The same etymological connection appears in "inspiration" (respiration, expiration, perspiration) though not in "exasperation". Do you ever feel the need to call yourself inspired?
You'll notice I said "
Even skipping the etymological connection", yet you latch onto it as if etymology was my argument. I believe that if you take out of context and distort what someone is saying, it is still called a strawman.
The point is that everyone who says they're "inspired", usually doesn't mean divine wooowoo, whereas the usual meaning of "spiritual" IS loaded with divine woowoo. Not as in etymology, but as in what it currently means. In fact, the #1 meaning I run into these days means believing in some woowoo New Age nonsense (or to paraphrase how the others put it, "I believe in a different kind of crazy stuff"), followed by mainstream religion "spirituality".
If "inspired" were similarly loaded, then, yes, I would look for a different word for that too. A more apt analogy would be asking whether I too claim the Holy Spirit inspires me (e.g., when I read a book on physics), and the answer is: no it does not.
The clue that it's not meant in a secular form when people charge atheists or skeptics with not being spiritual is in the very fact that they see atheism or skepticism as an obstacle to that. Their definition does include believing in some kind of woowoo that atheists or skeptics don't. That's why they think you can't do that while being an atheist or a skeptic.
Going "oh, I'm spiritual too", then proceeding to lay down a secular definition of spiritual is, like any switching word meanings in mid flight, an equivocation fallacy.
It's like saying, "oh, I'm gay too, but, erm, not in the being attracted to men kind. I mean the old definition." Who cares? If that's not what the interlocutor was asking about, it's just a red herring by way of an equivocation.
Or "I'm a libertarian, but not the Ayn Rand kind. I want socialized medicine, gun control, more welfare, mandatory paid vacations, etc, etc, etc." Not an exact quote, but that seems to have been a fair summary of Bill Maher's position when he claimed to be a libertarian. But then in effect he's not. Laying down your own definition of X doesn't make you an X too. He's just a guy who wants pot to be legal, not a libertarian.
And so it is IMHO for "spiritual" too. WTH is the point of finding another definition by which I'm spiritual too, when the one charging me with not being spiritual is meaning the woowoo definition?
And not only that is an equivocation, but that is essentially validating his claim that being spiritual (in his woowoo way!) is something positive, instead of just a crazy superstition. Instead of telling him he's crazy, I'm agreeing that his version is just as positive as my secular version.
