I have a friend who is an Atheist who also describes herself as a Nihilist. Her and I talked for a couple hours comparing and contrasting where we each came down on the subject. In mid-January, I'll be doing a presentation on Do you need God to be a genuinely moral person?
Well, she's also a moral Nihilist, who doesn't believe morality is an objective reality or that we each have an intrinsic moral compass. So, for my presentation, among other topics, I need to have a good understanding of the significance of Nihilism and how it plays into the morality of some Atheists..
So, what's Nihilism all about?
Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source but it is well known for organizing & summarizing information so making it one's research starting place is a great idea, because of how it presents the information. The wiki article for Nihilism makes priority mention of Friedrich Nietzsche, who was an Atheist, who wrote a lot about morality and Nihilism..
An interpretation of what Nietzsche says concerning Nihilism is as follows:
"When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis."
And to quote the Wikipedia article:
"Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value."
Reading SOME of the wiki article convinced me the subject of Nihilism is dense and so this post will just try to address moral Nihilism.
So I'll just commentary off of the two quotes in bold...
As to the first quote, yes, I was raised in Christianity to believe the world possessed objective value and meaning. As I moved away from Christianity and the faith, over the years, there was a disillusioning process where the evidence I studied made me to come to conclusions such as there is no evidence for God, no intelligent design to this life, only one life to live and when it's over it's over, no heaven, 99% of all the species that have ever lived have gone extinct, humans are not the center of the universe, no ultimate source to our morality only human nature determined by evolution.. That IF there is a design and purpose in the world it is "the survival of the fittest" and "natural selection".
So if there is no ultimate meaning or direction in this reality we live in, why should one be moral and make this life we live as meaningful as possible?
A real answer to this would be: because we are hardwired to find meaning and to not make meaning in our lives would be to go against the psychology of our minds as determined by our brains. In other words, to do this would be to go against our nature...
But one might argue, "But it is also our nature to hurt others, to steal, to even take life, especially when we feel our life and survival being threatened." To which I would respond, you are absolutely right, compassion and violence are neurological predispositions we have..
It is also interesting that both compassion and violence have an evolutionary survival value to them. Our compassion helps us to survive because together is better than being alone. When we share, the other reciprocates and there becomes a relationship. The more this sharing happens, the greater the number of participants, and so there becomes strength and safety in numbers insuring a greater survival of those in that group. This is how clans, tribes, and, ultimately, civilizations started..
Our fight or flight response is also there for when there is no reciprocation; no sharing, when there is no relationship but one species trying to dominate or destroy(for resources, etc.) the other.. The evolutionary logic or instinct is simple, kill or be killed. And this need to survive is probably our deepest instinct, even deeper than altruism; cooperation and sharing in groups..
So back to the first Nietzsche quote, "When we find out that the world does not....we find ourselves in a crisis." Yes, when I went through this disillusionment there was a crisis of faith and I began to rethink what was right and wrong and even if right and wrong were an illusion.
((I will agree with my moral Nihilist friend that Nihilism is correct in this sense.)) HOWEVER one should be careful to not take the conclusion of Nihilism too far and try to live without a moral compass and with unfettered freedom to do what ever one wants, because to do so, consistently, would go against our psychological nature; our mental state, which is happiest when there is structure, a "black and white", a "right and wrong", that there are consequences to actions, which we learn from, when there are explanations for why the world is the way it is. To quote from the Wikipedia article,
"Nietzsche states that nihilism as 'absolute valuelessness' or 'nothing has meaning' is dangerous, or even 'the danger of dangers': it is through valuation that people survive and endure the danger, pain and hardships they face in life. The complete destruction of all meaning and all values would lead to an existence of apathy and stillness, where positive actions, affirmative actions, would be replaced by a state of reaction and destruction."
So it IS intellectual integrity to acknowledge the conclusion of moral Nihilism and to indeed go down the path of disillusionment it takes you, but to not live out the implications of it, because there is also the obligation to stay true to our psychological nature; our mental state, in other words, that we are hardwired to find patterns, to make meaning in our daily lives, and to make our lives significant, because in addition to the instinct of survival, we also have the instinct to be happy, and when we share, when we give, when we see people happy, when we share our lives with people, when we do ethical deeds that we honestly respect, all these things make us happy...
Thank you.
---I mentioned we sometimes do things that go against our "ethical beliefs". I say our ethical beliefs instead of "our thought out ethics" because the majority of us have not really thought about the ethics we have. Instead we have acquired them instinctively on a psychological and biological level.
First came our beliefs and THEN reasons for those beliefs.
9 times out of 10, when we actually study into why we think and believe the way we do, we then revise or even completely change certain beliefs and ideas we have.
Why?
Because it did not start out with a well thought out idea but an intrinsic belief that had it's own psychological and emotional satisfaction to it.. There is almost this automatic acceptance, and very little critical assessment, of ideas that affirm what we already believe in.
----Now did I convince any of you tonight who already have a belief in morality and the source of morality similar to Keith's?
Probably not.
Did I give you concrete proof of my position that you that you can handle and examine, touch and sense?
No, not quite.
Few people can give you such proof whether they be Atheist or Believer of such ideas. But I have given you information that you can do research on, read books on, articles, etc. so that you can make a truly informed decision on such an important topic.
If you say you've already made up your mind on this topic, that's basically saying you're closed minded. If you say you don't see the need to do this research on such an important topic, that's basically saying this topic is not important enough to you like the many other topics, that have little to do with science or theology, yet we study and research them everyday, because they're important..
Dinesh DiSouza says Atheism is responsible for causing people to commit mass murder in history.
Saying Atheism caused people to kill is like saying Christianity caused the crusades or the inquisition, which torturing people till they recanted or died..
Most Christians today deeply object to the crusades and the inquisitions and will say these terrible times in history were caused by everything except genuine Christianity.
And I will agree(to a degree, which I'll explain later)..
Again to emphasize here, Stalin, who happened to be an Atheist, used Atheism and the other ideologies to justify his mass killings of millions of people, just like people, who happened to be Christians, in the 14th century, used certain scriptures from the Bible to justify the torture of a nonbeliever or a Christian who happened to disagree with them on doctrine. The danger in both of these situations is that they sincerely believed in their particular ideas, making it possible for them to do what they did with possibly a clean conscious.. It is this degree of conviction that we should be the most concerned about...
