(August 5, 2019 at 12:45 pm)Alan V Wrote:(August 5, 2019 at 10:37 am)Acrobat Wrote: That really depends on how you see reality, as an existential nihilist, or as someone who sees it as endowed with an intrinsic purpose of some sort of the other. In the latter reality looks something like a novel, a story, in which we are both it's characters and readers. It's from that nature of this novel, that they attempt to derive the nature of it's author. If we say this reality possess something like an objective good, that we ought to be, one might say this authors cares about Goodness, or is Goodness itself.
I'm an atheist who is neither an existentialist or a nihilist, which is why I pointed out the false dichotomy.
Existential nihilism, is just a rejection of intrinsic meaning, not relative or subjective meaning. If you're of the view that the only meaning life posses, is what we as human beings give it, but reject any sort of grand or ultimate meaning, outside of this you would be an existential nihilist.
It seems to me that you are the view that life doesn't posses any intrinsic meaning, only the extrinsic meanings human beings attach to it? Would that be accurate, regardless of whether you reject the nihilist label or not?
Quote:I understand where you are coming from, as I spent many years trying to make sense of the world that way myself. I finally gave up though, and had to settle for relative meanings. That was not my first choice. So yes, I get the attractiveness of the theistic picture. I just don't think it's supported by the facts. Our evolved human nature, rather than our mere preferences or nature as a whole, is what makes certain things objectively good or bad for us. They are the things which help us thrive or hurt us, and they are all quite species-centric.
I think that our conclusions one way or the other, involve the totality of our experiences and perceptions of the life we live, observe, and occupy, this is not just in regards to life outside, but the life we live inside as well. It has as much to do with the nature of friendship, our personal lives and the relationship that color them both and good and bad, our communities, as equally or perhaps even more so than any fact regarding the theory of evolution. How we make sense of the nature of love, suffering, joy, hope, goodness and evil, forgiveness, redemption, and our failings and imperfection, that just any sort of mechanical fact of nature.
It's my view as a theist, that there some undeniable something to it, a song, a rhythm, a poem, a beauty, that isn't my mind's creation, or even a belief held because I want to hold it, but as some sort of pervasive and unshakeable truth.