spiritual but not religious

Tweet

people often refer to themselves as being "spiritual but not religious" but i am not sure that they all mean the same thing, because my dictionary defines "spiritual" as:- sacred, religious, intellectual, mental, clever, witty, immaterial, disembodied. this is a very wide explanation of the word "spiritual" and in fact makes the saying "spiritual but not religious" a contradiction in terms when you look at the first two explanations of spiritual namely, "sacred, religious" thus my question; do people really know what they are saying when they refer to themselves as "spiritual but not religious"? I certainly do not understand it. How can you be "something" and in the same conotation you say you are not. My point being that you have to be more specific.