Why Religion Matters

An urgent defense of human wisdom against an age that mistakes scientific progress for the whole of reality.

Huston Smith, the author of the classic bestseller The World's Religions, delivers a passionate, timely message: The human spirit is being suffocated by the dominant materialistic worldview of our times. Smith champions a society in which religion is once again treasured and authentically practiced as the vital source of human wisdom.

The volume contrasts the dominant materialistic worldview with traditional metaphysics, showing how ancient wisdom traditions preserve an open horizon.

• Science and Religion: Smith outlines six vital dimensions of human existence that empirical methods cannot measure, explaining why laboratory experiments cannot resolve ultimate questions of meaning.
• Religious Freedom: A penetrating legal analysis of Employment Division v. Smith demonstrates how shifting courtroom standards threatened sacred Native American rituals until an unprecedented tribal coalition petitioned Congress.
• Spiritual Life: An insightful cross-cultural framework categorizes four spiritual personality types, revealing how atheists, polytheists, monotheists, and mystics each navigate the cosmic landscape.
• Comparative Religion: Drawing upon wisdom traditions from Australian aboriginal songlines to Sufi poetry, the text shows how ancestral sacred worldviews maintain a profound sense of human belonging.