Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?

[Angrboda]

...I don’t see why meaning has to be, nor that non-transcendent meaning is of necessity nihilistic. Temporary pleasures are still pleasures. Momentary setbacks are still setbacks. Why does meaning have to be grounded by relationships to something external and eternal for it to be real? Why does ephemeral meaning simply not count, while transcendent meaning is the only kind that does?

By making meaning a matter of personal preference and cultural whim, people remove again alienate signification from the larger reality. Once the relation between signfiers and the signified has been severed, then multiple interpreters have no consistent basis by which they can relate. The key to avoiding nihilism (in the Western sense) is to identify absolutes that apply to and govern the relationships between multiple knowing subjects…

Well, absolutes are certainly one way of providing that ground. They’re not contingent, unchangeable, and not subject to conscious control. They provide a shared background against which all interpreters can measure themselves. Contrasted with subjective whim which is contingent, readily changed, and subject to conscious control, your absolutes do provide a shared background against which meaning can be intersubjectively validated for the individual. However I would suggest that there is a middle ground between these two polar opposites. There are things which are shared among individuals that can provide varying levels of intersubjective validation of meaning. These things are contingent, yes, but not readily changed, and not subject to conscious control. Things that fall in this middle ground include our family history, our culture, our shared psychology as human beings, even the precariousness of our existence on this planet. Even something as contingent and seemingly changeable as personality can serve this role. I’m troubled by social anxiety, as are many in my therapy group. As a class, social anxiety is one of the most common personality issues and it forms a shared identity between myself and others who are so troubled, against which my personal accomplishments may be measured. As a Minnesota native, I have inherited a family of local sports teams whose success or failure matters to me and others in my region. I could root for an out of state team, but it seems in our nature to make local affiliations, from region to tribe or ethnicity and up to nationality. And I have an evolved psychology and biology which is shared with the rest of humanity, which includes many things from a shared instinct for language to the fact that I am, at bottom, a part of a social species. These varying levels of shared identity form a range of possible levels of meaningfulness, depending upon the size of the class and my contingent relationship to them. In short, I think you err in concluding that meaning is an all or nothing proposition; I think there are a range of shared contexts that we inherit as human beings which can serve to ground varying levels of meaningfulness. This provides a fertile background from which an atheist can derive meaning without resorting to absolutes.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Chad. I too have other pressing business, but your latest response has, I think, provided additional clarity with regard to the issues, both in general, and as you see them.