Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?

[genkaus]

Software does emerge naturally from hardware. People insert it. People structure the hardware and software to represent propositional states. Neither the software or the hardware have any meaning except for what has been assigned in advance.

Missing the point completely - how software emerges from hardware is not relevant - the fact that it does is. You - and I mean specifically you - may not be able to understand how it emerges, but that is not a deterrent to software being an emergent property of the hardware. Same goes for brain and consciousness.

My point exactly. The relationship between a sign and the signified is assigned and arbitrary, not causal.

And self-assignment is not possible because...?

Which function? Any function or specific to consciousness?

Any function.

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Too broad a question - the function of a light-bulb is on a whole different level than that of a Venus Fly-trap. The simplistic answer would be: when the sequence of events within a system affects something external to the system then it becomes a function.

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People cannot help but to assign value to the things in their lives. The nature of the OP question is whether or not someone’s philosophical position, in this case atheism, is inconsistent with the very human ability to find value. Thus it doesn’t matter whether the person has hope; but rather, what matters is if that hope is justified, i.e. does their philosophy fulfill its promise.

You might want to keep in mind that atheism is not a philosophy nor does it automatically result in a specific one.

I think it reasonable to interpret phrases like “if only for us,” that reference arbitrary sources value as falling within my definition of nihilism as “the doctrine that all values are baseless.” The general objection has been that people find their own meaning, as in...

On what basis are you considering it an arbitrary value source?

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. This is a project that self-referential systems cannot logically undertake.

Identifying absolutes is unnecessary - the principles need to be either objective or derived from consensus - that would provide a consistent basis you are looking for.

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You are responding to my statement. If you have no comment. Great.

Excuse me? You made the foolish claim first. You were the first to claim that "belief in just god/reality leads to a preferable moral system". So go on and prove your assertion first and then go around asking others to prove theirs.

That being said - this is a common Christian tactic to ask the opponent to prove their case so as to distract from your inability to prove yours. So take this post as a coupon to be redeemed in future - once you have provided arguments for your assertion - then I'll provide arguments for mine.

We've already covered our understanding of the goodness of God. We disagree. My evidence is clear. Yours is based upon obvious and deliberate misunderstanding. In the absence of actual evidence, I must leave it there.

Tautology is not evidence.

The point you mention here, concerns the ability of any creator to create something superior to itself. So far, humans haven't created better humans. Taking it back to a primary level, a substance cannot create something not contained in the source. The singularity had to contain all of the information necessary to form everything in the universe. It isn't possible for the universe to create anything that it doesn't already have the physical information to create.

Ofcourse humans have created better humans. If they hadn't we'd all still be living in caves. Ofcourse creation of new information not contained in the source occurs - that is how evolution works. That's why the idea that the singularity had all the information - or that it had any information at all - is simply ridiculous.