Religion v Spirituality

You seem to be confusing processes with physical things. If thoughts and so forth are processes occurring in a physical setting (like a brain), it makes no sense to talk of them as substances, physical or otherwise. I suspect that this error is at the root of notions of "spirit" and "soul".In a conversation recorded among Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens (you can find it on Dawkin's web site), a useful distinction came up: spiritual vs numinous. Numinous has to do with feelings such as wonder that occur to people. Such feelings are real experiences, but any connection to anything spiritual (non-material, gods, ghosts etc) has to justified separately.

(my emphasis)The point is that having an experience of this sort is not evidence that it is actually caused by anything supernatural.People often have such experiences, and they are important. It remains to be demonstrated that they are not entirely self-generated. Indeed, it has been shown that they can be induced by applying electrical fields (or magnetic, I forget which) to people's heads.ABE: (reply to 49 instead of 50 since a definition is given there)Edited by Woodsy, : No reason given.

The beauty we experience in the physical world is not enough? The amazing dance of interwoven complexities that our knowledge of the physical world reveals to us is not enough? Our relations with other humans and other living things are not enough? Our imaginations and creativity here in the physical world are not enough?You must be a greedy person indeed if all these are not enough!