Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[Mudhammam]

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.

That sounds about right to me, if I understand you correctly. Reality itself must first be capable of supporting meaning if there is to be the possibility of minds that can assign value.

That would seem to advance something like absolute meaning and I have no idea what that is meant to imply irrelative to a subject's intentional stance towards reality.

[One Above All]

Atheism would only lead to nihilism if the belief in a deity was required for the belief in a meaning or purpose to life. Since it's not, it doesn't.

I feel like I've said this before in another, similar thread... Hm.

[Mudhammam]

Atheism would only lead to nihilism if the belief in a deity was required for the belief in a meaning or purpose to life. Since it's not, it doesn't.

I feel like I've said this before in another, similar thread... Hm.

I think theists want meaning that exists INDEPENDENTLY of their existence. Yet I can't figure out what purpose THAT would have since presumably everything they find meaningful is dependent on their experience of it.

[Faith No More]

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?

[robvalue]

I really don't get how there being a magic guy floating around somewhere adds any more meaning to anything. Why is everyone so eager to seek him out and drop at his feet, to win his approval? How about giving yourself and those around you approval instead.

[Simon Moon]

I think theists want meaning that exists INDEPENDENTLY of their existence. Yet I can't figure out what purpose THAT would have since presumably everything they find meaningful is dependent on their experience of it.

Which is really kind of strange.

The vast majority of people wouldn't want someone choosing their college study, their careers, their spouses, the place they live, whether they will have children or not, their hobbies, etc.

They would resent and refuse to have literally every aspect of their lives being chosen for them, yet go ahead and relinquish their own choice for the meaning for their lives.

[Faith No More]

I think theists want meaning that exists INDEPENDENTLY of their existence. Yet I can't figure out what purpose THAT would have since presumably everything they find meaningful is dependent on their experience of it.

It's basically an argument that my meaning has more meaning than your meaning because I believe someone else gave me my meaning. It's an argument that attempts to eschew the definitions of meaning and value to something that can only come from an external source and ignores the fact that our neurological and psychological makeup requires us to place value on things that are beneficial to our survival.

[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.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think an important distinction is being lost between meaning, as such, and the source of meaning. I have directed my attention on the later, as in, what are the aspect(s) of reality necessary for the human mind to identify and form concepts about sensible bodies. I say that the generation of meaning is not possible with the tools available to ontological naturalism. That conclusion is also the general consensus of those naturalists that have seriously considered the issue. If naturalism is true, then mind is either an illusion or epiphenomena. Either way, true intentionality is out the window. Thus when I speak of nihilism, I am referring to positions that ultimately deny the intelligibility of sensible reality. So for example, I feel that methodological naturalism is absolutely necessary for the advancement of scientific knowledge but that ontological naturalism is inconsistent with the veracity of scientific inquiry.

Anyone can see that meaning has a role in our understanding of reality. Statements about what the meaning of life, like “be fruitful and multiply” or “maximize the well-being of all”, presuppose that intellectual content somehow corresponds to external reality. Atheist and believers alike assign values and people can debate the relative merits of those values, like whether externally imposed meaning is better or worse than internally assigned meaning. My opinion is that acceptance of external meaning as one’s own is not essentially different from making one’s own meaning. Everyone faces the inescapable freedom to make existential choices about what kind of being they are.

That said, the context within which that choice occurs matters greatly. For those who adhere to naturalism all paths are equally valid. I say that moderate realism connects us to varying degrees of good that can be sought.

[Esquilax]

I was quoting the paper. This was the gist of address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991 by Dr. L. D. Rue. It is also the conclusion of many (some famous) atheist philosophers. How is it that you do not come to the same conclusion. At what philosophical point do you part ways?

Here's the thing with all these "we should all just be selfish and act for our own self interest!" claims: they make a huge and confusing assumption, which is that in the hypothetical in which everyone just does what they want and discards the social contract entirely, our social structure and community will still remain intact. But it won't, which is the point: if we abandon the social contract, the society it was made to foster becomes untenable. That's the whole point of the social contract: it's the basis upon which society is formed.

Doing whatever you want and acting for your own self interest may grant you immediate satisfaction, but if you look further than the myopic few days of looting and murdering you'll enjoy, you'll see that your life is demonstrably worse off. It's kinda why people don't like living through riots, or in post-apocalyptic scenarios; when you strip away the trappings of society, you're left with a rudimentary, shittier existence. Don't believe me? Wait until you get sick and can't see a doctor because they're all just looking out for number one. Do you think it's better to just be able to go to the store and get food, rather than having to scavenge or grow your own? Do you like living in your own home, without generally having to defend it from roving bands of thieves?

So do I. I don't understand why people think that Mad Max is a superior world to the one we live in now. There's simply no need for a "noble lie," because it's just demonstrably true that we've made a better world for every last one of us by banding together and cooperating. We're the dominant species on the planet, present on every continent on Earth, because we were able to cooperate and use our intellect to form a functioning society, and we still need to have these conversations about why it's not better to just dismantle all that for no reason?

Others (Esquilax) seem to believe reality to be a sufficient objective framework upon which to hang morality. This I don't understand.

We have a real world that we share, full of predictable effects to causes, in which we share a uniform biological nature, within a set of well explained parameters. This is an objective fact: we live in a reality. We can use that reality to figure out what's good and bad for humans, and more broadly, for other thinking beings: dying is bad for us, as is injury. Pleasure is good for us, etc etc. It's trivial, but it's a thing we can do.

That right there is a sufficient framework upon which to hang morality: that which is good for thinking beings is morally good, and that which is bad is morally bad. These things can be ranked according to the severity of the effect, mitigating circumstances, and other things, and when they come into conflict with each other we can use reason- blind reason- to come to equitable judgments about this. In order for this to work fairly, we can apply the outsider test to it.

Why should morality be about what's good for thinking beings? Try to have a moral system without them, it's impossible. Inanimate objects perform no actions, therefore there is nothing to judge moral or immoral. Only thinking beings can be moral or immoral, and therefore morality requires them; they are the center of what makes a moral system... extant. That's more than enough reason to privilege their existence within the context of morality.