Woody Allen and the Secret to Lasting Joy

The great 19th century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard spoke of three stages that one passes through on the way to spiritual maturity: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. During the aesthetic stage, a person is preoccupied with sensual pleasure, with the satisfaction of bodily desire. Food, drink, sex, comfort, and artistic beauty are the dominating concerns of this stage of life. The ordinary fellow drinking beer at the baseball game and the effete aristocrat sipping wine in... Read More

Evolution Doesn’t Select for Ethics

The second most incorrect thing people say about evolution is that it is the survival of the fittest. (The most incorrect award has to go to the claim "it doesn’t exist"). The problem with this framing is that it sets up a picture of evolution-as-craftsman, carefully scrutinizing genetic variations and selecting and nurturing the most promising variant. But evolution isn’t selecting for, it’s selecting against. Instead of survival of the fittest, it’s the persistence of the... Read More