cogitating this morning about how if you are not a theist, the ONLY other logical option is to be an Existentialist/Nihilist (OK, I’m odd). Quite a coincidence to see someone else talking about it! But I’m pretty “up” on such things, and it seems very clear to me that those are the only options.
So go ahead, make your choice. But if you choose Nihilism, you really have no moral leg to stand on. There simply is no Truth. ALL is just preference and a will-to-power. There IS no Truth! There IS no right or wrong. There IS no moral existence at all! At best there is mere mechanism, but just as a hammer doesn’t choose to hit a nail (and therefore doesn’t exist as a moral entity), YOU are merely a mechanism. YOU don’t exist as a moral entity! Maybe you are more complex, but you are still every bit as much of a mechanism as a hammer or a dishwasher or a USB hub.
See, without God and without moral agency, there IS no moral existence!
If you’ve read The Stranger by Albert Camus, the argument is quite clear: Sure. I killed him on the beach, but that was because it was hot and the sun was beating down on me, and that is no more or less moral or meaningful than not killing him.
Even you punishing me for the killing is meaningless.
ALL is vanity!
Sure, Camus tried to salvage some form of morality by ultimately saying that though you are literally in the place of Sisyphus, it would not be noble to kill yourself.
Really, Albert? So you spend years making an argument that there is no transcendent morality, and then at the end, ground your argument in… transcendent morality in order to make it work and to avoid a conclusion you don’t like? Wow!
