Yes, to clarify, I meant a religious experience can
only mean the experience of a religion, or an
experience based on religion, or perhaps an experience
that leads to a religion. That is it is the experience
of a cultural construct, or an experience relative to
a cultural construct. While a spiritual experience if
taken in contrast means an unmediated direct
experience of something 'external' to culture and of a
personal nature. Possibly the only kind of unmediated
experience possible, if by spirit we mean foundational
reality.
The confidence trick remark was merely a cynical
observation that I've yet to discover a religious
cultural construct that isn't about manipulating
people's genuine spiritual needs into a mytho-ethical
system for pacification and social control. :)
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