Someone can be a tacit nihilist without explicitly recognizing one's self as one. It's like being a nominal Christian but not really believing any of it in any practical sense.
That's what happened to me. I can remember riding on the train one day and thinking to myself about how I could still consider myself a Christian even though I did not believe in the efficacy of prayer or miracles and that God was all but absent from my thinking. At that moment I admitted to myself that in reality I was an atheist. I felt liberated.
And for 10 to 15 years, I maintained an uneasy peace with the absurdity of existence. Nevertheless, based on the intensity and earnestness of my searching for meaning within that paradigm I feel fairly confident saying that atheism leads inexorably towards nihilism, a self-defeating philosophy that can be maintained only by willfully ignoring its own irrationality. I know others disagree but I truly believe that many many atheists simply have not fully examined their own beliefs and what they necessarily entail. They are like I was, only in reverse, clinging to the idea that I was a Christian while denying everything it implied.
Of course that is just an opinion based on my own experience. I'm open to the idea that there might be godless solutions to ultimate issues. Maybe there is some way to reconcile the absence of God with rationality and significance, but I haven't seen it. Four years on AF haven't done much to persuade me otherwise. Personally, I don't think it is stubbornness on my part, since I was at one time willing to embrace atheism and am still waffling over various Christian doctrines. But really, no matter how much atheists assert that their lives have meaning and such, they really don't seem to have done the heavy lifting necessary to justify those beliefs.
That's what happened to me. I can remember riding on the train one day and thinking to myself about how I could still consider myself a Christian even though I did not believe in the efficacy of prayer or miracles and that God was all but absent from my thinking. At that moment I admitted to myself that in reality I was an atheist. I felt liberated.
And for 10 to 15 years, I maintained an uneasy peace with the absurdity of existence. Nevertheless, based on the intensity and earnestness of my searching for meaning within that paradigm I feel fairly confident saying that atheism leads inexorably towards nihilism, a self-defeating philosophy that can be maintained only by willfully ignoring its own irrationality. I know others disagree but I truly believe that many many atheists simply have not fully examined their own beliefs and what they necessarily entail. They are like I was, only in reverse, clinging to the idea that I was a Christian while denying everything it implied.
Of course that is just an opinion based on my own experience. I'm open to the idea that there might be godless solutions to ultimate issues. Maybe there is some way to reconcile the absence of God with rationality and significance, but I haven't seen it. Four years on AF haven't done much to persuade me otherwise. Personally, I don't think it is stubbornness on my part, since I was at one time willing to embrace atheism and am still waffling over various Christian doctrines. But really, no matter how much atheists assert that their lives have meaning and such, they really don't seem to have done the heavy lifting necessary to justify those beliefs.
