Religion and the law

[Angrboda]

I would say a religious belief is the belief that one's spiritual claims are based on reality. If the argument for or against a law is based on logic and evidence, it's not based on religion, even if a religion would agree with the conclusion of the logical/empirical argument.

If the purpose of a new stop sign is to prevent traffic accidents and you can produce empirical findings that support that it will or won't, the purpose of the stop sign isn't religious. If you think every third crossroad should be a four-way stop because 3+4=7, a holy number in the eyes of Marduk, the stop sign is religious if that is the 'argument' that prevails.

The problem with that is that law tends to be aligned with morals, and morals aren't logically or empirically demonstrable. If we make empiricism our standard, then we seem to have a problem justifying morals and law at all.

(Your definition is also at one and the same time overly broad and overly narrow. It all depends on what is meant by the word 'spiritual'. Buddhism can be viewed as spiritual, but traditional Buddhist doctrine is not based on anything spiritual. Karma and rebirth are based upon dependent origination, not belief in a soul or spirit. Yet we would definitely want to include them under the rubric of religion. And the farther afield you go from mainstream religions, the more difficult it becomes to define them as being "spiritual" in any meaningful sense. The only way that could seem to be capable of being brought under control is to align "spirit" with those things relating to our existence as minds or Logos, that spirit refers to those aspects of life and mind which involve questions of meaning and purpose. But then philosophy becomes religion and we've overshot the mark.)