Spirituality and atheism

[bennyboy]

While these things are not literally spiritual, their rareness and their involvement of non-mundane frames of reference merits the term spiritual, IMO, since this is the word that best captures how unique they are to the normal physical processes of hitting things or looking at them under a microscope to investigate them.

And exactly how does it do that?

It doesn't, exactly.

The mind isn't black and white, nor are feelings. So we use lots of imprecise language to talk about them. This is only a problem if you want to fit subjective feeling-shaped blocks into objective science-shaped holes. Don't believe me? Suggest another word that better encapsulates the experiences that are usually referred to as spiritual. Harris can't, and I don't think you or I can, either.