All that's needed is alignment with the cosmos. A model need only be able to commute with reality to provide a useful metaphorical explanation. And then the challenge becomes decoding the metaphor to figure out the literal alignments and misfits. This is why every religious/spiritual perspective needs more investigation and experimentation, not less.

Once science is more shaped by applied category theory, this will become a common understanding.

Speaking as someone who made a joke design-your-own-religion religion that's a creative packaging of neuroscience, math, computer science, and psychology, I was very surprised to start being able to connect deeper with people carrying deeply-held religious/spiritual beliefs and to start identifying wisdom from their perspectives. This also allowed both parties to at least open up to considering each others' perspectives and sometimes shifting them.

And believing a model is literally true or metaphorically commutative isn't a necessary distinction for a model to be useful, though it does seem to impact the depth to which it can be embodied.

Turning belief on and off is a skill I see discussed way more in mystic circles than in science circles, where belief denial seems to be the norm.