If you look at these lists of 'modern' definitions of religion, the plurality (if not the majority) of the ones from academia seem roughly aligned with the (disputed) etymology.
http://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/religion/Definitions.htm
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/defi...
E.g. the William James quote: "[Religion is] the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
That's basically another way of saying what I said, and I don't see any reason not to include scientists under that umbrella. I mean even the phrase from the paper "a quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space" sounds an awful lot like a conception of "the divine".
The word religion means to "bind back" or "yoke" [edited], i.e. to seek an understanding of the universe and our place in it.
Here you are retconing. The religio or bond/obligation refers to a monastic vow. It has nothing to do with seeking an understanding of the universe or our place in it. Therefore, the etymology of the word religion is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
I didn't realize the etymology was in dispute, so my bad. But regardless of whether religare or relegare is the etymological origin of religio, wouldn't either predate the concept of a monastic bond by centuries?
I would say his quote refers to spirituality rather than religion.
No, it doesn't. Less importantly, you mean "yoke" and not "yolk", and more importantly you are confusing the definition of a the Latin word religare from which it is believed the Latin word religio may have been derived (from which, in turn, the Middle English "religion" meaning "life under monastic vows" may have been derived) with the definition of the Modern English word "religion".
The Modern English word religion doesn't mean the same thing as Latin religare, or even Latin religio, or even the original Middle English sense of religion.