Nihilism, the consequence of Atheism

[apreminin]

Yup... the chart summarizes it all.lol

 

[Dislexicmidget2021]

lol, You just had to draw it out in crayon for us didnt you?Yes a good chart indeed!

 

[Padawanbater2]

The longer I go without a belief in God, the more amoral my thought process gets. Though I'd like to make it perfectly clear it's not because I don't believe in God. It's because every day the world gives me more and more reasons to simply stop giving a fuck. Where the sentiment used to be something like "it'll all change eventually, we're all in this together after all..", now, it's more along the lines of "fuck everybody here, I'm in this shit for myself". The people you try to help, the ideas you put forth aren't acknowledged. I've found over the years this gets me nothing. I used to get a sense of... I'm not even sure what, accomplishment? But it doesn't accomplish anything... now, nothing. I see it as a waste of time. This has led to feelings of resentment towards people.

I guess I gave up on the idea of saving the world a long time ago. In a perfect world, I'd like to see it happen, I'd like to see everyone take responsibility for themselves, but in this world, the one we live in, I can honestly say I hope a few hundred million of these motherfuckers don't make it to next year...

Definition of nihilism?

lol

 

[Heisenberg]

The longer I go without a belief in God, the more amoral my thought process gets. Though I'd like to make it perfectly clear it's not because I don't believe in God. It's because every day the world gives me more and more reasons to simply stop giving a fuck. Where the sentiment used to be something like "it'll all change eventually, we're all in this together after all..", now, it's more along the lines of "fuck everybody here, I'm in this shit for myself". The people you try to help, the ideas you put forth aren't acknowledged. I've found over the years this gets me nothing. I used to get a sense of... I'm not even sure what, accomplishment? But it doesn't accomplish anything... now, nothing. I see it as a waste of time. This has led to feelings of resentment towards people.


I guess I gave up on the idea of saving the world a long time ago. In a perfect world, I'd like to see it happen, I'd like to see everyone take responsibility for themselves, but in this world, the one we live in, I can honestly say I hope a few hundred million of these motherfuckers don't make it to next year...


Definition of nihilism?


lol

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

-Yeats

 

[Padawanbater2]

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

-Yeats

What's Yeats'[the] solution?

 

[Heisenberg]

What's Yeats'[the] solution?

The Second Coming

He is describing a sentiment not dissimilar to yours while not bothering to suggest a solution.

Perhaps a solution is not the answer...

[video=youtube;mLEtb9N9oMA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLEtb9N9oMA&feature=youtu.be[/video]


Inside of every cynic is a disappointed idealist - George Carlin

You are not on a team of one against the world, you are on a select team that hasn't gathered all it's players yet. The goal is not to win a perfect world, but to enjoy the life you have on the world, during which time it is sure to be imperfect. Your game involves you and those you manage to get close to, the rest of the game is essentially a spectator sport.

 

[Padawanbater2]

I've sort of considered that too, but what it comes back to for me is, and I'm not discounting my inexperience on the planet, that too is a likely culprit of my pessimistic outlook, how can one live a life being happy while so many other people can't? They can't by no fault of their own, just because of some old tradition their culture is caught up in, or by random chance of geographic location. Deep down, it's really difficult to be happy knowing this stuff exists, knowing why, and knowing that there is something I could do to help prevent it or change it, and I don't. I don't because I've given up.

Existence, it seems, isn't without an unusual sense of irony.

 

[tyler.durden]

The longer I go without a belief in God, the more amoral my thought process gets. Though I'd like to make it perfectly clear it's not because I don't believe in God. It's because every day the world gives me more and more reasons to simply stop giving a fuck. Where the sentiment used to be something like "it'll all change eventually, we're all in this together after all..", now, it's more along the lines of "fuck everybody here, I'm in this shit for myself". The people you try to help, the ideas you put forth aren't acknowledged. I've found over the years this gets me nothing. I used to get a sense of... I'm not even sure what, accomplishment? But it doesn't accomplish anything... now, nothing. I see it as a waste of time. This has led to feelings of resentment towards people.

I guess I gave up on the idea of saving the world a long time ago. In a perfect world, I'd like to see it happen, I'd like to see everyone take responsibility for themselves, but in this world, the one we live in, I can honestly say I hope a few hundred million of these motherfuckers don't make it to next year...

Definition of nihilism?

lol

I feel you, Pad. Despite my best efforts, I often get into this 'Fuck the World' mode. I usually plan my day to have as little contact with as few people as possible, but even after I'm out for just a few hours I am exasperated and ready to get back into my home to shut out the fucktards. They are EVERYWHERE!!! I love the idea of humanity, but the older I get the more I can't stand people in general. Heis is right, you have your select inner circle of friends & family, that's who you spend your time and energy on. Let the rest take care of themselves or die trying...

God must have loved common man, he made SO many of them... Abe Lincoln

 

[Heisenberg]

I feel you, Pad. Despite my best efforts, I often get into this 'Fuck the World' mode. I usually plan my day to have as little contact with as few people as possible, but even after I'm out for just a few hours I am exasperated and ready to get back into my home to shut out the fucktards. They are EVERYWHERE!!! I love the idea of humanity, but the older I get the more I can't stand people in general. Heis is right, you have your select inner circle of friends & family, that's who you spend your time and energy on. Let the rest take care of themselves or die trying...

God must have loved common man, he made SO many of them... Abe Lincoln

Just a point of clarification. I don't feel like the rest can take care of themselves or die trying. I think working towards a more rational world is a worthy goal, but it's incidental to what really matters on a personal level. I don't feel the need to invest personal feelings into the state of the world, much of which i'll never see.

I'll admit my outlook may be a bit distorted. My situation is such that I can count on one hand the number of people I have meaningful person to person conversations with in a 6 month period. I am not exposed daily to the irrationality of the world, and I can't say I am impressed by the world when I do go out. This though is a reflection of people's shortcomings and bad choices. I still find much wonder and majesty in the potential humans have. As some Sagan guy put it, we are a way for the universe to know itself.

Despite the way it seems, the world is getting better, and people are getting smarter, by many standards of measurement. Life expectancy, reduced suffering, increased freedom, increased social connectivity, scientific theory, architectural and engineering achievements, critical awareness, charity, compassion, understanding; all these things have improved greatly over virtually any area of the past, and there is no reason to think the world will backslide.

BTW I never thanked you for telling us about your boy in the other thread. I enjoyed the read.

 

[eye exaggerate]

The longer I go without a belief in God, the more amoral my thought process gets. Though I'd like to make it perfectly clear it's not because I don't believe in God. It's because every day the world gives me more and more reasons to simply stop giving a fuck. Where the sentiment used to be something like "it'll all change eventually, we're all in this together after all..", now, it's more along the lines of "fuck everybody here, I'm in this shit for myself". The people you try to help, the ideas you put forth aren't acknowledged. I've found over the years this gets me nothing. I used to get a sense of... I'm not even sure what, accomplishment? But it doesn't accomplish anything... now, nothing. I see it as a waste of time. This has led to feelings of resentment towards people.

I guess I gave up on the idea of saving the world a long time ago. In a perfect world, I'd like to see it happen, I'd like to see everyone take responsibility for themselves, but in this world, the one we live in, I can honestly say I hope a few hundred million of these motherfuckers don't make it to next year...

Definition of nihilism?

lol

...here - this quote is really good. I happened to be reading it when I stopped by the forum.

"At the core of every cultural worldview is the God-image, whether it’s Christian, Moslem, Hindu or whatever. (Buddhists don't subscribe to a God, but they believe in the Infinite, which, from a psychological standpoint, serves the same purpose.) But when the Self is constellated, then the process of "uncovering what has been hidden," the Apocalypse, the "revelation of new truth," begins. And this is a process that takes ages.


Looking back, it may well have taken six hundred years for Christianity to emerge into being as a “religion.” Many of the themes Jesus espoused go back at least to Ezekiel, who referred to himself as "Son of Man" (symbolically, "Son of God"), which was the way Jesus referred to himself. Many of the early Church “fathers” believed some of the Psalms prefigured Jesus. After Jesus died, it took another three hundred years for Christianity to solidify into a religion. It wasn't that Jesus suddenly came on the scene, worked miracles and preached magnificent sermons, and presto, Christianity bloomed. Not at all. Jesus articulated and manifested what had been gradually growing in the collective psyche over an extended period of time. And this happened as the gods of the Greco-Roman world were losing their hold on the imagination of the Greco-Roman “creative minority.” Nietzsche's 1882 cry, "God is dead," was heard throughout the Roman Empire 2,000 years earlier in a similar cry, "Great Pan is dead." In other words, the prevailing God-image of the Greco-Roman world had been losing its resonance and relevance in the depths of the collective psyche of the Greco-Roman world. But at the same time, there was a psychic maturation taking place, which the old gods failed to express, but which Jesus expressed and manifested in a manner that resonated in the depths of the collective soul of that time."

...it has to be that a lot of people share your sentiment. It's due.

 

[tyler.durden]

Just a point of clarification. I don't feel like the rest can take care of themselves or die trying. I think working towards a more rational world is a worthy goal, but it's incidental to what really matters on a personal level. I don't feel the need to invest personal feelings into the state of the world, much of which i'll never see.

I'll admit my outlook may be a bit distorted. My situation is such that I can count on one hand the number of people I have meaningful person to person conversations with in a 6 month period. I am not exposed daily to the irrationality of the world, and I can't say I am impressed by the world when I do go out. This though is a reflection of people's shortcomings and bad choices. I still find much wonder and majesty in the potential humans have. As some Sagan guy put it, we are a way for the universe to know itself.

Despite the way it seems, the world is getting better, and people are getting smarter, by many standards of measurement. Life expectancy, reduced suffering, increased freedom, increased social connectivity, scientific theory, architectural and engineering achievements, critical awareness, charity, compassion, understanding; all these things have improved greatly over virtually any area of the past, and there is no reason to think the world will backslide.

BTW I never thanked you for telling us about your boy in the other thread. I enjoyed the read.

Thanks, Heis. I was really just jumping on Pad's exasperated bandwagon, venting and using hyperbole to make a point. I don't want anyone to die or suffer, even the fucktards. I just want them away from me. The very few of us that tap our potential achieve so much that it carries the rest of us along very nicely. It's amazing that humanity has such a range: top scientists, industrialists and artists that give us life-lifting values to the fat, ignorant family at Jewel that find it a challenge to even check out of line efficiently, to the constantly inebriated homeless begging for sustenance. They are all human and born with similar potential. I am most optimistic after spending a few days completely alone, but when I'm forced to interact with people in everyday America they can wear down that optimism, and my patience, very quickly.
The world is certainly becoming a better place with rapid progress on many important fronts, it's easier to see this by reading about it from afar than witnessing it first-hand when I need to run my errands

 

[Dislexicmidget2021]

I don't feel the need to invest personal feelings into the state of the world, much of which i'll never see.



Heis you couldnt have said it any better right there!Thats exactly what i feel daily.I guess im fortunate enough to be able let slide, all the BS and stupidity from people in general,I have to work with people and their mind numbing dumbness everyday,I realized how absurd and pointless it is to be bothered with how dumb people are,you cant help them edify their own logic in hopes to make them think smarter for themselves, I stopped letting the retards bother me,.The world or people are fucked up,no matter how much you care or try to make things better for others,there will always be people with problems and complaints majority of it stemming from lack of common sense,or as i term it uncommon sense. etc.In the end, none of the shit matters,U live once and U die once enjoy what is yours to enjoy while u can even if it seems selfish.

 

[cannabineer]

Are you saying "upper-middle-class white women in Christian families were criminalized"? Link to supporting data? cn

 

[Zaehet Strife]

Thanks, Heis. I was really just jumping on Pad's exasperated bandwagon, venting and using hyperbole to make a point. I don't want anyone to die or suffer, even the fucktards. I just want them away from me. The very few of us that tap our potential achieve so much that it carries the rest of us along very nicely. It's amazing that humanity has such a range: top scientists, industrialists and artists that give us life-lifting values to the fat, ignorant family at Jewel that find it a challenge to even check out of line efficiently, to the constantly inebriated homeless begging for sustenance. They are all human and born with similar potential. I am most optimistic after spending a few days completely alone, but when I'm forced to interact with people in everyday America they can wear down that optimism, and my patience, very quickly.
The world is certainly becoming a better place with rapid progress on many important fronts, it's easier to see this by reading about it from afar than witnessing it first-hand when I need to run my errands

Well said my friend.

 

[abandonconflict]

the scientific method, and science in general give us facts that have the highest probability of being true...

yet as confusing as this may sound, and some may never understand... the only real truth is, that there is no real truth.

If science were to figure everything out, science would stop.

 

[Zaehet Strife]

If science were to figure everything out, science would stop.

Science will figure everything out, it's just a matter of time. Science tells us what we can know, without science all we have is faith... and we all know what faith is...faith is just a beautiful word for ignoring evidence and logic to maintain peace of mind and pretending to know things that we really don't know.

 

[abandonconflict]

I think nihilism is indeed a natural consequence of atheism.

If there is no god or indeed no higher power/creator that defines what is right and wrong, just and unjust, then we can assume that the morality we feel comes simply from the wiring of our own minds.

It is evident that humans (and other species) must have developed a sense of morality (via evolution) in order to allow cooperative communities to form easily. (i.e. those individuals who where able to cooperate survived and passed their morality to their offspring whose successive generation added to in the same manner).

This explains why we feel the moral urges we do and where they come from. We can see that a bad thing is only considered bad because we are "programmed" to avoid it because it is (or was) disadvantageous to our survival.

In reality a bad thing is not judged as bad by anything but ourselves and can be disregarded.

On the topic of existence itself, it can also be disregarded because it simply exists and nothing more, there is no divine creator who can ascribe reason and purpose to anything.

So I think all atheists will eventually become nihilists. If they don't know it then they just haven't been introduced fairly to what nihilism is and/or haven't thought about it.

All my opinion.

ni·hil·ism/ˈnīəˌlizəm/
Noun:

1. The rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.
2. Extreme skepticism, according to which nothing in the world has a real existence.

I am an atheist. My religion is Methodological Naturalism and Empirical Scientific pursuit. I reject the notion that morality requires a God's eye view. In fact, if the threat of hell or the promise of heaven is what motivates morality, then faith only serves to put fear in a place where there should be only love.

There is a biological and evolutionary basis for emotion, morality and altruistic behavior. It is in the best interest of a species to collectively struggle for existence and this gives rise to those aspects of human nature. Attributing these to a creator's design is not necessary, for who created the creator?

At this question one may ask, how could this existence be the result of a cosmic accident? That is like suggesting that an explosion in a print shop would result in a Bible being printed with no editing needed.

The existence we have lies within a narrow set of parameters. The odds that all of the correct amino acids would be in a pool mixing into self replicating proteins is astronomical. The odds that a planet will be the right distance from the right type of star with the right composition of elements and the perfect tilt in it's axis, again astronomical. In fact, each of these parameters exponentially increases the odds against such an accident occurring. How could this be an accident?

For the sake of argument, I will just conjure a number represented by the variable X. Now assume there are at least X number of stars in the sky. One of those stars will have intelligent life. Of course, the only part of this equation that is not deductively acceptable, is that I assume there are X number of stars in the sky.

Therefore I say, there are MANY inhabited planets.

 

[Padawanbater2]

Science will figure everything out, it's just a matter of time.

I disagree with this, the more we figure out, the more there is to figure out. I don't think we'll ever reach a day where science finally ends and we've figured absolutely everything there is to know out.

 

[abandonconflict]

Science will figure everything out, it's just a matter of time. Science tells us what we can know, without science all we have is faith... and we all know what faith is...faith is just a beautiful word for ignoring evidence and logic to maintain peace of mind and pretending to know things that we really don't know.

There is no end to the wonder. I only hope the same can be said of the discoveries. Discovery is therefore the meaning of life. It is the direction, the nature and the splendid beauty of existence. I therefore disagree, an atheist has much more to live for that a theist. If you have everything figured out, you have nothing to live for, that would make you the nihilist, not me.

 

[abandonconflict]

Good thread by the way, made my day. I know you're not a theist, that last part there wasn't directed at any person.


and +rep for brightening my day.