Julien Haller Responds

Hi everyone! I apologize I have not posted anything since this weekend, but do not fear: I have not abandoned thee. It has been a busy week due to matters of a more mundane kind (i.e. work, doctors, yada yada yada), but I have still been working on two essays for the blog. To whet your appetite, here are the topics for each:

1) A response to economics’ claim to be a science
2) A response to William Lane Craig’s arguments in his debate with Sam Harris

Needless to say, both subjects require careful analysis and, since I do not want to give you anything half-cocked, time. I will try to finish them soon, though.

However, I am not writing this post just to make excuses, but rather because today I found myself wondering what I could offer to you, my gentle readers, during these times when I am working on larger projects and go long periods between posts. I knew it needed to be pretty darn awesome, something that will keep you warm on those long winter nights when new blog posts are nowhere to be found, and, after careful deliberation, I think I figured it out:

Napkin Thoughts!
Philosophical Filler for the Justifiably Impatient

“Napkin Thoughts” will be a new category to the blog in which I will post the shorter (paragraph at most) quips and quotes I have written throughout the years. In these posts, I will present a quote, and then try to give you context around it, such as the inspiration behind it and whether or not I think it portrays a good understanding of its subject matter.

And so, without further ado, here is your very first Napkin Thought:

“Perhaps our biological imperative to reproduce is reflective of some innate knowledge, unknowable in our thoughts, yet carved into our bones, that one day we will be reborn; but, for that to happen, fresh bodies will be needed.”

Context
I often find myself wondering why animals are so consumed by the need to reproduce. The two most often heard reasons are these:

1) It is a biological imperative coded into us
2) It is a path to immortality

Neither of these have ever satisfied me, though. Chalking it up to biological imperatives seems to be a lot of hand-waving; and animals, other than humans, do not exhibit an intellect sophisticated enough to understand “immortality.” But still, I often used them as starting points, and today’s Napkin Thought is one rapprochement I have found between the two.

In the end, do I think it is true, that we will be reborn and reproduction is just a mechanism by which we ensure that there will be bodies into which we can be reborn? Possibly . . . but, truth be told, I always look for answers that do not reach outside the boundary of our universe. So a better answer for me, when considering why animals have the imperative to reproduce, would be that, after billions of years of evolution, any species that did not reproduce would go extinct. Therefore, within the domain of survival, the call to reproduce would be an evolutionary advantage, and thus it would not only spread more broadly over all species of organisms, but it also might become more aggressive in its compulsion.