Reddit mentions of Myths to Live By

What you're talking about is more or less in line with a psychoanalytic / Jungian interpretation. There's a lot of history and some disagreement^1, but generally the idea is that religion was instituted to codify morality into an easy-to-digest way (ie, making up stories that teach us how to behave morally) and to give a general model of human behavior and interaction, a sort of primitive social science.

I'm coming mostly from Carl Jung (Text 1 / Text 2 / Wiki), Jacques Lacan (Text / Wiki), Joseph Campbell (Text / Wiki), and Erich Fromm (Text / Wiki), but these anthologies give a decent scope of study: Ways of Being Religious and Religion, Society and Psychoanalysis.

There's also an entire sub-genre of what amount to self-help books based on mythology, interpreting myths to teach you how to be a better person: Myths to Live By, Iron John.


^1 One of the big disagreements between Freud and Jung was the role of religion in the mind of a subject. Freud believed it was a fantasy we use to bolster our own sense of importance and impart some sense of order onto the world that isn't there. Jung believed, while that may be true of fundamentalists or the neurotic/pathological, generally speaking it was a positive thing, that it created or strengthened social bonds, that it taught us things about ourselves and humanity.

I'm a pretty well-confirmed athiest at this point. I tend to view the current manifestations of religion as following in a long tradition of mythmaking by human cultures.

With that in mind, you might look into some psychology in addition to your religious research. I'm a writer, which is how I came by Jung and Campbell and Booker -- but I think the idea of underlying patterns of thought that guide our own mythmaking is of broader use than simply helping me understand storytelling better.

I've read the following, and suggest you do as well!

Jung

The Basic Writings of CG Jung

Man and His Symbols

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

Psychology and Religion

Campbell

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The Masks of God (Vols. 1 - 3)

Myths to Live By

Booker

The Seven Basic Plots

There are a lot more, but those are the ones I'd start with. As an undergrad, I majored in English and Rhetoric, and minored in both Religion and Poetry -- this cultural storytelling stuff is important to me.

As a library science graduate student, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you can get all of these books from your local library -- and can enlist the aid of the reference desk in finding more material for your research. Believe me, there's nothing a reference worker likes more than an interesting topic -- i.e. something that doesn't involve directing people to the bathroom, or helping people find books on filing their taxes. We're trained to help with real research! Use us!

I'll start with an author whose work in comparative mythology is exceptional and deeply spiritual in a way that's very conscious of the difference between organized religion and spirituality. He's got a lot of books, some more scholarly and others much more approachable. Two examples here:

"Since lies are what the world lives on...those who can face the challenge of a truth and build their lives to accord are finally not many, but the very few"
--Joseph Campbell, [Myths to live By] (http://www.amazon.com/Myths-Live-Joseph-Campbell/dp/0140194614/)

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Next, if you really want to stretch there's a remarkable series of books created from first-hand accounts from hundreds of individuals under hypnosis to map out the nature of what might be termed our spiritual home or "life between lives" - I find this to be more credibly presented and much more consistent with the many well-documented near-death experiences that are continuously being studied by groups like NDERF and IANDS and Dr. Newton's methodology makes these books a compelling read:

Michael Newton, Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives

Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: More Case Studies of Life Between Lives

These aren't for everyone, and the idea that there is a proper place for spirituality can be hard to swallow for those who feel scarred by organized religion, but they've been helpful in my own personal journey to stay grounded while I escape a church that's obsessed with sexuality, the pursuit of money for itself above even the welfare of its members, and even the smallest perceived deviation from its accepted belief system and practices.