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Nihilism and Faith


Lemniscate

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Well, got bored, and decided to make a type out a mock debate, as if it were an arguement between a man of faith (say, a Priest), and a nihilist. Not finished, I could keep going, but I figured I would post it and get people's opinions.

 

[spoiler=Here you go]

I cannot understand the nihilist. He who sees no meaning. Who believes in pure fate, without reason. It is so sad that someone would look at the globe and not think it beautiful in some sense. When I see life I smile. But the new born baby is to them just another poor soul, brought so unfairly into the world. This is without morals. And if one takes a moralistic opinion of their own, which they themselves would consider contrived, and attempts to save this child. They have killed a baby. But to them this a good service to a needy world. They who have morals of their own duty, but who lack a guiding compass to control them are like a darkness released off a leash. It is so horrible to think that a human may be so dissociated as to think it kind to kill. I can never understand that. For why should I commit a sin to save another sinner?

 

But you misunderstand. It is not a sin. They who kill in the name of freedom are just. For hasn't that been taught in the land of the free? Are you not those who claim to be God's children, and at the same time, murder those who oppose you. A nihilist is better than one with selective morals, for at least there is some consistency in them. You who may kill and preach against it are the creator of disparity. It is not just that one may be a sinner and preach against sins.

 

But how is it not just? Is not the best person to preach against sin one who has experienced it wholly? The human condition is such that the greatest that may be reached is both to realize and utilize your own infirmity to heal others with much the same. For we are all sinners, and so those who may preach in the name of God against bloodshed do so in repentance. It may be that this is not enough, that after death they may be punished. But hopefully there is some peace that for those that at least which to please to Lord may please him by their intentions.

 

But intentions and actions are disparate. There is naught to those who dream good dreams, and yet do evil in their day. For although prayer may bring peace to a person, it can not absolve you of the darkness within. We are all blackened inside, we are all of us damned.

 

But again, my friend, you are wrong. For we are saved. We as humans are all saved. But this saving requires of us our act, so insignificant in the face of the first. Our act that we acknowledge the first, and do our best to live in its example. Morals stem from this, this second act. We are people who fear God, we are those who keep his Commandments.

 

But you do not keep them. No one truly keeps them. And if that be a command of the Bible, how can you say you are saved? You cannot. And thus, morals are a delusion. There is no second act, as the first act does not absolve you of yourself. You are still yourself. The nihilist is merely one who recognizes this, one who understands that we as humans cannot be saved, and can merely do as well as to live out our lives in general peace and prosperity. That is life. Not a preparation for something else, but a blip of existence, during which we are, until we reach the end, and are not.

 

How sad, how sad. I do not understand you. How can you say you are not saved. For did not the Son of God come down and show us our saving. through Grace we are justified. The nihilist denies this, because he is one who cannot accept that morals exist. He cannot let them exist. For if they exist, then so does judgment. And for one who lives without morals, the judgment is so great and to dwarf the mind of the man who stands so boldly now on Earth. It is fear that drives the nihilist. Something irrational, something terrible. For we with morals have nothing to fear. It is morals that give us steadfastness in the face of storms, and that give us peace, in the face of overwhelming trial. For could the Jews have made it through the Holocaust without it? What then of nihilism. It must be justified in itself, it must assist in the living of life. Faith is pragmatic, nihilism is not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The priest is in regular test, the nihilist in italics, just to differentiate the two. It switches every paragraph.

 

 

 

Anyway discuss nihilism and faith. And I want actual intelligent opinions, if that's possible. If you are doing to be an idiot, don't post.

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The problem with doing a conversation is that you will always have a bias.

 

As a nihilistic existentialist, I can say that I do believe in faith. However, it is not in the idea of a "god" so to say. Rather, I have an interest in the beauty of the universe, and my faith stems from the idea that we are "existing" rather to just enjoy life.

 

Also, you only really capture nihilism in the last section of his "dialogue." A nihilist doesn't think we are damned or that life is worthless. Life just is. There is no "right" or "wrong." There just is.

 

That isn't a bad thing.

 

That isn't a good thing.

 

It just is.

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I know I will have a bias. I obviously have a bias. I do these things for several reasons though:

- So that I may attempt to better understand the opinions of other people.

- So that I may strengthen and better define my own opinions.

 

I am definitely a person who believes in God. Also, a nihilist is a person who believes that there is no point to life, that we simply exist, and will die at some point, with nothing more afterwords. There is no true reason for life, or any defining and justifying moral imperative. In the earlier paragraphs, I took that basic philosophy, that life holds no meaning, and extrapolated a moral question out of it, in this case, the killing of a baby. In the hypothetical conversation described, killing a baby is an act of mercy, as the baby will then be saved from living a life without meaning. The killer also feels no remorse for the murder, as they see it as a sort of civil service to the child. I do not think that all nihilists think that. In that particular case, it was more a pontification on a possible extension of nihilistic philosophy.

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