This highlights the range of interpretations of “spirituality”. There is the explicitly religious kind. The “woo woo” non-religious but still metaphysical kind.
As far as I can tell, this paper is focused more on the kind of spirituality that has nothing to do with either of those. The kind that comes from the realization that for all of the scientific progress we’ve made, none of it actually explains what anything is. I think it was Roger Penrose who said something like “I’m a materialist, but dislike the word because we have no idea what material actually is”.
False dichotomies between science and spirituality are common in pop culture, probably because of the massive amount of baggage brought by untenable religious and metaphysical beliefs.
But for many scientifically minded people, “spirituality” is both an outcome of their growing depth of knowledge, and the force driving them to dig deeper.
To me, spirituality is about pausing the labeling and interpreting part of my brain, and realizing how intrinsically connected I am to the first moments of the universe. Appreciating the absolutely ridiculous improbability of my existence. In essence, leaning in to the awe and wonder experience that’s available and magnified by a growing scientific understanding.
Reducing existence to a series of increasingly more granular labels that still barely scratch the surface of what’s going on is its own form of fiction. It’s incredibly useful fiction that helps us understand and navigate ever more complex aspects of reality, but is still fundamentally just a simplified map of an indescribably complex territory.