Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?

[Mudhammam]

Just to be clear, my definition of nihilism is very broad: holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

This takes me to my third component needed to counter nihilism: significance.

Significance refers to the relationship between a signs, or signifiers, and that to which the signs refer (the signified). So when people say that life has significance, then they are essentially claiming that their being and actions are signifiers that point to something external to them.

Signs are physical and include material forms, like letters, images, and artifacts; structured events, like music and speech; or some combination of both. The meanings of the signs are what people assign to otherwise meaningless things. For example, in traffic a blinking red light means ‘stop’ only as a matter of convention. Physical things in and of themselves do not have meaning without an interpreter.

Every atheist I know assumes that the brain adequately serves as the interpreter of signs. There is a problem with this assumption. Brains are themselves sensible objects performing material processes and like all other physical things have no meaning.

Neural correlates are like abacus beads that require the interpretation of a knowing subject. The brain cannot act as the interpreter of its own physical states because that makes an empty self-referential circle. Nor can one part of the brain serve and the interpreter of another, since the first would itself require interpretation from a second, the second by a third and so on, i.e. an infinite regress. Nor can the brain, as a whole, can be broken down into smaller and smaller interpreters, each assigning meaning to lesser and lesser signs. Even the smallest sign requires an interpreter no matter how tiny. You cannot build something out of nothing.

The above is how a God or gods provide a basis for value that atheism lacks: value is contingent on [a] non-physical interpreter[s].

What an unfortunate mess of half-assed philosophical posturing. Yes, brains *are* "sensible objects performing material processes," which produce meaning. All you mean by the additional observation that brains, "like all other physical things have no meaning," is merely to admit that there is no objective meaning given to physical (or your "non-physical" processes), i.e. existential nihilism, a "problem" that is only confounded and shifted onto god or gods, not solved, by appealing to "non-physical interpreters," whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Gee wiz do I really need to prove that I'm not just making it up. I still read books...

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/449867450252193059/

[Mudhammam]

HOW can you differentiate between actual truth and any truth that isn't actual? Do you know some all-knowing oracle that filters the false from the true for you?

All-knowing oracle? No, but there is this thing called "experience" in which "language" is used to convey "objects in experience" through the use of "concepts" by which we determine their "validity" as "truth statements" about the world via analyzing their "definitions," internal consistency, and correlation to objects in said experience. Not rocket science. Just basic philosophy.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yes, brains *are* "sensible objects performing material processes," which produce meaning.

Asserted without proof.

All you mean by the additional observation that brains, "like all other physical things have no meaning," is merely to admit that there is no objective meaning given to physical (or your "non-physical" processes), i.e. existential nihilism,...

my italics. You're putting words into my mouth, ...but at least you accept that the physical cannot carry meaning.

[Mudhammam]

Yes, brains *are* "sensible objects performing material processes," which produce meaning.

Asserted without proof.

Clarification: *My* brain projects meaning on to the world. Maybe yours doesn't.

All you mean by the additional observation that brains, "like all other physical things have no meaning," is merely to admit that there is no objective meaning given to physical (or your "non-physical" processes), i.e. existential nihilism,...

my italics. You're putting words into my mouth, ...but at least you accept that the physical cannot carry meaning.

I didn't realize your "non-physical interpreters" didn't involve a process, but since you can't actually say anything constructive about their substance or functionality (probably because you have no basis for their existence), that's understandable.

[Violet]

All-knowing oracle? No, but there is this thing called "experience" in which "language" is used to convey "objects in experience" through the use of "concepts" by which we determine their "validity" as "truth statements" about the world via analyzing their "definitions," internal consistency, and correlation to objects in said experience. Not rocket science. Just basic philosophy.

Experience? Oh, you mean that subjective thing that is different for everybody and which changes over the course of everyone's life? You don't know the truth yet, then... as you've not experienced all. Wait a few years, it'll surely come to you... just like it has come to everyone else

Based on experience, theism is equally as sound an explanation as atheism... if not a better one.

There's a reason you call it "basic" philosophy.

[Anomalocaris]

Based on experience, theism is equally as sound an explanation as atheism... if not a better one.

Untrue. The experience says the explanation of theism exhibits no indication of significant nontrivial correlation, and has exhibited no indications of significant nontrivial correlation, between its predictions of undiscovered aspect of reality, and those undiscovered aspects of reality themselves. Therefore it is not an adaquate analogue of reality from which one might usefully deduce otherwise unknown things about reality. So as an explanation it is unsound.

Therefore to anyone with any degree of sophistication in using experience, experience shows theism is an unsound explanation.

[Mudhammam]

Experience? Oh, you mean that subjective thing that is different for everybody and which changes over the course of everyone's life?

Yeah, that's precisely what I mean. What the fuck else could I even possibly be talking about? (Hey, what do you know, we seem to understand each other--amazing! Wait, wait... GODDUNNIT!)

You don't know the truth yet, then... as you've not experienced all. Wait a few years, it'll surely come to you... just like it has come to everyone else

Ah, the ad hominem... the go-to card when you have nothing substantial to say. Thanks for that confession though.

Based on experience, theism is equally as sound an explanation as atheism... if not a better one.

There's a reason you call it "basic" philosophy.

[Violet]

Untrue. The experience says the explanation of theism exhibits no indication of correlation to reality because it can't predict anything which was not already known when the explanation was formulation, therefore theism is, to anyone with a reasonably sophisticated ability to process experience, unsound based on experience.

The point, Chuck... is that it *feels* true to them based on their experience, which often involves a childhood indoctrination within it.

The doubting skeptic on the other hand feels estranged by their experiences with such, and are left more humbled, or in a state prone to rejection. Truth is more... malleable, for these people. It is not static... it is not unquestioning... it is not the end all.

Not unless they're foolish enough to think that this time it'll be different... optimists are amusing

[Anomalocaris]

Experience should also have inculcate the feeling that feeling true is an inadequate criteria for assessing the truth of a proposition.