Nihilism and atheism (Endings)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Tuesday, June 03, 2008, 14:36 (6015 days ago) @ dhw

I will respond to dhw's two points: - (a) that nothing matters if there is no just afterlife. Well there certainly isn't any afterlife, and there is a lot of injustice in the world. As we have seen recently natural disasters claim the lives of many who do not deserve to die. Many young people of great promise are cut off by disease or accident before they can achieve anything. This is the way the world works. We can only do what we can to ameliorate it by trying to predict disasters and find cures for illnesses and so on. - But this doesn't mean "nothing matters". One of my favourite sayings is that "beauty is in the eye of the survivor". We must have evolved a capacity for optimism. This may be sorely tried at times, but until it has been defeated by circumstances, it's still the case that "while there's life there's hope". - As for some sort of "ultimate purpose", well we humans are the only known life forms in the universe with self-consciousness, and Earth is the only known planet on which life has developed. Surely the development of our powers of consciousness and the preservation of life are sufficient objectives to be going on with? - (b) that there is no justification for ethics if there is no God. This is naturally a subject that often comes up for discussion among humanists. The "golden rule" in its various formulations (e.g. "do as you would be done by") usually comes up, and can be found in all moral codes ever formulated. - However there are usually considerable disagreements when it comes to detailed situations. Some humanists broadly accept the validity of the non-religious ones among the ten commandments, while others question them. - For example "honour your father and mother" is OK if they have brought you up well, but Philip Larkin's well known poem takes a more jaundiced view, and isn't it normal for children to go through a rebellious phase, all part of finding their own way in the world? - Then again "thou shalt not commit adultery", but relationships can go sour, and isn't it then better to break with the past than to continue to live together in acrimony? - Humanist ethics can be seen in action in the discussions of medical ethics committees. Rather than depending on applying rigid rules, we tend to look at the consequences of actions, in so far as the results can be known in advance.