So I just finished reading a book called Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev and the story line deals with a lot of atheism, liberalism and nihilism. The novel ignites some controversy, it shows the generation gap between the "Fathers" and the "Sons" which seemingly symbolizes the current political debate between the older reactionaries and the younger radicals. One character of the book claims himself to be a "Nihilist" which I am mystified by.
A Nihilist is one who believes in nothing (which often Atheists are mistaken to be) whereas Atheists don't believe in "Gods" but they do believe in something else, Nihilist just don't believe in ANY truth, they believe life has no meaning or purpose. My intention is not to disrespect anyone's religion but to better understand these views, and like Quang's post on "Religion", it got me thinking... What are Atheists and Nihilists views on morality and about the origins of the universe?
Could any of you clear this up for me?
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Well, Breahna, the similarity between the two groups is that they don't believe in any gods controlling the world. Atheists believe in a supreme power ruling us, just not gods. To be honest, I've never even heard of a Nihilist. According to dictionary.com:
ReplyDelete---Nihilist: (noun), total rejection of established laws and institutions; an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
Simple definitions aren't always enough to satisfy, but they help when you have no idea about a word or term. So, what I get from this definition and a little research, is that Nihilists simply don't believe in any way of living to follow expectations from a 'godly figure'. Christians, for example, live to meet expectations and live a pure life to make it to heaven- that's their goal. Families of Christian faith always go to church. As a Catholic, I follow these same morals, and have since I was a newborn. Unlike Christians, Nihilists don't follow a 'steady road' to meet a afterlife goal. They just live to live so to say.
So really, Breahna, the only similarity between an Atheist and a Nihilist is that they don't believe in a godly figure. Also, here are a few links I found via google.com.
http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyschoolssystems/p/nihilism.htm
http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
http://www.counterorder.com/nihilism.html
*I Hope this helps out.*
Breahna has demonstrated her ability to look stuff up online already. I'm not sure she was asking you to do a quick Wikipedia search for her. Her question was on morals and origins of the universe. The distinction between nihilists and atheists is contained in her post.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to refer everybody back to the article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid"? I posted it early in the summer. Anyone can do a Wikipedia search and poke around on Google for a few minutes, but the understanding that comes from that practice is superficial at best, and sometimes dangerously so. This is neither clear or definitive, yet the tone is didactic. The explanation of Christian theology is something you might tell a child in Sunday school when they are about 5 years old, but insufficient for an AP class. The tone suggests that here are the differences, it's all settled, that is that, inquiry over. I think that is what I object to the most.
These are BAD HABITS for would-be scholars to slip into. Bad bad bad bad bad.
The intention is good and helpful, but the answer is no answer.