How are Dark Mtter and Consciousness different from Spirit?

[Jackalope]

Here again, I think you've missed the mark by virtue of your original premise.   Dark matter-is- a description for a set of observations.  Indirect ones, granted.  That without some x we cannot explain some y.  Spirit is not even -that-, until someone makes it so.

By the same token, someone made dark matter the explanation. As one poster mentioned, the solution might be our misunderstanding of Newtonian physics, which corrected might solve the problem that makes dark matter necessary.

I'm the one who said that. As Alex pointed out, MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) cannot explain some observations, and so-called dark matter does. It wasn't my intention to give the impression that the possibilities were weighted closely. They are not. The observational evidence supports one conclusion at this time.