" the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them"

I'm not sure what is meant by "academic", but if it's a synonym for science then I disagree. Watch the link below (feynman on the scientific method), a little after the 5 minute mark he talks about the problems of "vague" theories. This vagueness is where spiritual beliefs usually diverge from scientific beliefs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

But buddhists generally aren't vague, they are extremely expressive about what they are talking about. Are you refering to something specific?

I've heard a lot of Buddhists talk about mind being separate from body. If you push them on it they get very vague very quickly.

What's generally meant by the mind being separate from the body is that the idea that we control our bodies by thinking is actually an illusion. The way Buddhists know this is that in the body starts controlling itself without any input from the mind, something you can experience relatively easily from meditating. It only took me about 6 or 7 days to achieve the beginnings of this. (Scared the crap out of me, but it was insanely cool at the same time.)

This is rather vague. When you get specific it stops being spiritual. For example, I have decided I will go to the gym tonight. I haven't gone yet, so clearly my mind is aware of my decision to go the the gym before my body actually goes to the gym.

Of course, you didn't mean that. You meant something like "if I'm driving my car, and an animal runs in front of my, my body reacts before I am consciously aware of it". This is true, but I'm not sure what this has to do with spirituality. What is "spirituality"?

"What is 'spirituality'?"

The best definition I've been able to come up with is that spirituality is basically the relationships you have with yourself, with others, your work, the food you eat, your religious practices, etc. To me at least spirituality isn't especially vague, it's something that you could probe and measure (to some extent), not unlike the social graph on Facebook.

"You meant something like 'if I'm driving my car, and an animal runs in front of my, my body reacts before I am consciously aware of it'."

More like my legs started walking on their own without any conscious input from me.

"This is true, but I'm not sure what this has to do with spirituality."

The kinds of answers you give to the relationship questions I posed above are largely dependent on your worldview and how you think the universe works. After meditating you start to experience the world differently at the experiential level, and because of this how you view the universe naturally changes. And because of this your view on all those spirituality type questions I started to enumerate in my definition also changes.

I know what you mean. It's all about the underlying patterns and concepts and their relations to one another.