Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[wiploc]

Why doesn't theism open the door to nihilism? Theists like to claim we're supposed to comply with an objective standard that we don't make up ourselves. We don't get to vote on it. We don't have to agree with it. It doesn't have to be good for us. There doesn't have to be anything good about it.

If that isn't nihilism, what is?

And how does having this code dictated by an invisible eccentric make it "objective"?

Perhaps a definition of nihilism is in order: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.

Theists like to claim that living in the natural world would be meaningless, that the proclamations of some super-fairy are all that give life meaning.

Doesn't that open the door to nihilism? Aren't they just a hairs-breadth away from it?

The super-fairy doesn't exist, and the alleged proclamations are idiotic, contradictory, and absurd. They take way meaning more than give it.

synonyms: skepticism, negativity, cynicism, pessimism;

We're skeptical about the value of vile fantasies; they're skeptical about the value of real life.

As for pessimism, they desire a world in which most people suffer extreme torture forever. Any other worldview is optimistic by comparison.

IN PHILOSOPHY: extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence.

That's not atheism. It's nothing like atheism. It's a little like, you know, theism, which could maintain that gods are the "ultimate" reality, and that the real world is just a fantasy, a hologram, a fiction created by the gods.

Theism does in no way lead to nihilism since God would be the source of meaning and of course there would exist realities beyond the physical.

You made that up, right? How would gods be a source of meaning? If someone were so depressive that she couldn't find meaning in natural reality, how would she get meaning from an invisible eccentric?

If God does exist and he did declare a "code" it would be objective for our perspective because our individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings would not affect it.

"Objective for our perspective." I love that.

Consider my neighbor kid, Timmy. If Timmy made a code, would that be objective from the perspective of gods?

Are the gods going to feel meaningless unless they hear about Timmy's code? If not, why should it work the other way?

Isn't the claim that atheism opens the door to nihilism just one way that theists slander people they don't like?