I saw an article about faith

Context
The American Library Association has a e-mail list that's supposed to relate to intellectual freedom called IFFORUM (archives here). Because it's unmoderated, it often becomes a magnet for all kinds of political commentary. Today someone posted an excerpt from this interview with Sam Harris. There was a great deal of food for thought in the interview, (translation: I could rant about it all day, if you let me), but I was particularly struck by this exchange:

Amazon.com: In other words, you are careful to distinguish between what you term "faith" and "spirituality." In a nutshell, what is this distinction?

Harris: "Faith" is false conviction in unjustified propositions (a certain book was written by God; we will be reunited with our loved ones after death; the Creator of the universe can hear our thoughts, etc.). "Spirituality" or "mysticism" (both words are pretty terrible, but there are no good alternatives in English) refers to any process of introspection by which a person can come to realize that the feeling he calls "I" is a cognitive illusion. The core truth of mysticism is this: It is possible to experience the world without feeling like a separate "self" in the usual sense. Such a change in the character of one's experience need not become the basis for making unsupportable claims about the nature of the universe, however.

Commentary
Let's start with where I agree with Sam Harris: I, too, think there's a difference between "faith" and "spirituality." When I'm at my most cynical, I think faith is when you actually believe in something and spirituality is when you have the vague feeling that you want to/ought to believe in something, but haven't settled on anything in particular.

Thanks to my husband, Mark, I've started thinking about the distinction more rationally. Faith is still when you believe in something, or as the writer of Hebrews would have it, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1 NRSV)

Spirituality has more to do with what one believes in. I agree with Harris that it is something separate from the self, but I think he’s too anthrocentric about it, in that he views the transformation of the individual as the important component. I think the most important aspect of spirituality is learning about an entity that is separate from the self. I’ve been taught to call this entity the Holy Spirit.

At this point, Harris would be perfectly justified in crying “foul!” I’ve taken an article in which he defines spirituality as something separate from the most evil aspects of Western religion, and stuck it smack dab in the center of the enemy camp. The problem is, despite Christianity’s reputation for couching things in terms of black and white, I don’t see the duality Harris proposes. In fact, my “real” definition of spirituality is in some way related to my cynical one above. It’s that separate entity, whether we call it “God,” or “the Holy Spirit,” or “Nature,” or “the Avatar,” that prompts us to think, “maybe I ought to believe in something that’s outside my immediate experience and self-interest.” In other words, “maybe I ought to have a little faith.”

That being said, I think Harris does have some faith himself. For example, he believes that, “It is possible to experience the world without feeling like a separate ‘self’ in the usual sense.” Personally, I think that’s an unsupportable claim about the nature of the universe.

What did you see today?