RE: The difference between ethical atheism and nihlism is that ethical atheists have more faith
March 1, 2013 at 4:37 pm
(March 1, 2013 at 4:29 pm)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: "Bad person"?! According to what? The bible?
I think you can have a knowledge of ethics that it is wrong to direct your will without any wisdom guiding it. It is similar to the concept of rationality. Epistemology and ethics are closely intertwined.
To be a Christian really means that your will is always directed towards wisdom. I believe that there could be alternative ways of understanding God, that could also be directed towards wisdom, or towards human nature and the glory of God represented in nature.
So I think that the sort of nihilistic ethics would be condemned in pretty much every single religion and philosophy ever developed. People are created to direct their wills towards what is good, and it is possible to know what is good. Is the knowledge of what is good less important than knowing the details of esoteric scientific theories, if they can even be understood at all?
Human biology and culture reveals that it is wrong to be foolish and direct the will only the pleasures or arbitrarily. Nihilism is a way of saying that foolishness is acceptable because there is no such thing as wisdom. As hinted at before, this also destroys the foundations of atheist epistemology, at least epistemology understood in a sense in which there are duties to accept the fruits of epistemology.
So nihilism really is incompatible with the aggressive scientism that dominates atheist discourse. Christianity is actually close in many ways to the rationality of science. Christianity demands that the will be filled with epistemologically responsible concepts at all times. This is what nihilism denies.
Anyone who defends nihilism is defending that it is ok to be a bad person. I think it is safe to call them a bad person.
