Hello everyone:
Thanks for the book recommendations and interesting comments on the issue
of quality and religion. I nearly finished completely re-reading ZMM for
the first time since a teenager -- the first time I tried to re-read it I
got stuck at the very point at which Mr Pirsig was writing about getting
stuck!
In currently re-reading ZMM, similarities between it and some C.S. Lewis
writings strike me. Pirsig starts with an indefinable concept "quality",
as does Lewis in "Mere Christianity" begin with an indefinable concept of
"the difference between right and wrong (as a clue to the meaning of the
universe)".
Lewis goes on to "prove" that, the entity that allows us to distinguish
between right and wrong, is God. Would not the difference between right
and wrong be akin to the concept of quality, and the ability to be able to
differentiate between it and the lack thereof? Indeed, in the chapter of
ZMM about gumption, Pirsig declares God and Quality to be synonymous.
As for the quality of "religious experience" (to borrow William James'
phrase), wouldn't that be the relationship between the subject, and the
object of one's religous worship? So, for a Christian, the quality of
one's faith lies in one's relationship with Christ, what all the greatest
Christian philosophers have been saying all along!
G
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