Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?

[One Above All]

Nihilism would be the "logical" extreme of atheism if a deity were required for meaning. Since it's not, it's not.

[genkaus]

My feeling is that theism is the acknowledgement of purpose.

God gives meaning to life.

Well purpose is something I see God as answering. I looked for that answer and find it in God.

Maybe that's what we're all looking for, which would tie in with an opposite in nihilism.

Judging by your statement, your purpose and meaning is dependent on god's will - which makes it subjective. And since nihilism is absence of objective purpose or meaning, that would make your position similar to nihilism, not opposite to it.

[fr0d0]

How is it subjective? I either know Gods will it I don't.

The objective purpose is justice. That's not negotiable.

[genkaus]

I disagree. It can be wrong for me to kill someone for no good reason, and right for you to do so given appropriate impetus -- say, I'm charging you with a knife. From your viewpoint, killing a person is right at that point, because you are defending your own life.

That means that the propriety of killing is subject to the conditions pertaining at the time of the killing; it is subjective.

Point of correction - dependence on the conditions and facts on the ground makes it conditional - not subjective. Being subjective would require dependence on an entity's wishes or desires.

[Esquilax]

Judging by your statement, your purpose and meaning is dependent on god's will - which makes it subjective. And since nihilism is absence of objective purpose or meaning, that would make your position similar to nihilism, not opposite to it.

Yeah, that's the part that never gelled with me either, when apologists start bandying the word "objective" around when talking about their god; god is a subject, just like anyone else. Even if he knows everything, that doesn't prevent him from having opinions and so on that might warp his worldview, making his position no more objective than the rest of us. There's nothing in god's opinion of X, Y or Z that makes it objectively true, and I suspect that really it's just a word theists toss around to give their god a putative edge in and discussion of opinions they'd like to have.

[genkaus]

As Genkaus correctly points out, failure to find a solution to nihilism doesn’t make it false, which would be an argument from ignorance.

Come again? I don't recall doing that.

At the same time, no one cannot justify saying they have a raison d’etre (if it matters to them) without having some way to ground the meaning of their life with three basic concepts: purpose, lasting value and significance. As I see it, atheism undermines all three. And without that solid foundation, all atheists are tacit nihilists no matter how adamantly they deny it.

The keywords here being "As you see it". That is insufficient to establish your views as logical.

Does one's raison d’etre doesn't require all three - purpose, lasting value and significance - or any one of those would suffice or are there no other possibilities such as duty or obligation? Secondly, the idea of lasting value is subjective for now, since you've failed to define how long value should last or why it should exceed one's lifetime. Thirdly, and most importantly, you have to establish atheism is sufficient to undermine all three and would not require any congruent philosophy.

To establish your view as logical you have to justify these points, otherwise all of it is simply "as you see it".

To me, the truly honest atheist is one that accepts existential absurdity. When I was an atheist, I found myself able to counter the occasional moments of despair with a pleasing noble defiance of my fate, that “rage against that dark night”; the myth of Sisyphus; Zarathustra’s dancing; and all that sort of heady stuff. But there is nothing wrong with simply focusing on the mundane, just getting on with getting on, and “enjoying the ride.”

Again - "to you". For your view of an honest atheist to be accurate, you have to establish that existential absurdity is the only logical conclusion of atheism - which means establishing that every other worldview is either self-contradictory or implicitly accepts existence of a god.

One of the actual joys of atheism is defining your own purpose in life.

Not necessarily. You can be an atheist and
- believe the whole point of being a biological entity is to propagate genetic material and consider your purpose to have as many children as possible.
- believe in certain immutable laws governing conscious entities and believe your purpose to live according to those laws.
- believe you owe your parents your existence and feel obligated to allow them to define your purpose.
- believe your existence to be impossible without your society and feel obligated to accept the purpose that society has defined for you.

All of these options involve as much choice and self-defining as accepting whatever purpose you believe your god has ordained for you.

Such joy is an emotional response that doesn’t rationally counter nihilism. When someone defines purpose as that outcome towards which something is directed, then they are invoking Final Cause. Atheism, per se, does not exclude final causes, but the reduction of the world to purely efficient causes acting on material bodies does. Therefore ‘purposes’ are illusions born of viewing higher-order processes that are fully determined at lower levels of order. So while it would appear as-if intelligent agents have goals, in actuality there are no final ends and it is irrational to speak about any life having purpose.

First of all, you are confusing reductive materialism with atheism again. Atheism does not entail the belief that world is "purely efficient causes acting on material bodies".

Secondly, even that belief doesn't imply that the higher-order processes are illusory. Software is completely determined by lower-level events within the hardware - that doesn't make it an illusion. The conceptual nature of things like "purpose" or "goals" doesn't make them any less real than "atoms in motion" they are the result of. Which is why, there are final ends in actuality and it is rational to speak of life having purpose.

When people talk about a life’s purpose they usually are thinking of a higher criteria that just goal-seeking behavior and final ends.

Are they?

What they really mean is that their life counted from something, i.e. their life has, or will have, lasting value.

Vague generalization. The criteria for considering is your life "counted" is subjective. Which means "lasting value" would be subjective as well.

Value requires that someone appreciates and desires something which is valued. The value of life for the person living it, seems self-evident, since all other valuables require already having a life. But because life ends, the lasting value of a person’s life depends on their life having continuing value to those remain alive and future generations. Then the sun blows up and with it any value our lives once had. Thus at a bare minimum, for human life to have value there must be some enduring agent to whom human life is valuable.

Why would you equate value with lasting value and then lasting value with ever-lasting value?

Where one's raison d’etre is concerned, life having value to the person living it - something you regard as self-evident - should suffice. Why should that value then stretch beyond his life? Your reasoning here seems to be "that is what people generally mean when they talk about value of life" - but that is not a sufficient reason.

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We know that natural life is unjust. Taking away heaven and hell limits God to imparting justice in our natural lives, which would conflict with natural laws.

Why would it conflict with natural laws?

Yes. In my understanding, atheists operate on the premise that there is no ultimate justice, as that's the natural order of things. Reality. So an atheists morals are based upon an unfair system. The Christians morals are based upon a fair system, therefore our moral standards are different.

Wrong on three counts.
- Atheists can believe in natural justice . That is, justice is inherent in the natural order of things.
- Disbelief in any natural or ultimate justice system need not be the basis of morals. In fact, once you realize that there is no ultimate or natural system to dispense justice, you have to build a fair system if there is to be any justice in the world.
- For most of the Christians I encounter online, their morals are based on the belief that actions are irrelevant within the system (faith, not works) and infinite punishment/rewards based on finite lives. That is hardly a fair system.

There can be none; that purpose is defined by a deity, and is inherently subjective, just as any morality derived from the same source must be.

(my bolding) That seems contradictory.

Its not.

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How is it subjective? I either know Gods will it I don't.

The objective purpose is justice. That's not negotiable.

Justice, within your theology, is subject to god's will - whether you know it or not. Thus, the purpose dependent on subjective justice is likewise subjective.

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Yeah, that's the part that never gelled with me either, when apologists start bandying the word "objective" around when talking about their god; god is a subject, just like anyone else.

Its a simple fallacy of equivocation. By "objective", people mean "independent of any being's wishes, will, opinions or desires". Apologists take that to mean "independent of any human being's wishes, will, opinions or desires".

[Neo-Scholastic]

...And how are you defining your three concepts,?...

I guess you don’t read whole posts before you start spouting off.

... what is it about a god that resolves these issues? This seems to me a total non-sequitur: why must we gain those things from outside of humanity for them to be worth enough...

The question of the OP is “Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?” not “how does believe in God provide meaning.” That question would be a distraction from the original question.

... This all seems needlessly melodramatic, to me.

As per the OP we are talking about logical extremes. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about then you haven’t fully embraced your own philosophy.

...You're beginning with a premise that I don't buy, that if life is solely composed of material causes then matter is all there is. But that's a fallacy of composition, presuming that the whole must function exactly like its constituent parts.

Except you haven’t proven that giving matter a specific form is sufficient to endow a being with final cause. So the burden of proof is on you when you claim that your life has purpose to justify that belief in purpose itself.

...Just because something ends doesn't mean it has no legitimate worth. If you actually believed that you'd never see movies, or read books, or even talk to people. After all, you'll eventually forget things about them, therefore diminishing their value, right?

That’s kinda the point isn’t it? The value of a trivial but enjoyable book fades because it doesn’t make an impact on your life. Then there are other books that profoundly change how you think and feel about the world. Is life profound or trivial?

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...all atheists are tacit nihilists no matter how adamantly they deny it.

Perhaps that was your atheism. It certainly isn't mine.

Like I said, you may deny it, but that doesn’t mean that atheism isn’t actually nihilistic.

The unquestioned premise here is that all atheists are materialist reductionists.

The explicit answer is that denial of a spiritual dimension to reality leaves only the physical one. In turn, you get ontological naturalism. Whether that become material reduction or idealistic monism or something else doesn’t matter.

Death doesn't render life meaningless, that is a silly claim. You may as well argue that the period at the end of this sentence removes meaning from each and every word in it.

I didn’t say that it did. I haven’t gotten to the third part about significance yet. What I did say was that death undermines lasting value. I think that’s pretty obvious to most people except Esquilax.

[genkaus]

The question of the OP is “Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?” not “how does believe in God provide meaning.” That question would be a distraction from the original question.

As demonstrated earlier, in order to prove that nihilism is the logical extreme of atheism, you have to prove that belief in god can be the one and only reason that provides meaning. How do you expect to do that if belief in god itself is insufficient to provide meaning.

Except you haven’t proven that giving matter a specific form is sufficient to endow a being with final cause. So the burden of proof is on you when you claim that your life has purpose to justify that belief in purpose itself.

The existence of a conscious being capable of identifying function is sufficient to endow the being with final cause. That the conscious being itself is a product of matter in specific form is irrelevant.

Like I said, you may deny it, but that doesn’t mean that atheism isn’t actually nihilistic.

You haven't yet proven that it is.

The explicit answer is that denial of a spiritual dimension to reality leaves only the physical one. In turn, you get ontological naturalism. Whether that become material reduction or idealistic monism or something else doesn’t matter.

Atheism doesn't automatically deny the existence of spiritual dimension.
Also, false dichotomy - spiritual and physical dimensions aren't the only two options. There is the conceptual dimension as well.

I didn’t say that it did. I haven’t gotten to the third part about significance yet. What I did say was that death undermines lasting value. I think that’s pretty obvious to most people except Esquilax.

You are yet to establish that lasting value is significant to the meaning of life as well.

[bennyboy]

I'm sorry if I seem dense, but could someone please define nihilism for me? If it means only there's no objective purpose to life, then that doesn't really seem to be a "logical extreme," more like a statement of the obvious. And I can't imagine any atheists denying that meaning is purely subjective and largely arbitrary.

I'm probably not the best person to define it. But my reaction is similar. I would certainly agree that meaning is purely subjective. (That isn't to say you couldn't approach meaning as an objective phenomenon. But if you did I would have to say you're doing it wrong.) However I don't think it is entirely arbitrary. I think the subjective truth for many of us is fixed or at least has sufficient inertia to provide considerable stability.

It is easy to mistake that which seems arbitrarily up to you as something entirely undetermined. But I don't think we are born tabula rasa and I don't believe we respond randomly to choice. Living is an art more than a science. (Science serves the execution of that art.)

Well, it's arbitrary with the caveat that arbitrary decisions are guided, possibly deterministically, by one's genetics, development, and environment. In this context, I'd say those decisions are arbitrary which don't respond to any strong biological imperative, and which are not imposed on you by others. So Mars Bar vs. Snickers is an arbitrary choice, even though your brain and body chemistry at that given moment make your choice "inevitable." So is health food vs. junk food. But food vs. no food-- maybe not so arbitrary.

[Esquilax]

I guess you don’t read whole posts before you start spouting off.

Oh, I did. I even responded to the whole thing. But you weren't making any sense, you were just saying a bunch of vague, unconnected words, seemingly under the expectation that simply putting "atheism doesn't have..." at the beginning of those sentences would make them stick.

But I asked those questions for a reason: without a clear reference for what is and isn't sufficient reason, value etc, it's very hard for either of us to tell whether or not any given atheist viewpoint might have it. You might end up surprised by how we answer, but you're never going to get much cogent response when you won't define the terms you're playing by, other than to flatly assert that atheism doesn't have a few of the vital components.

The question of the OP is “Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?” not “how does believe in God provide meaning.” That question would be a distraction from the original question.

That's certainly true, but you were expanding upon the point that spawned the OP, and a part of that explanation was the contention that the reason why atheism leads to nihilism is because it doesn't have X, Y and Z things, which theists do because they have god. Knowing why you think that would be a useful fact to have, if we're to answer you, whether that answer is in agreement or disagreement. Perhaps we have a view of atheism you haven't considered before, that might encompass some of the things you think come from your god. Without defining your terms, we'll never know.

As per the OP we are talking about logical extremes. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about then you haven’t fully embraced your own philosophy.

Or perhaps my philosophy is different than you think it is. Maybe you need to stop being in such a rush to define everyone else's position for them.

Except you haven’t proven that giving matter a specific form is sufficient to endow a being with final cause. So the burden of proof is on you when you claim that your life has purpose to justify that belief in purpose itself.

Except that my position, as it should be, is "I don't know." There are so many things about the way we work that aren't fully understood, I'd be mad to assume one way or the other. But it's easy to envision an alternative to what you say, where constituent parts come together to transcend the individual pieces. We see it all the time. Hell, the entirety of engineering and mechanics are based on that premise.

Meanwhile, you're sitting there either demanding I hold a position that I don't, in which case you're simply wrong, or you're claiming that it is impossible for matter to scaffold itself up to something free of the exclusive dictates of matter alone, which is the actual claim that bears a burden of proof. To simply dismiss the possibility entirely because it hasn't been fully answered for is, as you quite rightly mentioned in an earlier post, an argument from ignorance.

That’s kinda the point isn’t it? The value of a trivial but enjoyable book fades because it doesn’t make an impact on your life. Then there are other books that profoundly change how you think and feel about the world. Is life profound or trivial?

Why can't it be both? And again, why the all or nothing attitude about it?