Hi All, Though religious people often say that without their faith life would be meaningless, we know that some people's faith itself leads them to the same conclusion. What is life compared to Heaven? Life for the religious is sometimes viewed as merely a means to an end without meaning in itself. (To such people who see the afterlife as the only meaning in life we may ask, what is the meaning of the afterlife?) It is not surprising that American voters are not too concerned about the environment or social justice when polls indicate that nearly half of us expect the second coming of Jesus and the glorious end of the world within the next 50 years.
The first step toward nihilism is not disbelief in God. The first step toward nihilism is acceptance of the notion that for the existence of the world to be justified it must have some external purpose to guide it. It must be the shadow of some truer world than this one that has the power to grant meaning to this world, and if no such other world exists then this world ought not to exist. Note that this is quite similar to what James described "the religious impulse." It is this impulse rather than atheism that produces nihilism. Nihilism is the rejection of at least some aspects of the value of life, and it is attached to the notion that meaning must come from somewhere outside one's self and in fact outside the world of ordinary experience. It is the religious impulse to seek justification "out there" rather than having doubts about religion that is the first step toward nihilism. One can take this step toward religion and find no convincing externally imposed meaning. On the other hand, if one never goes looking for meaning to come from somewhere "out there," one never encounters nihilism. Some people actually do find such an externally imposed meaning and are still nihilistic. An extreme case of religious nihilism is the suicide bomber who is nihilistic in rejecting the meaning that others find in the value of human life while having a deep conviction in the externally imposed meaning of his own death through martyrdom and divine reward in Heaven. The suicide bomber is indeed nihilistic. He may be thought of as having placed some value on the lives he takes as fulfilling some religious purpose, but in doing so he is decidedly rejecting many other aspects of the value of individual human life. In Kantian language, he is treating others solely as means to serve his purposes of glorifying God rather than as having worth as ends in themselves. That is a form of nihilism--a radically religious nihilism. One might argue that the suicide bomber is not nihilistic because his death and the deaths of those he murders had profound significance to him in glorifying God. But the question of nihilism is not whether death has meaning but whether living life has meaning. There is no stronger version of nihilism that valuing death above life. A far more subtle but still dangerous form of nihilism exists in the US with respect to the environment. In a country where the majority of people are Christians and expect the immanent end of the world, it is no wonder that it is difficult to get some people motivated to take care of the world for future generations. Sam Harris addressed poll results on expectations regarding the second coming of Christ: "It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves- socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically." Note that I am not saying that this sort of nihilism is a necessary consequence of all Christian belief. I am just saying that Christianity gets interpreted by some (such as the murderer of the abortion doctor) in very nihilistic ways where aspects of the meaning of life are deemed entirely insignificant next to Eternity. Nihilism is not then part of a problem with atheism as it is often claimed. Nihilism is in fact incompatible with a thorough-going atheism that has ceased to seek meaning "out there." Nihilism is not the inevitable result of anti-religious skeptism but part of the religious impulse which includes the supposition that such an external order is necessary and foundational to all value, meaning, and purpose that the world of our everyday experience can ever have. Atheists only become nihilists when they take their atheism with a this small dose of religion. Atheists inclined toward pessimism sometimes take the fact that the world seems to exists without such external justification as evidence for the absurdity of existence. Some atheists respond to the human condition by saying that we must live life in such a way to make it a worthy protest to the injustice of death. Such a response is one of a very religious sort of atheist. This is the sort of atheist existentialist who announces the death of God but seems to be angry and in great despair about that fact. This sort of nihilism is an unconscious sort of nihilism that Nieztche called "religious nihilism." In fact, there is no other kind. Nihilism depends on the affirmation of another world as the only possible legitimate source of all value and the denial of this world as able to sustain its own value. All nihilism is religious in this sense. The nihilism of the religious is often not recognized as such because it is often an optimistic sort of nihilism. The promise of the next world is thought to be the assurance of everything that one could ever think to hope for. But then, we know how that sort of thinking in the suicide bomber works out for the rest of us, so even optimistic nihilism can be something to be concerned about. Religious people who think that believing in God makes them immune to nihilism and the nihilism is part of "the atheism problem" should turn to the Bible and reread Ecclesiastes which has Solomon, son of David and renown for his wisdom, "Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Clearly even the Bible demonstrates that that nihilism is not just a problem for skeptics. Though the one who never look to other worlds to justify this world is less nihilistic than the one who takes this first step toward nihilism even if she does find meaning "out there," an avowed religious person who takes the first step toward nihilism by seeking meaning in the great beyond is unlikely to consider herself a nihilist. The most prominent authority on meaning among Christians today is Rick Warren who sold 30 million copies of The Purpose Driven Life. He seems to be the heir-apparent to Billy Graham as a widely palitable representative of Christianty. Both McCain and Obama needed to be interviewed by him to validate their positions with respect to the so-called "values voters" in the 2008 election (as though only conservative Christians make decisions based on their values.) In the Purpose Drive Life, Rick Warren wrote, "If there was no God, we would all be 'accidents,' the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this book , because life would have no purpose or meaning or significance. There would be no right or wrong, and no hope beyond your brief years on earth." This declaration is not merely one small step but a giant leap toward nihilism. Warren has hung all his hopes upon the need that a single fact turn out to be true. Clearly Rick Warren, who it is granted has found meaning and purpose in life, is still by my lights teetering on the brink of nihilism since all sense of meaning for him depends on the need that one sentence be true. A believer such as Warren is not likely to recognize the nihilism behind his statement and his belief that without some external source of worth our world would be worthless. Instead he is more likely to mistake those of us who accept this world as sufficient unto itself as nihilists. But doing so is indeed a mistake. Consider what it would it mean to be complete in the lack of nihilism. The complete lack of nihilism is not to deny the "objective" meaning of life but to stop thinking of the question as one even worth asking--to stop looking for the justification the world to come from somewhere else. The complete opposite of nihilism is not to be able to affirm the objective meaning of life, but to never need to go looking for meaning. Meaning abounds. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but asking bad "philosophical" questions like, 'what gives one's life objective meaning?' if taken too seriously can also make life seem not worth living. We don't need to be convinced by some philosophical or theological argument that life has meaning or feel at all like something is lacking in not being able to provide a Cartesian foundation that stands outside of time and space upon which meaning in life can rest. How could anyone who loves another be convinced by a logical argument not to love them? Likewise, how could I become convinced that life has no meaning when I already love or if I simply refuse to accept the premise that meaning must come from some "true" world of which this world is a mere shadow? Meaning abounds for all those who love so long as they don't get fooled into thinking that love needs a philosophical foundation--that "why love?" is a question that needs an answer. Only the psychopath needs a reason to love. It takes a lot of intellectual wheel spinning to even get one's self to the point in thinking that the love of family and friends and our efforts to make the world better than we found it are not meaningful. This whole question of meaning only becomes a question when one follows the religious impulse to search for meaning "out there." It comes from the idea that meaning must come from outside one's self and even outside the world altogether. It is important to emphasize that nihilism is not an atheistic phenomenon. Both atheists and theists are capable of denying aspects of the meaning of life. As we have seen, nihilism--the belief that the world in itself is without value, meaning, and purpose--is not the inevitable result of atheism. Atheists only become nihilists when their lack of belief in God is taken together with a half-measure of religion, while the theistic nihilism of the suicide bomber is the result of taking a full measure of the wrong sort of religion. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
