Lax Inspiration Quotes

Presently the small of coffee began to fill the room. This was morning’s hallowed moment. In such a fragrance the perversity of the world is forgotten, and the soul is inspired with faith in the future…

Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?

Give yourself a reason to smile for no reason; the reasons may grow and grow.

L'axe du bon et du mauvais n'est plus une ligne horizontale et fixe, qui place de façon indiscutable le bien au-dessus du mal, mais une série de points flottants, dispersés, éclatés, ou les valeurs dérivent, se croisent, s'entrechoquent et se séparent, comme des atomes perdus au milieu du vide.

And they were all agreed that it was Eros who held the world together, since Love made the world go round. And the universe was thus perceived as an enormous egg, held together by Love. And this primordial egg consisted of two hemispheres, the Sky[Uranus] & the Earth[Gaea] held together by Eros[Love]& if they were not thus held together, both halves would spring apart & hell would break loose. And that was exactly what happened when it all began. Eros laxed his hold for a moment & the universe sprang apart with a Big Bang.

The first thing is to have the will; the rest is technique.

I started going to Los Angeles a lot. It was the first time I realized the vibrational power of a city. As soon as the plane would touch down at LAX, something inside of me would awaken and align. Something I was, clicked into harmonious agreement. The energy of the town excited me. I needed less sleep; I was always refreshed; my skin looked better; I was eating right; I wanted to work out. I was inspired. I have since realized the critical importance of environment. Choosing the city you live in is as important as choosing your life partner. p149

By straining every sinew, we will have a good chance of sparing them our specific problems. We might have been scared of our parents, but our children won’t have to be scared of us. We lacked material goods, but they will have plenty. But in seeking to avoid one problem, we are always at risk of generating another. Perhaps their lack of fear of us will lead them to an undisciplined and lax approach to their work. Or their material comfort will inspire ingratitude and lethargy. There are so many fresh ways for lives to go wrong that in sparing our children certain forms of misery, we are only heightening their risk of exposure to others.

The impact created by change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from L.A.X. adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff - the nose of the airplane just moves a few feet - but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart. Similarly, a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very distant destination.

Hildegard saw music as divine and she saw the divine in everything. “So sing!” she wrote. “Be not lax in celebrating. Be not lazy in the festive service of God. Be ablaze with enthusiasm. Let us live as a burning offering before the altar of God.” Wow—how many of us have ever been so excited to face the day? Hildegard was neither the first nor the last philosopher to argue that music has a very central role to play in the good life. (Examples within this book include Confucius, Aristotle, and Nietzsche.) Even if it turns out that music and God aren’t for everyone, Hildegard seems to be making a deeper point about the crucial importance of enthusiasm. Perhaps there is something ecstatically inspiring out there for each of us, something that can turn a dreary or painful life into something truly good.