Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[Dystopia]

Steve, why should we have meaning?

[pocaracas]

According to our friend the wiki:

Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the negation of one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. [...]
Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological or ontological/metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that reality does not actually exist.

So which nihilism do you mean?

Existential nihilism requires a nice definition of "objective". And yes WLC is an expert at saying that the only objective thing in the Universe is a god.
Moral nihilism seems correct, to me.
Epistemological or ontological nihilism seem a bit far fetched, but in a way... it's not entirely wrong... ultimate knowledge is not possible, but you can have knowledge of models of parts of the Universe. Reality not existing takes us into the matrix, or the brain in a vat... people tend not to go there as it's unprovable territory.

[SteveII]

So, there is no intrinsic meaning, value or purpose to anything? We have to make it up? So...the "noble lie"?

There is no lie.
It's only a lie if you deny how you obtained your ethics.

An how does an atheist obtain ethics?

[Thumpalumpacus]

People get those values from within, of course, meaning that those qualities are inherently subjective and not intrinsic.

Yes, that includes believers in deities.

So, there is no intrinsic meaning, value or purpose to anything? We have to make it up? So...the "noble lie"?

If that's what you call it, I suppose. I think of it as assuming responsibility for my own behavior, but we're quibbling words at this point.

[Silver]

An how does an atheist obtain ethics?

I personally obtain my ethics from whether or not an action harms another person. If what I do causes someone harm, it is self evident that what I am doing is wrong. I do not need a book to understand that.

When an individual cannot discern right from wrong on his own, and must have a book to tell him how to behave, then clearly he is lacking empathy much in the way that a sociopath does.

[Alex K]

There is no lie.
It's only a lie if you deny how you obtained your ethics.

An how does an atheist obtain ethics?

Are you honestly claiming that atheists cannot have ethics? That's ludicrous.

[SteveII]

Steve, why should we have meaning?

I think we all live like we all have meaning (and value and purpose). The excerpt from the paper points that out. The question is: does atheism lead to existential and ethical nihilism? It so, and an atheist reasons and acts like there is meaning, value and purpose to life, an inconsistency exists.

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An how does an atheist obtain ethics?

Are you honestly claiming that atheists cannot have ethics? That's ludicrous.

I made no claim. I am asking what is the basis for ethics consistent with your philosophy?

[Dystopia]

There is meaning you can subjectively attribute to actions and consequences, but there isn't objective grandiose meaning for human life or any other life

[TheRealJoeFish]

There is no lie.
It's only a lie if you deny how you obtained your ethics.

An how does an atheist obtain ethics?

Atheists get their ethics the same way as everyone else - by being taught, and by thinking about the ways their actions affect the world around them, and by taking into account reason and emotion, things like empathy and desire and such - except atheists don't pretend that, instead, they're 'obeying' the commands of some source of ethics on high.

Now, if we're talking about "moral nihilism" as the belief that "all morals are constructed" - that is, there's no external source of morality - I think it's also true that many atheists feel this way (I certainly do), but it doesn't follow as readily as existential nihilism. For example, there seems to be a growing movement of trying to define morality/ethics as something of an emergent property of society or even biology. One could, for example, argue that, even without an objective source of meaning in life, morality can be objectively grounded on human biology.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Existential and ethical nihilism go hand in hand. The logical progression from one to the other follows directly from the foolish abandonment of formal and final causes. Any ethical system requires people to identify essences, like that of a moral agent, based on the formal and final causes of moderate realism. Post-modern philosophy has exhaustively revealed the big gaping hole in modern alternatives to moderate realism: nominalism and conceptualism. The post-modernists have shown that only convention links signs to that which is signified. Thus there is no conceivable solution to the Problem of Universals. Without a solution to the Problem of Universals, people lack the means of concept formation needed to even form a theory of ethics. This is why Western cultures have become obsessed with issues of identity and power-dynamics.