* "Wasted" is a value judgment. Arguably anything humans do with their lives that's valuable to them isn't wasted.
* Creating narratives that provide context and serve a starting/exploration point for value judgments seems to be something humans just do (the astute might even notice the author of the comment I'm replying to is hardly immune). Religion isn't that different from the rest of the liberal arts in that respect, though the way people inhabit it arguably is (and everyone inhabits one narrative/cosmology or another).
* Given those things, it looks like you might be confusing religion with a kind of folk cosmology (as that's the easiest explanation for a flat judgment of religion as a waste of time).
* "Wasted" is a value judgment. Arguably anything humans do with their lives that's valuable to them isn't wasted.
* Creating narratives that provide context and serve a starting/exploration point for value judgments seems to be something humans just do (the astute might even notice the author of the comment I'm replying to is hardly immune). Religion isn't that different from the rest of the liberal arts in that respect, though the way people inhabit it arguably is (and everyone inhabits one narrative/cosmology or another).
* Given those things, it looks like you might be confusing religion with a kind of folk cosmology (as that's the easiest explanation for a flat judgment of religion as a waste of time).