The most appropriate picture of living is of a spiral of regression and progression.

The child remains in each of us, and from time to time throughout our adult life we move to and from that phase. Sometimes we may appear merely to return to a point that we, or others, have previously attained. But like the spiral, although we may have on one plane come back to where we were, on another we are at a new level.

The description of religious behaviour as merely infantile, with  the assumed consequence that it can be dismissed by those who are adults or mature, therefore needs careful examination. For religious belief and commitment may represent not  escapism by reversion to a childhood state, but a valuable and creative regression, of importance both to individuals  I and to the society or communities of which they are citizens or members