Falsely Equating Atheism With Nihilism

Graham Preston at Online Opinion plays devil's advocate:

[link] Let’s take it as given that Richard Dawkins is correct: God does not, and never has, existed.

With that being so, what necessarily follows about life, the universe and everything?

He then proceeds to barrel wildly into wrong-headed, opinionated oblivion by treating "atheism" and the philosophy "nihilism" as synonyms.

More below the fold...

[link] This is not to deny that individuals or groups of people do not manufacture their own goals or direction for life; of course they do. It is typical of religious beliefs, for example, that there be a heaven or nirvana awaiting the faithful one day. But according to an atheistic ontology these are merely vain imaginings. It may well be the case that the universe will one day collapse back into nothingness or that life may flourish on every planet, but whatever happens it will not be because of some great cosmic scheme. There is no such scheme, hence there can be no ultimate meaning, purpose or goal which anyone need strive towards or care about. In that sense no person can be a success or a failure. It simply does not matter to matter what happens.

This remains true not just in relation to the whole of life but also in regards to all the moral decisions made along the way. Nothing that a person or any other creature does is the right or the wrong thing to do in any given situation. This is so because there never is, within an atheistic framework, any such thing as the right or wrong thing to do.

Later, in the comments, he responds to a comment from an atheist:

[comment link] And I did state very clearly that I acknowledge that people and societies do make up their own meaning and moral codes - but that is all they are - manufactured fictions. One moral code, such as Hitler's, is as 'good' or as 'bad' as another's, such as Mandela's.

Graham is neglecting to take evolutionary feedback into account. Yes, morality and ethics are manufactured, but they are not consciously manufactured by individuals like Hitler and Mandela. They are emergent properties of human societies.

"Good" and "bad" are deceptive, emotionally-laden words that do not quite convey the correct meaning that needs to be conveyed here. We need to define our terms. "Good" in this context should mean "a successful survival strategy", and "bad" should mean "an unsuccessful survival strategy".

(Please note that I said "in this context" above. That is, within the context of Graham's assertion that in an "atheist" world, Hitler's and Mandela's moralities are both neither good nor bad. They are equal because there is no "ultimate meaning". That is the context that I am referring to here. Obviously, in everyday common speech, the words "good" and "bad" denote some very specific meanings when we use them - meanings that would not exist without the framework of an evolutionarily successful morality surrounding them.)

Our ethics and moralities develop and flourish because they are either a useful survival strategy (IE - they help our species survive), or they are not a useful survival strategy (in which case they are modified until they do work well, or until the species does not survive - in which case the point is moot. Game over.). The larger the number of individuals within a society, the better the feedback is over generations, and the morality and ethics for a given society of human beings is polished and honed to the point where it works well consistently, becoming a useful tool in assisting our species' survival.

When you get right down to brass tacks, the only true measure of a species' success is whether or not it still exists - whether or not it survives.

The ethics and moralities that us humans have developed over hundreds of thousands of years work well. That is the reason why morality exists. We are still here. There are indeed local cases, like a Hitler or a Stalin where for a while a different morality is attempted. If it is successful, it is adopted into the wider society. If it is not successful, as in both of those cases, the societies that gave birth to these aberrant moralities do not survive. Morality is a species-level survival tool that pre-dates Christianity. Christianity adopted an existing morality and declared that their God created it. Yes, Christianity is a moral parasite, co-opting that which already exists for it's own purposes.

The truth is that to date there is no good evidence for the existence of any supernatural agency of any kind whatsoever. It is wishful thinking and self-deception to assume that there is in the face of this massive absence of evidence. The human species will continue to survive for as long as it can - that is the nature of any species on our planet. The way we survive *may be* to employ self deception and wishful thinking - who is to say what strategy will be successful in the long term? Or, it may be to embrace our natural morality that has allowed us to come this far and strip away the magical religious trappings we have draped over it throughout the years.

What Graham does not understand is that atheism is merely the absence of god belief within a human being. It isn't a "world view", or a religion, or a philosophy. It doesn't "logically lead" to anything at all. It is a singular description, suggesting *nothing* except that absence of god belief in a human being that I mentioned above. Most important and relevant to his article however, is that atheism most certainly does not equal nihilism. Nihilism is a silly philosophy that does not take large group dynamics and feedback into account.

In short, he seems to have used the word "atheism" where he should have used the word "nihilism" in his article. I would not have any problem with it then. Atheism and nihilism are not synonyms, and using them as such is disingenuous.