from a stavesacres writeup:
Regarding the album title, Salomon remarks, “People do what they believe, and when what they believe is absolute, that belief takes complete control. I believe in gravity absolutely, so I’m controlled in such a way that I’ll do whatever its laws demand I do. The question is do I believe in God absolutely? When we wrote this record, I was going through significant personal trials. I had to ask myself whether I was going to quit or have the faith to see it through, and if I was going to see it through, would I see it through to the end no matter what? If the album has a theme, it’s a challenge to consider what in life do you consider absolute and what should that mean?”
* note, you will be bound by the laws of gravity even if you believe absolutely that it doesn’t exist. corollary: just because you believe doesn’t make it true.
actually, i should probably add that, i am in agreement that belief is very powerful, but this power on a local level does not in any have any relation to a sort of objective reality, and seems to me, to rather imply the very opposite (because each person has a different worldview, and if belief is all that matters… subjective reality leads inevitably to conflict)… but i am bothered by the primacy of existence that’s placed by objective reality when it can only be understood through perception (but can not avoid being filtered through a priori understanding). i’m rambling again. time for a nice cold glass of koolaid.