Well, science and religion are not competitors, they’re two different languages trying to tell the same story. There’s room in this world for both.
Coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.
For the human brain,” Edmond explained, “any answer is better than no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with ‘insufficient data,’ and so our brains invent the data – offering us, at the very least, the illusion of order – creating myriad philosophies, mythologies, and religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world.
My friends, I am not saying I know for a fact that there is no God. All I am saying is that if there is a divine force behind the universe, it is laughing hysterically at the religions we’ve created in an attempt to define it.
To permit ignorance is to empower it.
And history has proven repeatedly that lunatics will rise to power again and again on tidal waves of aggressive nationalism and intolerance, even in places where it seems utterly incomprehensible.
Love is from another realm. We cannot manufacture it on demand. Nor can we subdue it when it appears. Love is not our choice to make.
The price of greatness... is responsibility – Winston Churchill.
There is only one way to triumph over death, and that is by making our lives masterpieces.
We are now perched on a strange cusp of history, a time when the world feels like it’s been turned upside down, and nothing is quite as we imagined. But uncertainty is always a precursor to sweeping change; transformation is always preceded by upheaval and fear. I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness.
Faith does not protect you. Medicine and airbags... Those are the things that protect you. God does not protect you. Intelligence protects you. Enlightenment. Put your faith in something with tangible results. How long has it been since someone walked on water? Modern miracles belong to science... Computers, vaccines, space stations... Even the devine miracle of creation. Matter from nothing... In a lab. Who needs God? No! Science is God!
Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease – they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor.
Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. For Langdon, the meaning of these words had never felt so clear: In dangerous times, there is no sin greater than inaction.
Nothing is invented, for it’s written in nature first. Originality consists of returning to the origin.
We comfort our physical bodies in hopes our souls will follow.
Cancer is nothing more than a healthy cell that starts replicating out of control.
The art is in knowing how to ask.
Dialogue is always more important than consensus.
As the old adage goes: ‘Men plan, and God laughs.