convenient.
2) The religions ARE different, but there are some strong common threads. Asceticism, for one. EVERY religion's spirituality tells you that if you want to find God / the divine / ultimate-truth that you have to get AWAY from your ego and self-centeredness, and that you do this by prayer (or meditation), fasting, charitable alms, and obedience to someone further along the process than you. This holds in every major religion of which I'm aware. So it isn't that one religion says "God's in Paris" and another "God's in Tacoma, WA" and you're stuck not sure whether to take a flight to France. EVERY religion says "Get out of your current continent (your ego) and cross the atlantic (ascesis) and you may find God." We all agree on the general direction that God resides in - so even if you don't want to listen to a particular religion, the alternative shouldn't be to expirement and come up with your own.
3) Even if there were a list of 25 locations that different people said they'd found God (to continue our somewhat silly analogy), it would still be the height of irrationality to start poking around Seattle to try and find Him. You'd look at the list, try to figure which one or ones seemed the most likely places for God, and you start looking there. That's the smart move.
From there - from that point - I can argue effectively that Christianity has an extremely high probability of being the "Paris" of this analogy. But at this point, organized religion (despite its warts) makes sense.
You don't try to find God on your own. You ask those who've already found Him how they did, and you disciple yourself to them.
Anything less is just irrational.
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