I know, I know. Sentiment such as this is not befitting a philosophy forum. The purpose of the philosophy of religion is to discuss questions regarding the nature of religion as a whole, rather than examining the problems brought forth by a particular belief system. Yet, to ignore sentiment such as this is to disavow the very purpose of the philosophy of religion.
In his book The Constant Fire, author and astrophysicist Adam Frank talks about William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience. He writes:
The experiencing of the Divine may be wholly valid, but discourse about the Divine, being intellectual and philosophical, is divergent and oftentimes confusingly fallacious. All attempts to express what is meant by the Divine are more or less misleading and more or less wrong. Why this lack of clarity? Near the end of the movie by same title, the character Lucy says: “Humans consider themselves unique, so they've rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness. 'One' is their unit of measure. But it's not. All social systems we've put into place are a mere sketch. 'One plus one equals two.' That's all we've learned. But one plus one has never equaled two. There are, in fact, no numbers and no letters. We've codified our existence to bring it down to human size, to make it comprehensible. We've created a scale so we can forget its unfathomable scale.”Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. ― William James
This perspective on religion stands in stark contrast to the idea of religion that traditional, popularized debates over science and religion focus on. Here the emphasis on solitude is crucial. It reflects James's wish to understand an elemental encounter with perceived spiritual realities. He is not interested in theological theories. As he writes, “The problem I have set myself is a hard one: … to defend . . . 'experience' against 'philosophy' as being the real backbone of religious life.” That turn from theology to experience irrevocably alters the character of the inquiry and the nature of questions James asks us to address. To begin with, the elemental encounter with life's sacred character must be distinguished from the derivative life of rote religious practice. James makes this distinction quite clearly as he separates the authentic religious experience from the “ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country.” It is experience, not institutional practice, that is primary for William James. Experience, he claims, stands alone as the root of every established religion. “Personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than . . . theology,” James writes. “Churches, when once established, live at second hand upon tradition but the founders of every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine.”
What do you make of Lucy's comments? I see it as explaining why we have "restless hearts" or a "constant fire" ever urging us God-ward.