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Showing posts with the label Reason

You Decide Why

Dianne, a young, attractive, aerobics instructor, told me why she saw she disagreed with views I had written about in my book” When Bad Things Happen to Good People.     “I believe nothing happens to you unless you secretly want it to,” she told me.     “Last week, for example, I was driving to work. I was stopped at a traffic light when a careless driver hit me from behind, causing major damage to my car. I said to myself, now, why did this happen to me? Then I remembered that, just two days before, my father called to tell me he was buying a new car and treating in his two-year-old Lincoln Continental. My first thought was, why doesn’t he give me the Lincoln instead? But he won’t, because I’ve got a perfectly good car. Then two days later, the car I wished I didn’t have was totaled in an accident. Are you going to tell me that was just a coincidence?”   “Diane,” I said, “Let’s accept the premise that you wanted to be rid of your car.  Did the driver ...

Animals vs Humans

A dog following his master comes to a triple fork. He takes the left, and then the dog comes back.  He then tries the center path. He races back without a sniff and finally chooses the third and final path. This is a conundrum that Pliny and Plutarch debated. Montaigne commented that the dog does not need to chase down the third pass by smell. He is figured out it must be the last and final choice. Aquinas believes that it was a fluke. The dog is not intelligent. Be careful not to attach human characteristics to animals.

Jewish Logic

Two Jews – one young, the other old – were traveling by train from Kiev to Odessa.  Neither knew the other.  The young Jew was well groomed and had lots of packages with him, including a bag overflowing with several kinds of sausage. “Are you Shapiro?” the elderly Jew asked. “Yes I am,” exclaimed the surprised young Jew, “but how did you know?  I’ve never seen you before.” “It was really quite simple,” began the old man. “Travelling on this route with so many sausages, you couldn’t possibly be going to Odessa, because it’s easy to find sausage there.  So you must be going to one of the small towns en route.  It has to be a town with a large Jewish population, since you look Jewish. That means it must be Zhmerinka. “For a young person like you to go to Zhmerinka before one of two reasons, either a marriage or funeral. Since no one has recently died in Zhmerinka, it must be for a marriage. “I know of only two forthcoming ma...

The Good

“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.”   -Harold Kushner Place your faith in the Ultimate Source (that excludes you).