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Does not "faith" lead to charlatinism? Faith is belief not based on proof. It is the stock-in-trade of the snake-oil salesman and the faith healer. The power of Christianity does not stem from Jesus's wisdom, but rather from the idea that he was the son of God sent by his father to suffer for our sins and that he died and was resurrected.
Uri Geller is important to the discussion. He is an exemplar of claims of miraculous powers that have proven to be, as you say, bull. All other claims of supernatural powers have also proven to be bull. That makes the odds that the resurrection is also bull exceedingly high.
If I wanted to sell you a fanciful story, I'd say that you have to take it on faith, it can't be proven or disproven.
my post was only half the story. the half relating to this thread. the other half, which would better address your post, would probably fill an entire book.
to answer as succinctly as possible: a person who develops spiritually relies on an internal process akin to intuition to untangle truth from the world around them, books, people talking, experiences etc. charlatans selling snake-oils or bending spoons set off the bull-o-meter and get treated as such. true spirituality is not concerned with such things. in fact, i would go so far as to say that a genuinely spiritual person is more impervious to bull than the norm.
a deep understanding of your own human condition and your place in the world must be reached through introspection, meditation, analysis, reflection etc. before a person can even begin to tackle matters of the spirit which runs even deeper than all. wisdom relating to the deep motivating energies of the human psyche is the single most important asset a spiritual person has, being able to see things the way they truly are, not just the surface levels of meaning a lot of people only ever deal with; fanciful beliefs and the like can only come afterwards, and then only for a reason.
i don't see things the way you do, so you will always file me away under the airy-fairy section. true spirituality however couldn't be further from the damning perception a lot of atheists have of it.