Nihilistic Murderer

[Faith No More]

Neither atheism or theism per se entail existential nihilism. Ontological naturalism, physical reduction, and materialism are a different story, since all three sever the relationship between signs and those things they signify. Purely physical event just are, they are not omens nor do they have affect. They have no significance except what gets assigned to them arbitrarily based on someone’s whim. And within that absurdist position, the whim of a pious humanitarian has no more justification than the whim of a mass murder.

The significance assigned is not arbitrary. Through my intellectual capacity and sentient awareness, I assign value to myself. I recognize that which I value in myself within others, so I value them as well. Based on that value I place on them, I conclude that causing them harm is negative(bad) and pleasing them is positive(good), and our ethics can be derived by trying to maximize the pleasure as whole based on each individual having equal value. Philosophically it has more justification than a mass murderer, because the logical conclusion of the philosophy that other people are meaningless objects that can be disposed of is that you yourself become equally disposable. Unless you are willing to devalue yourself, it's an unsustainable philosophy.

And why exactly do those effects matter at all within a materialistic paradigm? How does someone go about assigning value to different kinds of electro-chemical reactions?

One word: sentience.

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I don't think that's a theistic delusion? Not really sure that there are many, if any, theistic nihilists out there. Theists tend to think that our actions matter overmuch, as in what we do will have eternal effects out our immortal souls. Obviously I don't share any of that. In fact I think atheists who aren't nihilists are being dishonest with themselves on some level.

I labeled it theistic because they often like to tout the idea that if we are going to die eventually with no afterlife, this life is meaningless.

I have a hard time defining myself as a nihilist, because it seems to mean different things to different people. I do recognize that ultimately none of what we do will matter. The cosmos will fizzle out and our existence will a tine footnote in existence that no one will ever read. I draw the line, however, when someone says that because of that inevitable path our actions in the present time and space don't matter. Whether or not that makes me a nihilist, I don't know.