If I may:
Spirituality is one thread among many that runs through the human psyche. It is akin to one’s joys, one’s insecurities, one’s values, one’s memories, one’s preferences, one’s beliefs, etc.
Religion is one thread among many that runs through human society. It is an institution. It is akin to a society’s laws, a society’s politics, a society’s sciences, a society’s arts, a society’s educational systems, etc.
How do one’s preferences, values, joys, etc relate to art, politics, art, education, etc?
They are what the latter stem from.
My point is: spirituality is a personal thing, whereas religion is a social/institutional thing.
But that comes with a lot of other differences besides scope. For instance, once institutionalized, a system such as religion acquires a set of standards or rules that all adherents are expected to follow–whether or not those standards/rules are right for the individual, or speak to the individual. There becomes a lot of group think, a lot of blind conformity. Spirituality, being personal to the individual, is more often a creative endeavor and is dictated more by the individuals passions, intuition, insight, unique idiosyncrasies, etc.
By no means does this mean that the two are mutually exclusive. One can obviously practice an institutionalized religion as his or her form of spirituality, and one’s spirituality can indeed become an institutionalized religion (in fact, isn’t that how all religions start?).
Ah, the supremacy of the individual over the group-think of society.
Yeah, that’s another reason for the current popularity of spirituality. 
Phyllo … you just introduced another element of spirituality … what many refer to as “spiritual warfare” … this notion seems to dovetail with the idiom “As Above … So Below”
Most people obviously prefer to talk about the Holy Spirit … the word “Holy” meaning “good”
Plenty of empirical evidence points to a not so “Holy Spirit” … stuff like sorcery … magic and so on.
So let’s bury our heads in the sand and pretend there are neither good spirits or bad spirits. 
Gib: I subscribe to your thoughts on religion and spirituality … institutional vs individual.
Individual spirituality reinforces my belief that spirit(uality) is indigenous. Yes there is still plenty of variance in how people prefer to express their individual spirituality. I’m hopeful that some day humanity will achieve critical mass and the variability will settle into some core human values and behaviors.
For me … Phyllo is echoing the fear of anarchy … in the absence of group think. Perhaps yet another man made fear mongering tactic to encourage sheeple to stick with the flock.
Whatever is lurking out there in the future will come to pass … I’m sure there is a philosophical term for it … just don’t know it.
What empirical evidence?
The Holy Spirit isn’t a spirit - it’s not some kind of entity … it’s clear thinking … enlightenment. It’s personified because that’s how people would conceptualize these things. Similarly, satan is the personification of a concept. Similarly, God … 
What’s good about anarchy?
And the word “holy” infers good, but it means whole, as in totally comprehensive, considerate of all. The lesser spirits are more narrow minded, often ill-considered.
Holy Cow Muffins!!
A sleepless night … looked up ‘pantheism’ … learned Spinoza is considered the father of pantheism.
… and I have always thought Indigenous North American(INA) peoples were spiritual. Huh! … turns out they were pantheists. BTW … I still think of INA peoples as spiritual peoples.
NO … wait a minute … INA peoples were savages … heathens … uncivilized.
Yet theses same INA peoples … savages in the eyes of the Europeans … even put on display in the UK … practiced pantheism for milleniums before Spinoza finally wrote sufficiently convincing arguments in the 17th century to carve out a respectable chunk of the intellectual/philosophical community.
Spinoza = intellectual genius/philosopher = pantheism = savage/heathen.
So how do we reconcile this conundrum.
This morning it seems to me in Spinoza’s pantheism nothing is sacred … and with INA pantheism everything is sacred.
JSS … on this issue we are on the same page … I think 
A hierarchy of spirits … dovetails with “As above … So Below”
I still really like the graphic rendition of this notion … not so much a hierarchy … rather a distance from the source … I think Augustine suggested the same.
Phyllo … I have often thought of your comments to my posts … in a word …“niggly”
This morning I have come to understand that I owe you an apology … your comments often prompted me to … revisit … contemplate … expand … my world view … physical as well as metaphysical.
This morning I ‘see’ how true your statement really is … religion and spirituality are very anti-life.
We should put this in context … ‘life’ as understood by the vast majority of people and ‘life’ as understood by a very small minority of people. The latter ‘see’ life as seeking meaning/purpose rather than pleasure/happiness.
Is this so bad? … even though it can never be proven in a scientific sense.
For me God is in this world. Like Augustine says … God speaks to us through the beauty of nature. I don’t ‘see’ myself as completely separate from Him … rather … I only ‘see’ a rather thin ‘veil’ separating me from Him … and at times the ‘veil’ seems to be temporarily lifted.
I read Peter K’s OP " the law is the law" … he answers your question much better than I ever could
Are you trying to make being anti-life seem like a good thing?
Why would a child need to learn to think and evaluate if he/she was already able to think and make a complex decision prior to being born? And what’s the point of having a physical brain if you are able to think without it?
not so much a “good thing” … rather a natural fruit of human evolution/metamorphosis
Now you’re probing the mystery of life as well as the mystery of the brain … some argue that our brain has enormous untapped utility despite … pick a number … a million years of evolution.
What if Teillard was right concerning his Noosphere theory? … that would make our brain simply a node on a humungus main frame with some local processing power.
I would say the appeal is more the freedom to be creative and to remain true to one’s self.
In his time, Spinoza was accused of being an atheist.
I can’t really speak for Pilgrim, but the way I see this “choice” is that it is God’s choice to take a part of himself and inject it into life on this planet–into some organism.
The absence of God in this world from the point of view of an animal is illusory. As much as the advent of life on Earth might symbolize an attempted “escape” (or “exile” in Pilgrim’s words) on the part of God from Himself, it is doomed to fail. If God really is the spirit of existence (from a pantheist point of view), He cannot escape or be exiled from himself but by ceasing to exist. Yet, evolution seems to have worked insofar as it allowed these little parts of God–these animals–to forget God–what animal on this planet really knows about “God”?
Man may be the pivotal point around which the evolution of life turns and begins the long journey home. Man first conceived of “gods” as individuated dieties–represented in stone idols–in the ancient polytheistic religions (of which NAI spirituality may be a precursor). It was the creator gods that allowed for the understand of gods being “outside” the universe. Later came transcendentalism and then monotheism. From there, pantheism is only a small step away.
Science has taken an equivalent journey (albeit in only 5 hundred years)–from the Aristotelian view of there being a multitude of different kinds of things and different substances, to the reductive view of all being one substance: matter and energy (and now with E=mc^2, matter = energy).
Religion and science have converged at an interesting juncture–both fit in the modern age to capture the whole–the entirety–in a single concept–the transcendent, monolithic God on the side of religion, and the material universe of matter and energy on the side of science.
I can see what drove the scientific prong of this development: reductivism–the yearning for a all-encompassing and parsimonious singular concept to explain everything–all as fundamentally one thing. I wonder if the drive towards reductivism also determined the road taken by religion.
I’ve also often wondered if this is what “revelation” means: God finally revealing his true form to us. What if it turned out that we were looking at God the whole time? What if God introduces himself thus: I am the universe. That, to me, would mark the full and complete revolution–the turning of life away from exile and onto the path home–and man gets to be the pivot!
Where is this humongous computer and how are brains connected to it?
Philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, political leaders and so on TELL us the mysteries of life and proscribe any activities beyond their man made boundaries.
IMO that’s the point Peter K is attempting to make … he’s saying all of the above are either missing something or something in their dogma is terribly wrong.
How would rate … in terms of goodness … the current state of the plant?
How would you rate … in terms of goodness … in absolute terms rather than as compared to some past period … the current state of humanity?
Was that post an answer to something or a reference to something? 
Nooshere = mainframe
Brain connection = consciousness
That doesn’t explain anything.
for believers no explanation is necessary
for non believers no explanation is satisfactory
