Uh, no, I didn't understand it as belitteling. I think you raised a fair point in the context of this discussion. I don't think we have very good syntax yet to discuss these things.

I don't know, but I have a gut feeling the spiritual awe one gets from one religious sacrament or another and getting it through other means are the same thing.

Effectively, the way I see it, religions claim something that is universal and publicly available as under their domain. It's like a guy came and wanted to resell the air you breath back at you.

Similarly I feel drug afficionados are sometimes overselling their hobby as the one key to the mysteries of the universe.

I don't mind if someone is religious or likes to do drugs. What I don't like, is that one or another claims something that can gained by other means as belonging to their dominion.

The major religions are especially intransigent and arrogant about this in their creed - claiming things that belong to all men and women to belong only to one sect or another - thus poisoning themselves doubly by first trying to fool those outside of their creed, and then being intellectually dishonest of their own experiences.

> The one thing I am tying to validate / invalidate is weather "spiritual" as used by non religious people, is mere hacking of our delicate physical and chemical machinery.

It really is, if our minds are entirely a manifestation of the brain.

What makes "mere hacking" different from true enlightenment?

Is it just the perspective of the one who has the experience? As Tim Leary said: The caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly.

One is rational and comprehensible, the other one isn't. At least that is how I read "spiritual" and "enlightenment"