Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[Angrboda]

Can one be a moral nihilist but not an existential nihilist?

I tend to flip those around and postulate a nihilistic approach to morals, but that existence itself is not, and cannot be, meaningless. (existential nihilism) Meaning, for me, is an a priori category which we find ourselves 'thrown into' by virtue of the nature of our minds.

Is that a consistent position? I'm not sure. It would seem existential meaning might ground ethical meaning. And I don't hang these beliefs on my theism, btw.

Perhaps, but wouldn't that mean you'd have to rationalize having ethics that did not require acting in accordance with that meaning? Given what we value and find meaning in informs our ethics, wouldn't seeing meaning in existence itself require you ethically to act in respect to that meaning?

(emphasis mine)

See, I don't agree with that. What we value doesn't determine what is ethically significant. We try to reason backward from what we value to what we find ethical because that seems the appropriate way to justify ethical norms. But that always leaves a gap; yes it's valuable, but is the good also morally good? I think in reality, ethical norms are just picked up along the way, subconsciously, without our conscious choosing of them (e.g. fairness as a value seems built-in to us; we don't 'choose' it). From what I understand of the various moral anti-realisms, I'd have to say that I'm a non-cognitivist, or maybe a presupposition failure type error theorist.