“Religion” vs. the spiritual life

As usual, my mind starts brewing when reading stuff by the folks over at MindonFire.com, which usually leads me over here after making long comments over there to finish my thoughts. :). In one post, the question of the day was “What is religion?” In terms of the book we are reviewing together by Sam Harris called The End of Faith. I tried to answer that as best I could, but only briefly.
I just want to make this statement: Religion is the destroyer of the spiritual life. If anyone wants to live a thriving spiritual life, they must throw it out. It is a sinking ship – if you stay on it too long, you will die spiritually.

I first of all explain what exactly my defination of religion is so everyone is clear on what I am really saying. My best short defination of religion is that it is a faith-based worldview combined with a man-made institution whose leaders dictate how I should live my life accordingly with it.

A group of people who claim to be authorities in this religion tell you the worldview you are to have, and then give you instructions on how to live accordingly with that truth. They give you a list of things that are bad to do, and things that are good to do. In some cases, it might even be written down for you, in other cases, you have to just rely on them to tell you more and more stuff every Sunday. In my case, it was written down for me, and they called this their “doctrinal statement” which they claim to have expertly extracted from a book called the “Bible.” However, many things in the Bible are confusing, so the authorities tell you not to question things too much when discrepencies arise between their doctrinal statement and what seems to be said (or not said) in the Bible, but to consult them if you are unsure, but above all, stick to the doctrinal statement. Why? Because only the experts understand how to extract doctrine from it and you don’t.
However, a quick look around finds that many other people have similar religions because they have a different bunch of “experts” who have found a different interpretation of the Bible with a different doctrinal statement. So which group of people who claim to be authorities do you believe? The one you grew up in of course – all others are wrong… right?

Bull. Sooner or later, the thinking person is going to size up this situation and chuck the whole thing out the window. Why can I NOT question the “experts?” Who made these “authorities” in charge? Where did this “Bible” come from? Why is this particular religion’s “doctrinal statement” (dogma) absolutely right, where another church down the street has their own way they think is absolutely right? Why do people, even the “authorities” and “experts” who claim to believe this stuff, obviously live their life contrary to their own doctrinal statements and do the bad stuff they told me not to do and don’t do the good stuff they told me to do? So I reject the authorities, I throw out the doctrine, and I dismiss the experts and strike out on my own. If there is real truth in life, it’s not found in this disaster. So now that I have rejected religion, what is the alternative way to living a spiritual life?