Nihilistic Murderer

[CapnAwesome]

What, do you want me to scan the hard copy of the OED for you? What do you expect to find, online, but an online dictionary?

Dismissing the definition because it is "online" is silly. It's a cheap way to get around the point without answering it.

My moral principles come from my own thinking and empathic sense. I don't go out and kill others because I don't think I'd care for it if someone tried to kill me. Returning the courtesy..... etc etc

First off, forgive me editing job above, I just personally find it easier to have these discussions in paragraph form rather than breaking things down point by point. Feel free to respond however you like (since the way you edit arguments on the internet doesn't really matter, just like everything else.)

Well I think that using a dictionary definition is also a cheap argument tool, so we are 1 for 1 on that. Lets just stick with the definition that I use for myself, since I'm not going to be bothered to conform my beliefs to what a dictionary says. I think most nihilists would agree on the definition 'life and everything else is meaningless' So for arguments sake I'm just going to stick with that since that is what I believe. Although I also think that it probably applies to most Nihilists.

So you say that you don't go out and kill people because of some kind of social contract that you won't be killed. That leads to a second important question: if that social contract wasn't in place, would you kill people? In other words do you want to go out and kill people? Personally I think what prevents me from killing people is that I don't want to do it. It sounds terrible. I think the reason I don't want to do it is the same reason for most human behavior including morality, a combination of nature and nurture.

Also regarding morals. I think that the distinction between having no morals and having meaningless morals is an extremely important one. Being a Nihilist doesn't at all mean that I believe that morals don't exist. To me that would be like saying that I don't believe rationality or love or all kinds of other human states exist. It's clear to me that they exist because I can both observe them and experience them. I just don't think that they matter. Lets just imagine it this way. You are walking on a beach and pick up a shell. Pretty quickly you lose interest and toss the shell back into the sand and forget about it. Does that mean that the shell doesn't exist or that it just doesn't matter? That's how I view morality (and everything else). I firmly believe that morality exists and also obviously I have morals. It just doesn't matter. I choose to behave in a moral way for a variety of reasons, mostly that I like being a moral person and that it improves my life. I think everybody has morals (except for maybe the person in that video, which is why I found it so interesting in the first place.) Even a psychopath like Ted Bundy has a moral code. His moral code just placed all the value on himself and none on other people.