ABSTRACT
This chapter explores generic ultimism. The main advantage of simple ultimism over more detailed views is that in saying less, it is less likely to say something that is mistaken. Schellenberg overstates these advantages. More particularly, one of the things that helps to give ultimism some cognitive traction, namely its commitment to afterlife, reintroduces the problem of evil. There are number of worries that might be voiced about ultimism's cultural prospects. One objection is that generic religion is too abstract and lacking in content to permit even non-doxastic faith. One of the lessons from the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is that the human mind does not find all religious ideas equally plausible, attractive, or worth spreading. Schellenberg's claims seem interestingly analogous to Existential Theory of Mind (EToM) experiences, something that arguably counts, cognitively speaking, in its favor. Aside from being widespread, EToM experiences arguably increase subjective wellbeing, which is also presumably an important selling point.
