New Way of practicing Old Beliefs

[Belacqua]

Here I guess it depends on what you think of Scientology. Someone who thinks it's real will hold that he's improving his spirit. More skeptical people might well think he's a dupe who's giving away his money to unscrupulous people. 

I lean more toward the second option, but I've never really looked into Scientology.

Is that fundamentally different from any other religion?

Good point!

So let's take (temporarily, tentatively) the definition of spirituality to be "a value system which emphasizes first and foremost efforts to be more grateful, appreciative, aware of and connected to other life in the world, and humble about one's place in the world." 

Then any religion (or ideology, or political commitment) which met this definition would be spiritual. 

And we all know that sometimes religion does the opposite. It has been known to make people less connected to people unlike themselves, and prouder about their own group. So when it does those things it's unspiritual and bad. Ideologies and passionately-held commitments can have such effects. 

But I recognize that I've worked up a definition of spirituality here which is different from how many people use the word.