Etymologically speaking, spirituality is related to, well spiritus, related to soul, spirit, vital principles and so on.
Religion on the other end comes from religare, which means to bind.
Can you see the difference in meaning of this two words ? One talks about ethereal things without boundaries but the other bounds you to something…
To answer your point, spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?
> spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?
By "invisible" I doubt that you mean simply "unable to be seen with the naked eye," since there are of course many things that are only visible using tools (microscopes, telescopes, infrared cameras, etc.)
By "invisible" you might mean aspects of the world which cannot be sensed with any of our human senses using any technology at all, you have a challenge before you: proving they exist.
Perhaps by "the invisible world" you're referring to abstractions or concepts, e.g. "altruism" or "love" or "evil"? But if so, in this instance I think there must be material evidence for these things for one's belief in them to be rational.
The assertion that an immaterial thing exists, but its existence and any effect of its existence are utterly unobservable, is no different from asserting that the thing does not in fact exist.
So life is effectively purely material. One may assert that there is an unobservable unsensible immaterial reality, but this assertion is ultimately meaningless to us.
"For those who understand, No explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, No explanation is possible" Ziad K. Abdrlnour
But, I enjoy the arguments you brought forth, so let me try some more :)
>The assertion that an immaterial thing exists, but its existence and any effect of its existence are utterly unobservable, is no different from asserting that the thing does not in fact exist.
The "unobservable" part here is where we differ : I had subjective experiences that no one could ever, ever deny happened that prove, to me, that spirits exist.
Now, when I told my friends about it, they did not believe it.
Mostly because drugs were involved. I get it, I would have said the same before the event happened, but now, it totally changed me as a person.
>So life is effectively purely material. One may assert that there is an unobservable unsensible immaterial reality, but this assertion is ultimately meaningless to us.
I find funny that for the most part of humanity, your view would have been deemed incorrect. It was mostly after the so-called Enlightenment that we have globally accepted this as true, but take any being from the year 1500 and below, and bring them here, they would deem us crazy.
Are we truly more evolved than those cultures of yore ? Is our world driven by advertising, mental crisis epidemics, ultra-processed food and commoditisation of everything really gives us the right to call us more evolved, and therefore, to say that our view is more correct than the ones before ? More and more I don't think so.
But again, that's the beauty of my system : it encompasses yours. You don't have to have faith for the spirit world to engulf you, and you may give it several names, like "luck", "randomness", "coincidence", whereas my system will at least try to give it meaning, and therefore connect it to something.
Can you see the difference in meaning of this two words ? One talks about ethereal things without boundaries but the other bounds you to something…
To answer your point, spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?