Dr. J. Budziszewski

Alvin Plantinga has made this argument.

Right.

If that's how the mind had developed, then why should we?

Our mind has developed in such a way as to promote our genes being passed on into the next generation.

It doesn't follow from that that our mind will make us believe things that are true.

Right.

And so why should one have confidence even in his theory, in Sam Harris's theory, in Darwin's theory, in anybody's theory?

It seems that that's entirely baseless.

You just pull the rug out from under yourself, which is, that was sort of where I was in those days.

I had pulled that rug out underneath and there was nothing there.

I don't think they're argued into it, or at least put it this way.

Okay, the root of the word is, N-I-H-I-L, is nothing, means nothing.

The nihilism, the nothing.

It means, um, there are different forms of nihilism.

I mean, there can be a, there can be a radical denial of moral meaning or a radical denial that we exist or, uh, or a radical denial of any kind of meaning at all, you know, but, uh, but basically it's, it's nothingness and it's a sort of an iteration of nothingness.

Uh, and, uh, um,

There are different forms of nihilism, even.

When Nietzsche found his own nihilism very, very difficult, claimed to have overcome his nihilism, although he didn't, and in the 20th century, you've got the existentialists in the mid-century, and they all anguished over this, and they were in despair.

I was sort of like that.

So, okay, you've got the despairing nihilist, but you've also got pop culture nihilists who say, okay, everything's meaningless.