We Have Had Plenty Of

Cults And Prophets Proclaiming The Imminent End Of The World Have Been With Us For Several Millennia, And It Has Been Another Sour Sort Of Fun To Ridicule Them The Morning After, When They Discover That Their Calculations Were A Little Off. But, Just As With Marxists, There Are Some Among Them Who Are Working Hard To "hasten The Inevitable," Not Merely Anticipating The End Days With Joy In Their Hearts, But Taking Political Action To Bring About The Conditions They Think Are The Prerequisites For That Occasion.

The Theoretical Fruits Of Deliberate Oversimplification Through Idealization Are Not To Be Denied... Reality In All Its Messy Particularity Is Too Complicated To Theorize About, Taken Straight. The Issue Is, Rather (since Every Idealization Is A Strategic Choice), Which Idealizations Might Really Shed Some Light... Which Will Just Land Us... Diverting Fairy Tales.

I Am Confident That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong. That Is, We No More Need To Preserve The Myth Of God In Order To Preserve A Just And Stable Society Than We Needed To Cling To The Gold Standard To Keep Our Currency Sound. It Was A Useful Crutch, But We've Outgrown It. Denmark, According To A Recent Study, Is The Sanest, Healthiest, Happiest, Most Crime-free Nation In The World, And By And Large The Danes Simply Ignore The God Issue. We Should Certainly Hope That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong, Because Belief Is Waning Fast, And The Props Are Beginning To Buckle.

Philosophers Are Never Quite Sure What They Are Talking About - About What The Issues Really Are - And So Often It Takes Them Rather A Long Time To Recognize That Someone With A Somewhat Different Approach (or Destination, Or Starting Point) Is Making A Contribution.

The Chief Trick To Making Good Mistakes Is Not To Hide Them-especially Not From Yourself.