[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
My complaint is that the religious people touting their 
faith in a "we have something that you don't have" sort 
of way, don't really have anything that I want or that I 
think they ought to be smug about. They only seem to 
have a bunch of factual beliefs rather than anything of 
spiritual worth. Likewise, those that do have this 
something aren't smug about it at all. Smugness would 
be a clue to me that a person does not have this 
something worth seeking. Based on reading about such 
people and knowing some people who seem to be 
closer than others to what is called Enlightenment, I 
think it is possibly to feel extreme outrage and deep 
sorrow and also have a deep sense of inner peace. 
Unfortunately, the phenomenon of holding these two 
perspectives simultaneously tends to only be spoken 
about in religious terms....

Matt:
Right, and I guess I'm not seeing how faith becomes 
redeemable from this religious context (assuming, 
blandly, that whatever "religious context" refers to is 
what we want to move away from).

For instance, I take the Dalai Llama to be someone that 
does not exhibit faith, but hope.  Why?  Because I 
wouldn't take seriously his self-descriptions.  I see his 
actions as taking primacy over possible descriptions of 
"things are just as they should be," and as invalidating 
them as good descriptions of, say, where his calm 
comes from.  It is a commonplace too often forgotten 
that we ourselves are not always our own best judges.

The way I see it, it is this "faith" that leads to smugness.  
Smugness _is_ a clue, but I don't thinks this spiritual 
worth, this "something," is always best described by 
those that have it--hence the frowny face you had when 
you said, "tends to only be spoken about in religious 
terms."  And "faith," in many of its guises--particularly 
the nonobject guise gav described--seems to me to be 
what leads large segments of culture towards 
inadvertent smugness.

Actions speak louder than words and it is looking at the 
pattern exhibited between what people say and what 
they do that gives us clues as to what things we should 
keep saying.  And it is just not clear to me that we 
should keep repeating "faith" and not get everything we 
want from "hope."

I have absolutely nothing against people who wish to 
self-describe themselves as religious, or theists, or what 
have you.  I'm not an anti-theist, as many here are.  
But I'm never more suspicious of what's really going on 
in the background of our beliefs when another person 
that seems to be just great, has radically divergent 
self-descriptions.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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