[MD] MoQ as religion

[Matt Kundert]

Kevin, Mark,

Mark said:
In a recent exchange between you and I you avoided addressing the absense of 
Intellectual patterns in religion.
...
Please address the absence of Intellectual patterns in religion Kevin.

Kevin said:
With all due respect Mark I didn't avoid addressing anything.  I simply let 
you have the last word.  I really have no desire to argue with you or debate 
you.

Sorry.  You win by default.

How about a nice rambling discussion?  Interested in exploring what the 
Metaphysics of Quality has to say about faith, hope, love, forgiveness or 
mercy?

Matt:
I like this answer because I think the question is extremely bad.  _And_, 
what's more, Kevin wants something that sounds very much like what Pirsig 
described as a good Zen narrative:

"Zen literature seems at times to divide into two groups of works: those 
that are about zen; and those that are zen itself, talking. The first group 
is often precise, authoritative, and highly pedigreed but lacks a certain 
warmth and settledness. The second is often inaccurate, poorly composed, 
vague at times but has a special sound which you can recognize as the real 
thing. It is the sound of someone singing a song he himself has composed and 
which no one else can ever quite imitate.
...
The best of zen masters ramble on and on without any apparent central point. 
This is caused by the slippery nature of what they are trying to convey. You 
can't read a zen discourse the way you read a detective story, trying to 
figure out the plot. There isn't any. You have to read this book like a 
giant catalog, line by line, looking for items to buy and keeping the rest 
on hand in case you might want to buy them later."  (Forward to Zen 
Environment by Marian Mountain)

As for why the question is bad, there are two simple responses.  One, if you 
define religion as a set of social static patterns, then of course there are 
no intellectual patterns.  Two, if we focus on "religious people", then of 
course they have intellectual patterns of value because no person doesn't.  
If you should argue that none of those patterns traced to religion are 
specifically _intellectual_, I would beg to differ.  It seems to me that 
religion produces just as many "independantly manipulable symbols" as 
anything else.

Matt

p.s. I waited for Kevin to answer, just like you asked Mark.

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