We should take the Moral Highground

[mediamogul]

What is the basis for nihilism absent the existence of god?

We can and do deem things as moral or immoral. The question lies in who or what serves as the ultimate standard or arbiter for determining which is which. In the absence of an ultimate standard or arbiter, each person is left on their own. The individual then becomes their own ultimate authority, each with equal claim for what is right and wrong, rational or irrational. While I could appeal to ideals like human dignity and ‘the golden rule’, another could deny both, and there would be no common thing to which either of us could point to prove the other wrong. The alternative is to assert the existence of some transcendent authority, principle or standard that applies to all individuals. Absent that true morality does not exist. No one has the ‘right’ to demand others behave in a particular way, because right do not exist. Appealing to reason is also insufficient. Saying that everyone should follow reason is just another unfounded assertion. Why should anyone be rational? This leaves power as the only ultimate authority. I call that nihilism.

That is a good basis for rational nihilism. It basically states that because there is no ultimate standard of morality that morality has no ultimate value. Each person basically "invents" their own morality and because it is an individual invention is has no inherent validity, especially when we apply this "arbitrary" morailty to others who have equal claim to a moral standard of their own.

A couple of points: First I would seperate the idea of "ethics" from the idea of individual "ethics" in practice. In reality people act upon what they believe morality/ethics to be. Ethics corresponds to what people ought to do based upon what is good or bad. Simply because people have wrong beliefs, doesn't mean that ethics itself is not valid.

Human nature and rationality can provide us with a basis for ethics external to individual wrong beliefs. Ethics based upon sentience (a being's ability to suffer) provide a standard for human conduct. Suffering is self-defined as a state that human beings seek to avoid and conversely happiness is a state that humans seek and value. Individual conceptions of happiness and suffering exist and a person is free to pursue then insofar as they do not treat another person as a means to their end (happiness), cause unwarranted suffering, or impinge upon another person's reasonable pursuit of happiness. Humans inevitably come in contact with other human beings and therefore there is the inevitability of social contact. This is where the specifics of human interaction come into play which is the source of most of the grey, indistinct feeling of many conventions. This is another conversation regarding ethics in practice but in a nutshell that is my refutation of nihilism. In my early philosophy days I wrestled with this question of values without god. I read Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor and was very convinced by the "If god does not exist then everything is allowed." argument. This was the rational response I developed after a few years of philosophy. Incidentally this is also what led me to vegetarianism. Many animals are sentient and thus afforded the protection of ethics and rights.