I think that we live in a time where our understanding of what a spirit is, is very different to what religions traditionally believed. We only think of some kind of ghostly person which might be in some kind of other dimension which science has yet to discover. But I think that the way we think of Patriarchy is actually much closer to the way that a spirit was thought of in the past. It's not exactly the same, and it lacks some aspects, but it is a much better starting point for a secular person to understand what a spirit is, rather than childhood memories of caspar the friendly ghost.