Arguing To Survive

If naturalistic evolution is true, then our cognitive faculties have resulted from blind mechanisms like natural selection, working on sources of genetic variation such as random genetic mutation. And the ultimate purpose or function or chore of our cognitive faculties, if they have one, is survival. Survival of the individual, the species, the gene, or the genotype.

Consequently, it's unlikely our cognitive faculties produce beliefs that are true. They can only help survive. Consequently, given naturalistic evolution, the probability or our faculties' being reliable is low, even when applied to naturalistic evolution itself.

--From Alvin Plantinga

"An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism"

Perfect-Mind Questions

Someone asked me about the wisdom of searching for or being preoccupied with a perfect mind.

First, I discovered the perfect mind long ago. To question there was one seemed to assume one, or assume my embodiment of one in that self-same process, so I just gave up and realized there is a universal brick wall in any attempt to even question it.

Questioning a perfect mind does the same thing.

That question assumes a perfect mind to analyze the wisdom of my belief in it to possibily recognize it to be deficient or to be a defection, in some way and to some extent, from a perfect habit of mind.

It's the same thing, in other words. There are just as many perfect-mind assumptions behind denials of a perfect mind, as there are in the perfect-mind belief itself.

Dying to Surprise You

A man dies and suddenly finds himself at the gates of Heaven.

He immediately sees his wife and two children standing outside the gates looking at him. His wife says,

"When the doctor told us you were fading fast, we all ran home and committed suicide, just so we could surprise you here!"


From a cartoon in The New Yorker

Pessimism's Vested Interests

For most people
it would be very convenient
if God were a rascal.

When In Rome

You become what your companions are.

MYOB

If you want to make an enemy,
try to change someone.

Less Is More

Whoever lives
content with little
has everything.