Atheism and nihilism

Is atheism inherently nihilistic?

  • Yes

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durangodawood

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Generally speaking, yes.

Sure. I can understand that and this is why I stated above to various people that my axiological position as to what constitutes "the Good" will be difficult (maybe impossible) to explain or prove. I personally don't expect anyone to just agree or to perceive it all automatically as I do ... which isn't to say that I think it's "ok" if they don't.

Anyway, the short of it is that my hermeneutical view of "the Good" is partially informed by what might be called "Creation Ethics" along with some variation of "Ethics of Care," a view that is apart from and different in some aspects from Divine Command Theory as it is traditionally conceived.
I'm pretty sure your axiological condition is impossible to prove. If its correct perhaps it can be apprehended through some undiscovered spiritual sense, or assented to out of pure hope, but certainly not proved.....unless perhaps to minds much smarter or dumber than mine.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I'm pretty sure your axiological condition is impossible to prove. If its correct perhaps it can be apprehended through some undiscovered spiritual sense, or assented to out of pure hope, but certainly not proved.....unless perhaps to minds much smarter or dumber than mine.

... I'd say you're correct on a practical scale, even a somewhat biblical one, but there might also be a 3rd angle by which a person might at least begin in a partial way to find some coherence in my axiological position, and that would be to be willing to adopt some principles of Philosophical Hermeneutics. ;)
 
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durangodawood

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... I'd say you're correct on a practical scale, even a somewhat biblical one, but there might also be a 3rd angle by which a person might at least begin in a partial way to find some coherence in my axiological position, and that would be to be willing to adopt some principles of Philosophical Hermeneutics. ;)
Does the third angle involve beer? If so I might be willing to try.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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Strathos

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Sure, that makes sense. So that's one possession.

How do you think that I payed for the computer, and the electricity I need to use it, and the house I keep it in, etc.?

This approach seems to be predicated on the idea that those finite thing (lives here on earth, money) do have a value after all.

Only because it lets us save souls, which are eternal.
 
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Speedwell

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Comprehensively? You don't. So, we'll each have to rely upon our moral intuitions and cultural conditioning. And if we're lucky, we might even bump into a thing called "the bible" [and/or some thing called "Christianity"] to add to or modify what our intuitions and conditioning don't enable us to conceive about "the Good."
Why the Bible, particularly?
 
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Kylie

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I would refer the answer to this in Redac's reply which I think sums things up quite well here #285
I don't think it is redefining anything. This has been the understanding for millennia. The old saying was God is good, add an o to God and we get good. God is the essence of goodness. These go hand in hand and even atheists are familiar with this.

The fact that this redefinition has been happening for a very long time does not mean it isn't happening.
 
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stevevw

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Yes, feelings are felt subjectively. But as I already said, and you havent denied, we can tell from the outside when people are generally happy or miserable. We can study this just like any other aspect of animal behavior. The wise among us have known how to distinguish misery from satisfaction among the people. And at the core, most people share the same set of general conditions for happiness: health, material security, friendship, some self autonomy, etc. Wisdom-based morality promotes those, enabling a society people are invested in, which can endure.
But that is not the point I am saying. The question is why and not how. Why are happiness and misery the measures of morality? Even if we can recognize this and measure it. Why do these particular qualities equate to right and wrong morally?

I would say as you eluded to that most atheists would say it is to endure IE survive. But who said human survival is a moral issue. This is more about a sociobiological issue in evolution that species want to survive to pass their DNA on rather than a moral issue. But that is committing the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is trying to invalidate something by explaining how it came about in that because we can explain how evolution accounts for moral values it also explains why (why something is morally right or wrong). You can’t substantiate a view of naturalistic morality by explaining how it came about. Nor can you invalidate that objective moral values are real metaphysically.

The establishment of a relationship between evolution and morality cannot be done at the cost of compromising moral specificity, that is, by means of indistinctness between justifying and explaining or by means of indistinctness between moral and non-moral duty. In this sense, it seems to us that it is difficult for the project of evolutionary ethics to rid itself of the problem of the naturalist fallacy in its form of derivational fallacy or even genetic or definition fallacy.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...turalist-fallacy-for-evolution-ary-ethics.pdf

No one had to decide that they prefer happiness over misery. It comes naturally. And so for a society to endure it has to discourage behaviors that make people miserable.
Once again who said that human endurance is a moral obligation. Why humans and not rats. That is a form of speciesism. But even so, I agree that we know intuitively that there are certain moral values but that doesn't mean they were created and have a naturalistic origin. It doesn't work that way for non-theistic. Morality has to be metaphysically based outside humans, but also be rational, unchangeable, and personal. This can only point to a personal transcendent source.

Absolutely. In no way is every single issue crystal clear. For your issue of environmental damage, divine command morality isnt clear either, as there's Christians on both sides of that issue.
The Christian moral on this would be to not destroy God's creation and not to make money and this world your God. Just because some who claim to be Christian don't follow these values doesn't mean those Christian values are not objective. That is why as mentioned earlier God is the perfect ultimate moral lawgiver. Through Jesus, we see clear teachings for example related to this issue Jesus said.

Matthew 6:24
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
 
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stevevw

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The fact that this redefinition has been happening for a very long time does not mean it isn't happening.
That's correct but it doesn't mean anyone is wrong in making that claim either. It is not just any claim. It is a logical and justified claim based on evidence that God equates to good.
 
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Kylie

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That's correct but it doesn't mean anyone is wrong in making that claim either. It is not just any claim. It is a logical and justified claim based on evidence that God equates to good.

I disagree that there's any evidence that God equates to good, even if we grant the premise that God exists.
 
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Moral Orel

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Ok. So now we come to it: Some "thing" is "good" because God made it that way, and without God, that "thing" would not exist and/or have potential for "goodness." [And notice, I didn't say any of this would be explainable, provable or easily transferable.]
First off, I'm not looking for you to prove anything. Hopefully the amount it can be explained is at least somewhat satisfying, that's all I'm looking for.

So thus far, something is good because God imbued it with the quality of goodness?

As an analogy, say there's a painter that loves the color blue and paints nothing but abstracts in shades of blue. We would say that such and such painting of his is blue because he made it that way. Seem apt so far?

So is goodness a real quality in the way that blueness is? What makes something good? Why is "created" a necessary quality for something that is "good"? I don't expect you to answer these questions line by line. They're quasi-rhetorical in that I'm trying to find a good question that gets me a better understanding of "goodness" itself from your view.
 
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Moral Orel

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Goodness is being under the aspect of the desirable:

Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea; which is clear from the following argument. The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. i): "Goodness is what all desire." (ST Ia, Q5, A1)
(I realize I am wading into an issue that is vaguely connected to Euthyphro over hundreds of posts)
Sorry, Zippy, I'm not trying to ignore you. But I can't carry two of these conversations and contain myself from sniping argument points.
 
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Moral Orel

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How do you think that I payed for the computer, and the electricity I need to use it, and the house I keep it in, etc.?
With some of your livelihood. I'd bet there's room in your budget to send KC some money that you'd just spend on something meaningless though. I'd bet there are some possessions you have that are meaningless and could be hocked for cash too.
 
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stevevw

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I disagree that there's any evidence that God equates to good, even if we grant the premise that God exists.
If you grant that God exists and we are talking about the Christian God then we have to ensure we use the correct understanding of God from God's own word. Therefore the support comes from the Bible whether you dispute that source or not this is the only source that claims to describe God and His nature IE.

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Luke 18:19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

Psalm 119:68 You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.

1 Timothy 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,

Psalm 106:1 Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Matthew 5:48
You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

1 Peter 2:22 He who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth;
 
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stevevw

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Just to be clear, I'm not talking about what I want. Wisdom based morality is my explanation for the origin and endurance of human morality. Its an explanation, not a desire.
I understand this. But what I cannot understand is how moral value is given to wisdom without God (without an independent reference point for what is morally right or good). Otherwise, you are borrowing from God's morality and therefore without this, you may as well say that Folly is the measure for what is morally right.

The fact people keep trying to ground values that support human wellbeing and happiness and that there is no naturalistic basis shows that we all know of God's objective morals intuitively. Some who choose not to believe God just happen to try and find other ways to ground morality but none really work.

Also I wouldnt call the collection of human wisdom over history "science", although science may contribute some factual findings that affect our moral evolution going forward.
That's not what I am calling science. It is the things like human happiness and wellbeing you say wisdom determines as morally good and use science to show are objective that I am questioning as to why these things equate to morality. Wisdom itself cannot be the reason as "what is wisdom" without God, without some independent basis. It would just be some abstract idea that has no justification for determining anything.
 
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Kylie

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If you grant that God exists and we are talking about the Christian God then we have to ensure we use the correct understanding of God from God's own word. Therefore the support comes from the Bible whether you dispute that source or not this is the only source that claims to describe God and His nature IE.

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Luke 18:19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

Psalm 119:68 You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.

1 Timothy 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,

Psalm 106:1 Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Matthew 5:48
You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

1 Peter 2:22 He who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth;

I fear this is getting off topic, so I won't continue the discussion here beyond this post.

However, there are many examples of God being cruel. God destroyed Job's life just to win a bet against Satan. He condemned nearly every living thing to death by drowning, a truly horrible way to die from all accounts. He also encouraged the abduction of young girls to be the brides of the soldiers who captured them in battle, and he supported many laws which said women were unclean for menstruating or giving birth. God also sent plagues to Egypt, including the killing of the firstborn (many of whom would have been babies), he gave instructions on how to kill animals because he liked animals being killed in his name (for some reason), and God hardened Pharaoh's heart so God could justify continued cruelty against the people of Egypt.
 
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Redac

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My objection is that when you frame your argument as, "If we redefine X to mean Y, then we can show that X exists," it means we can prove anything we want as long as we claim it means the same thing as something which we can demonstrate exists.
That's not what's happening here, though. No one is saying that "good" is now defined as "God", and that therefore, since we have some concept of "good" then God therefore exists. It's a discussion of God's nature and attributes, and an argument that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma because it fails to fully account for those things.

Besides, the Euthyphro dilemma was never actually about whether God (or the gods) exist. It's about the nature of morality.
 
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stevevw

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I fear this is getting off topic, so I won't continue the discussion here beyond this post.

However, there are many examples of God being cruel. God destroyed Job's life just to win a bet against Satan. He condemned nearly every living thing to death by drowning, a truly horrible way to die from all accounts. He also encouraged the abduction of young girls to be the brides of the soldiers who captured them in battle, and he supported many laws which said women were unclean for menstruating or giving birth. God also sent plagues to Egypt, including the killing of the firstborn (many of whom would have been babies), he gave instructions on how to kill animals because he liked animals being killed in his name (for some reason), and God hardened Pharaoh's heart so God could justify continued cruelty against the people of Egypt.
The problem with claiming that the same Bible says that God is evil is that it is committing a grave and obvious contradiction. Surely the writers of a book that is designed to promote God's goodness and authority would not allow such an obvious mistake. So perhaps something else is going on. Perhaps you are mistaken in your assessment which is a common finding with many skeptics of the Bible.

For example the charge of God taking lives and inflicting various destructions on people. It would seem just for a righteous God as a moral lawgiver and judge to punish evil-doing as we do in society. Punishment is a vital part of moral law because if there are no consequences then it is meaningless. A creator God can give and take what he creates and we cannot apply the same context as we do to modern society.

If it is just your opinion that God is evil then that means nothing in the greater scheme of moral truth. Subjectivists of all people should be allowing for relative times and circumstances and not judging other cultures or individuals based on their own relative time and situation. Knowing that we all see things differently and cannot apply their context to others.

I agree that we may be going off-topic a bit. But in some ways it is relevant because as stated without God how can morality be real. If it is subjective and relative then though each individual and group have their own view of morality there is no truth. There are many "truths" which means there is no one truth that can be applied which then means there is no truth and no morality. It isn't really morality but preferences, likes and dislikes, trends, fashion, and sociobiological programming.
 
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Speedwell

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The problem with claiming that the same Bible says that God is evil is that it is committing a grave and obvious contradiction. Surely the writers of a book that is designed to promote God's goodness and authority would not allow such an obvious mistake. So perhaps something else is going on. Perhaps you are mistaken in your assessment which is a common finding with many skeptics of the Bible.
"Skeptic of the Bible" = "Disagreeing with Steve about what it means."

For example the charge of God taking lives and inflicting various destructions on people. It would seem just for a righteous God as a moral lawgiver and judge to punish evil-doing as we do in society. Punishment is a vital part of moral law because if there are no consequences then it is meaningless. A creator God can give and take what he creates and we cannot apply the same context as we do to modern society.
Aha! Punishment. Departing from naturalistic morality has consequences. Apparently, departing from divine command morality has none except God's displeasure, so punishments must be contrived.

If it is just your opinion that God is evil then that means nothing in the greater scheme of moral truth. Subjectivists of all people should be allowing for relative times and circumstances and not judging other cultures or individuals based on their own relative time and situation. Knowing that we all see things differently and cannot apply their context to others.

I agree that we may be going off-topic a bit. But in some ways it is relevant because as stated without God how can morality be real. If it is subjective and relative then though each individual and group have their own view of morality there is no truth. There are many "truths" which means there is no one truth that can be applied which then means there is no truth and no morality. It isn't really morality but preferences, likes and dislikes, trends, fashion, and sociobiological programming.
Yes, only objective morality is objective morality, and subjectivity morality is not objective morality.
 
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durangodawood

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But that is not the point I am saying. The question is why and not how. Why are happiness and misery the measures of morality? Even if we can recognize this and measure it. Why do these particular qualities equate to right and wrong morally?....
Because morality exists as a feature of human species and culture precisely to ensure the success of a society. And for societal success, social order and individual satisfaction must go hand in had more or less, or else collapse will result. Thats what morality is: the tried and true rules for social order as recorded in our wisdom traditions, layered on top of certain biological features of our brain.

Yes it could be this order imposed from an untouchable other-realm. We cant prove it isnt. But that seems farfetched and is definitely unnecessary as an explanation for the emergence of a sense of right/wrong in the human mind.
 
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