According to your own definition of spirituality, Einstein was spiritual:
"“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe … We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.” -- Albert Einstein
"it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves" i.e. The universe
"and it typically involves a search for meaning in life" i.e. : "Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive." -- Albert Einstein
As a declared atheist I'm often asked to change my position to agnosticism based on an argument that 'while science certainly provides us with our best guesses, in the end we can never be 100% sure what is real and what is not'. I'm not so sure about it. Our best guesses about the Cosmos begin with Galileo and rejection of 'nature' of things. About the life with Darwin and evolution. About the mind and culture with Turing and information maybe? Anyway, religion (and spirituality for that matter) weren't especially helpful with those best guesses. I think is important to notice that.
For me being agnostic is saying: I believe in science, as you believe in God. I don't believe this way. I'm looking at the history of human ideas and cultures and drawing conclusions.
Anyway, great well- balanced answer for my atheist brother somewhat emotional post. Thank you, @echion!
I'm not sure if "religion (and spirituality for that matter) weren't especially helpful with those best guesses" in the past. You're right if you say that a lot of religions were often wrong in the past if they made guesses about the physical universe we inhabit, some times they were spot on though in that regard. Fair enough, when religion was right about our material universe it is more likely to have been because they were heavily inspired by the prominent historic (proto-) scientists of the time, and not necessarily through religious-divine revelation. As such, hard science has never been and still isn't most of the major religions forte.
But then again we can learn a lot from religion if we like to learn more about the mind of ancient men and consequently about our own inner psyche and its evolution. Often these are just ancient forms of psychology and philosophy, some of which are still very applicable and relevant today. Those who don't follow dogma can learn a lot about our current inner realities through religion (and legend, and myths, and fairytales etc.)
And then I definitely wouldn't lump religion and spirituality together. While at one point in time they were one and the same, nowadays there has grown a huge divide between those who consider themselves religious and those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. Spiritual practices like meditation have become mainstream for example, and are because of their proven scientific benefits - which are huge and lifesaving - practiced by people all over the world regardless of their religion or irreligion. I guess in this regard the ancients guessed it right after all.
“Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.” -- Carl Sagan
Worship of the Sun, ancient gods, God etc. make some sense for me too. You said that we 'can learn a lot about our current inner realities through religion (and legend, and myths, and fairytales etc.)'. I would rather say 'social realities'.
Hard science is making up some hypotheses in order to check out if ensuing predictions will be accurate. Religion is mostly organizing humans around belief in some 'higher' powers in order to check out if ensuing social order will work out (at least for the elites). I think religions are experiments just like sciences.
A lot of these social experiments succeeded for the elites and sometimes also for the masses. Our species build the biggest and most effective social structures on the planet (Harari, Sapiens). We need to be grateful, yes.
P.s. Atheism and agnosticism aren't necessarily mutually exclusive:
And ignore the Einstein was a Deist bit. Einstein was a Pantheist
Thank you very much for this video, now I know I am an agnostic atheist.