I always let it slide by too. Stay cool. GROG

I don't think it can mean anything. For example, it can't mean material. Like almost every other word, it has more than one meaning, but not unlimited meanings. One thing we can pretty well rely on is that it's referring to something non-material.

@skado It is the immaterial nature of spirit that bothers me too. GROG

Yay! All of those things in your comment are spiritual to me.
Not a bit of religion exists there in nature, where we can be one with the soothing or invigorating essence.
Experiences that are soothing or invigorating are not intrinsically religious.
They simply make us feel deeply good.
Beautiful photos!

@AnonySchmoose

Thank you, dear. In the photo, I had just recovered from pneumonia. Felt ecstatic to be outdoors on a beautiful day.

@AnonySchmoose I agree with you there, I often feel more 'energised' when I'm out in bush around where I lived but I don't see as a 'spiritual thing' more like my body is getting back in synch with the rhythms, etc, that are both a part of nature and our bodies.
Like most other animals, primates included, we have what is termed a Circadian Clock in our system.
It is linked somehow to the rhythms of day and night, regulating our times of sleep, activity, etc, etc, to a natural pattern.
Shift working, especially night shift, can alter those regulations, sometimes quite drastically, since night shift forces the workers to be awake when they should be sleeping and vice versa.
Imo, there is nothing remotely 'spiritual' in either nature nor the human body/being, we are just another part of the cycles of nature, nothing more, nothing less.

ezackly

"Every human is spiritual," then please define 'spiritual' and also how it can be that a 'spiritual' human can also be a low murdering, often at times multiple murder committing being, when they are 'spiritual.'

@Triphid
Like most words, spiritual has several definitions. I tend to use the ones that don't have supernatural implications. Most dictionaries include a definition of spirit as anything incorporeal, or non-material. And every human has a non-material component. Feelings and thoughts, for example, may emerge from a material substrate, but are, themselves, non-material. They are perceptual or experiential. They are events more than things. We're material AND spiritual. What we choose to do with it is another matter. People can be "poor in spirit."

@skado Okay then let us start with,
A) "People can be "poor in spirit," a terminology that has its roots way back in the earlier years of the Judaic Belief system, ergo it has religious overtones,
B) "Definitions include "spirit being incorporeal ( sorry to be pedantic here but that IS Noncorporeal, not incorporeal btw) and non-material,
i) "feelings and thoughts, etc, etc, but are, themselves non-material," well all animals have sensations/feelings of some sort or another and humans are no different except we have learned to harness them, use them to our own benefit/s and, by inventing languages, have evolved to given them names,
ii) so, according to your definition/s these words I type here are but both non-material and have emerged from a 'material substrate,' where, precisely can this 'material substrate' be found or located?,
C) "We're material and spiritual,"
i) can you show empirically tried, tested and proven evidence in favour of this ASSUMPTION you so put forward as being a FACT?

@Triphid
A) So...? Is every word or phrase that ever passed through the Bible now sullied beyond usability? Oops! There goes Western Civilization!
B) (I don't find "noncorporeal" in any of the dictionaries I use.)
i) So...?
ii) My best guess would be the brain.
C) Yep.
i) "Material" and Spiritual" are words that humans made up to describe qualities in the world they experience. We print dictionaries to document the consensus meaning of words according to common usage. There is no absolute proof of any of it. Scientists haven't found anything "material" yet - it's just a word that allows us to communicate with other humans about our experiences. I experience rocks as material. I experience feelings as non-material. Do we really need to present proof that feelings exist?

@skado A) So-called "Western Civilisation" is NOT completely the product of the Christian religion nor the bible,
B) it took me less than a minute to use a Search Engine and find 16+ Dictionary definitions for BOTH spellings of the word Non-corporeal/Noncorporeal, Does that tell you anything?,
ii) "My best guess would be the brain," simply your supposition then, ergo no evidence to support it,
C) "Yep," We living beings are evolved from matter, ergo we are material - Logic, yet it has never been shown nor proven that anything remotely resembling 'spiritual exist either within or around us,
i) " Scientist haven't found "material yet.......: In which reference/s do you use the term "material" and the searches made by these scientist that haven't found anything material yet," Are you perhaps making the implication/s that the ground upon which we walk, live and dwell IS purely a figment of the imagination or something, the Solar body upon which most of life on this planet depends is also a figment of the imagination or that the walls, floors roofs, etc, of our dwellings are merely just as imaginary?

@Triphid
A) So-called "Western Civilisation" is NOT completely the product of the Christian religion nor the bible,

I didn't say it was. I'm saying if you prohibit the use of words and phrases that were used in the Bible - for no reason other than that they were used in the Bible - then you will bring civilization as we know it to a halt. Those phrases don't belong to Christianity; they belong to humanity. They have become a part of how we communicate. They don't carry communicable disease.

B) it took me less than a minute to use a Search Engine and find 16+ Dictionary definitions for BOTH spellings of the word Non-corporeal/Noncorporeal, Does that tell you anything?,

No, it tells me nothing at all. In what ways did the definitions differ from the definition of incorporeal? Links please.

ii) "My best guess would be the brain," simply your supposition then, ergo no evidence to support it,

I think there's plenty of evidence to support it. If you'll take the same initiative you took with looking up "noncorporeal" you can find it. Shortcut: start with Phineas Gage. Where do you suppose thoughts come from if not the brain?

C) "Yep," We living beings are evolved from matter, ergo we are material - Logic, yet it has never been shown nor proven that anything remotely resembling 'spiritual exist either within or around us,

Depends completely on which dictionary definition of "spiritual" you have chosen to use. When I look up spiritual, one of the definitions is:
 "of, relating to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal."
When I look up spirit, one of the definitions is: 
"an attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action: the spirit of reform."
No proof is needed that such attitudes or principles exist; it is self-evident.

i) " Scientist haven't found "material yet.......: In which reference/s do you use the term "material" and the searches made by these scientist that haven't found anything material yet," Are you perhaps making the implication/s that the ground upon which we walk, live and dwell IS purely a figment of the imagination or something, the Solar body upon which most of life on this planet depends is also a figment of the imagination or that the walls, floors roofs, etc, of our dwellings are merely just as imaginary?

No, I'm not suggesting it's imaginary or that it doesn't behave as a solid (liquid, gas, etc.). I'm just saying that as science goes looking for the fundamental building blocks of matter what we find is tiny particles separated by vast spaces. Then we look into one of those particles and again we find even tinier particles separated by more vast spaces, and so on. Each time we think we have found the "real" building blocks of matter, only to find, a generation later, that they are made up of even smaller particles. I'm not aware of any reason to think we have yet discovered the smallest "russian doll".

But this is getting off into the weeds. My only point is that there is more than one generally accepted definition of the word spiritual. And among those accepted definitions is the one that correlates to attitude or relative emotional buoyancy. And if we choose to understand the word that way, it removes one of our excuses for thinking we are enemies.

Peace.

.

@skado Jeez Louise @Skado, after years as a nurse I'd reckon I'd know quite well that all our thoughts, et, etc, are generated in our brains, where else would they come from, our Anus perhaps?
To many the word' spiritual oft reeks of the religious connotation, i.e. holy spirit, etc, etc, and that is why I try to get you to put across a clearer and more precise explanation/definition.
However, re- your ending paragraph, I do not see other humans as 'enemies' as such UNLESS they threaten me or those I care about and I am both a humanist and a pacifist to the best of my abilities.

@Triphid
So as always, we are in perfect agreement!

I respect no one more than Sagan in these matters and I realize that Harris also uses the word positively. I just have a problem with the "spirit" in "Spirituality." I certainly experience the same feeling but personally use other words. I try not to judge those who do but I just don't like the feeling I get from that word. It's probably from personal experience with people I know that use it and which I disagreed with as they say they are not religious but carry all the trappings of being so.

@gearl When working with an inadquate vocabulary, semantics can be a treacherous path to follow. The word 'spirit' simply means 'to breathe,' and is the root of such innocuous words as 'inspire,' 'aspire,' 'expire' and 'respire.' One should not feel 'duty bound' to reject terminology that has been appropriated by religion.

I can and I will. Semicolon.

@redhog
When I look up spiritual, one of the definitions is:
"of, relating to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal."

When I look up spirit, one of the definitions is:
"an attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action: the spirit of reform."

What about this understanding of spiritual is incompatible with atheism?

I'm so glad you include time in that list. I know people who think "spiritual" simply refers to intangibles like values, attitudes, boundaries, dynamics, relationships, sheer downright plain respect for what and who is around us. One also speaks of something being done by someone "in a such & such spirit" or "spirited".

Given that by definition the speculative basis of "spirits" (plural) is well nigh indescribable, and that much of the baggage exists (or is supposed to exist) outside time, where we are unfamiliar, I think it's pointless worrying about them unless it is being weaponised against us: I like to quietly and ultra tentatively (multi) hypothesise but no more than that, and my many hypotheses wouldn't please most religious people, or spiritualists, that I know anyway.

I've got a theory that most religious people don't understand what might be meant by the many contradictory concepts of "heaven". My turn of mind isn't to maintain that something I "think" about "exists", anyway.

and that is the honest and correct response.

That's the feeling I get too. I have two ex-Mormon friends that gave up on the LDS version of the divine, but seem to hang on to a "spirit-world". It amazes me how people can be convinced that heaven exists. The answer is, they are taught as children that heaven is real. Thanks for your comment. GROG

I agree, I'm against package dealing and want everyone to go cafeteria, if they dare.

I think this is a humorous perspective. Agnostics think atheists are just arrogant agnostics, and atheists think that agnostics are just wimpy atheists."
There is a wide range of disbelief and titles, but I like 'nonbeliever'. Why? Because the supernatural does not exist and heaven is a mental construct. GROG sorry for the harangue...stay well

I like that first sentence, looking at life through the lens of religion. Yes, "colored glasses". Another attribute of the lens is that they cause double vision. GROG

@GROG My point, double or otherwise, is closer to that lenses distort in many ways. To emerge from an undesireble environment, as a mudhole for example, requires additional separation from residue before we are clean and 'in touch' optimally with the new environment. With long indoctrination particularly, the baggage carried through the portal to new understanding can still be tremendous.