Nihilism and atheism (Endings)

by Cary Cook , Thursday, June 05, 2008, 02:10 (6014 days ago) @ dhw

In saying that if there is no just afterlife, nothing matters, I deserve to be challenged, because I was only thinking in terms of ethics, and I didn't say to whom nothing matters. - If there is no just afterlife, then the only rewards/punishments for good/bad behavior are in this life. This life rarely offers enough rewards/punishments to motivate good behavior except when people are watching. Yes, there's conscience, but any internal conscience can be suppressed by anyone who sees sufficient reason to suppress it. If doing good does not ultimately benefit the doer of it, there is ultimately no reason to do it. Anyone who figures this out, and is sufficiently convinced of no just afterlife has little or no reason to behave ethically (again except for conscience or people watching. However I know an atheist who behaves ethically just to prove he can do it ... at least he appears to behave ethically, and he said that's the reason.) - I should have said this:
If there is no just afterlife, then there is no reason to behave any more ethically than is likely to get you what you want in this life. - Of course, anyone can make up any subjective values they want. So if ethical behavior makes you feel good, then it matters to you for that reason. But if someone else doesn't enjoy ethical behavior, and behaves unethically, you have no objective justification to accuse him of wrong doing, much less punish him. - I also should have specified that if there is no afterlife, then nothing ultimately matters to me, because though I find trivial pleasures in this life, it has not been enough to outweigh the displeasures. And the majority of the rest of animal life also appears to be experiencing more displeasure than pleasure, and appears to be sustained by nothing but fear of death. So if this life is all there is, the creator of it appears to be evil. In this case, the only sensible desire would be for non-existence, which could not even be guaranteed by blowing one's brain out.