Spiritual or Religious?

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I have been involved in a thread regarding the reason educated people seem to have so much trouble accepting the existence of God, and thinking about it, felt the need to start this thread. I do not believe in God. I accept that it is difficult to see how the incredible balance and creativity in the universe came about, but if there is, indeed, intelligent design, I simply cannot give any credence to any of the anthropomorphic representations humans have created to depict the Creator. I have sought spiritual enlightenment in several Christian variations, a couple of eastern ones, and in the Neo-pagan path. Of them all, the Neo-pagan was the only one that I felt approached effectiveness, and even then I did not "believe" in the Goddesses and Gods of the pagan pantheon, but I saw them as useful archetypes with which one could act "as if" they exist and work with the energies that ritual and meditation could raise with that model in mind. I have no problem at all with people who believe implicitly in a Creator, or even with those who call the Creator God. What I do have real problems with is the religious path that so many people of all races and cultures seem to need to find their way to spirituality. The belief in "Holy" books and their divine origin is, to me, the absolute peak of stupidity and wishful thinking. As a highly educated person, with qualifications in, among others, Comparative Religion, and having at one point seriously considered taking Holy orders with the Anglican Church, I believe I have the knowledge and understanding to judge the evidence that archaeology, anthropology, and religious studies have put before us: that all "Holy" books are human creations, that all religious myths are symbolic, not realistic, and that all religious systems are politicised power structures with an elite leading the masses. Sheer observation also tells us that these systems tend to attract a lot of inherently evil people into their power structures, as well as, it must be admitted, some "saintly" types. So, it is not so much that educated people don't believe in God, and many educated people have been highly spiritual; it's that they tend not to believe in scriptures and religious systms. And for the spiritual ones, all the benefits that are said to come from religion come even more so from spirituality. Even ritual, which many people need, does not have to be in a religious setting. Summing up, I am saying that sirituality is valid and valuable, religion is invalid and valueless. What do we all think? Lash