Nihilism is a faith based position in the same way a belief in god is a faith based position

nihilism is a faith based position in the same way a belief in god is a faith based position.

to conclude life and the universe has no ultimate meaning you would have to examine it as a whole, since as humans we are limited to a tiny part of the universe our knowledge of the whole of the universe is insufficient to come to this conclusion with anything even remotely resembling certainty. life may appear to have no meaning but there was a time when the earth appear flat, appearances can and often are deceptive.

whether life and the universe does or does not have an ultimate meaning is unknowable to us at this current time. in the same way the existence of god is. life and the universe could have an ultimate meaning and we would be ignorant to it in the same way a cog in a machine (if sentient) would be ignorant to its place in the larger system of things due to its limited perspective. the cog's life would appear to be without meaning, it spends its entire life going in a circle in what seems to be a completely inconsequential and purposeless manner. if the cog could see the entirety of the system it exists within it would see that its function does have purpose, even if that purpose is limited in scale.

the only intellectually honest position with respect to the question of whether life and the universe has any ultimate meaning is that of agnosticism. in the same way the, the only intellectually honest position with respect to the question of whether there is or is not a god is that of agnosticism.

since there is insufficient evidence to conclude life and the universe has no ultimate meaning or purpose, such a belief is based on a leap faith rather than knowledge.

prove me wrong, please.

I hope you're also agnostic about the unicorn living in your backyard

why wouldnt I be?

I dont believe its there but I dont know for sure that it isnt.

are you saying ultimate meaning is analogous to unicorns?

>Le you cant know nothing jon snow meme

Theres is actually a demon unicorn dragon necrofilic soul surrounding your body until the day of your death. The afterlife consist of being eternally sodomize by him.

>you got any proof for that claim?
>Nah but you dont have proof to proove me wrong because we cant know it yet but someday we may proove me right. Until that day my theory deserves has much respect and significance has any other since you couldnt prove me wrong and that is enough reason to making it "probable".

God fuck i hate agnosticism retards

Being agnostic doesnt mean you have to give equal credence to all positions

You dont have to conclude that life has no meaning, all you have to do is reject every proposed meaning there is, leaving you with nothing accepted while still not making the positive claim that nothing is what there actually is

this is the only reason i call myself an atheist and not an agnostic

I go with "de-facto atheist agnostic" when I want to be specific, otherwise I just say atheist

Are you the same fagnostic that gets destroyed everytime he comes to shitpost? Don't you get tired of getting fucked?

some things can be known but not whether life or the universe has an ultimate meaning or not.

the agnostic rejects positive claims until supported with evidence, so the idea that an agnostic would take the absurd beleifs you've just mentioned as seriously as other more plausible* beliefs

*(due to there being supporting but not conclusive evidence)

of course not, I never implied it did. but the belief life has or does not have an ultimate meaning deserves equal credence in the sense that there is no conclusive evidence to support either claim.

thats an interesting and seemingly valid position but is it really nihilism if you arent claiming that life or the universe has no ultimate meaning?

if you leave the possibility of the existence of an ultimate meaning open that is essentially my argument, in the same way its possible a god exists but every god claim so far has been soundly rejected due to there being insufficent evidence. that is the agnostic position which is what im arguing for.

the logical conclusion of agnosticism is atheism because if you dont know god doesnt exist (agnosticism) there is no reason to believe god exists (atheism). and atheism relies on agnosticism because the only valid reason for not believing in god is the lack of knowledge concerning god.

I dont know god exists so I cant will myself to believe it.

no this is my first time posting here friendo

Agnostic means god is unknowable, that it is not possible to know that god exists. Atheist means you don't believe in god.

You can be gnostic theist, the bible says it so it must be true.
You can be agnostic theist, you have you hard evidence but you believe there is a creator.
You can be agnostic atheist, you don't believe god exists, and even if god did exist you couldn't prove it.
You can have a gnostic atheist, evolution and science prove god doesn't exist.

>but is it really nihilism
Its agnostic or weak nihilism. All positive claims are equally untenable and always will be, there is no possibility whatsoever of a "meaning of life" ever being sufficiently justifiable to be believed in. So you are de-facto nihilist while keeping your logic strictly consistent

I don't get that equation

By your retarded logic we could never know anything because we are not omniscient. Why are agnostics so dumb? Jesus

>By your retarded logic we could never know anything because we are not omniscient
Not OP but this is objectively correct. Its just a matter of where you go from this rationally undeniable foundation

Epistemological nihilism is self-refuting.

Try again

agnosticism: a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.

Ive only ever used the first half of that definition.

I dont know how anyone could conclude with anything resembling certainty that god is unknowable, I only know that I dont know whether or not god is real.

how could anyone ever know or prove knowledge of god is unattainable?

ok that is interesting. maybe thats what I am, an agnostic nihilist. but if there is no possibility whatsoever of a meaning of life doesnt that mean we can say with certainty that life is meaningless? in which case that would be plain old nihilism rather than agnostic.

You should study logic

not (p or q)
=
not p and not q
!=
not p or not q

>Epistemological nihilism is self-refuting
How so?

>but if there is no possibility whatsoever of a meaning of life doesnt that mean we can say with certainty that life is meaningless
No not at all. It is entirely theoretically possible that life actually does have meaning or purpose or intent. The point is that it is fundamentally unkowable

thats a false dilemma logical fallacy.

I dont need to be omniscient to know that I exist.
I dont need to be omniscient to know 1+1=2
I dont need to be omniscient to know all bachelors are unmarried.

the knowledge required to prove a claim is proportional to the extent that the claim aims to correspond with reality, if I make a claim about absolute reality, such as the universe has an ultimate meaning, the extent of that claim goes beyond the kind of tautology or self-evident truth in my previous examples of what is known.

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to claim the sum of existence is meaningless you would have to have knowledge of the sum of existence.

that reply was meant to be to

if its theoretically possible life has a meaning, how can you say there is no possibility whatsoever of life having a meaning?

that seems to be clearly self-contradictory.

Because you take some axioms, use logic, and prove it is theoretically impossible based on those axioms.

>I dont need to be omniscient to know that I exist
This is correct and the sole exception

>I dont need to be omniscient to know 1+1=2
>I dont need to be omniscient to know all bachelors are unmarried.
I thought it was implied I was referring to the nature of reality rather than tautological constructs, but if that was not clear I apologise. You are of course correct about things that we make up

>how can you say there is no possibility whatsoever of life having a meaning?
There is no possibility whatsoever of you proving what that meaning is, should it exist. Your justification will always be based on unprovable axioms

>How so?

Claiming that knowledge is impossible is self-refuting. Self-evident to see why: if epistemological nihilism is true, then you could never know that "epistemological nihilism is true", you could never know anything, not even the meaning of words.

Claiming that knowledge is impossible is akin to claiming "I don't exist", it refutes itself.

I find that fascinating.

Its a trap that will destroy you. Better to lie to yourself

if no one ever threw themselves into the philosophical meat grinder youve just described the ground from which new theories and problems emerge would never be fertilized and it would turn barren and philosophy would stagnate even more than it already has.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a popular saying, not a principle of epistemology. All a claim requires to be reasonably hold is that, given the evidence, it's more likely than not.

Given the evidence, the claim that existence has no inherent meaning is more likely given the law of parsimony.

So OP I am not a nihilist by any means as it's an irrational reactionary stance, but your reasoning for why it is not logical is extremely flawed.

>to conclude life and the universe has no ultimate meaning you would have to examine it as a whole
To conclude there is meaning in the universe, it would have to be observed. It is 100% objective to say "no evidence of meaning has been discovered by humans". Linguistic phrasing is important, you can't decide that people are being illogical by rephrasing what they say into something illogical. That is a textbook example of a straw man.

Your cog analogy is pure poetry, it proves nothing.

>the only intellectually honest position with respect to the question of whether life and the universe has any ultimate meaning is that of agnosticism
"There could be gods" or "there could be meaning" or "the christian god could be real" are all equally logical statements to make as "unicorns might secretly run denmark", "space whales will soon visit the earth", or "pluto is a sentient object". If there is no evidence to suggest something to exist, considering it's existence is up to you, but, why?

>since there is insufficient evidence to conclude life and the universe has no ultimate meaning or purpose, such a belief is based on a leap faith rather than knowledge.
Burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Prove to me that unicorns aren't secretly running denmark. Until you can, it's possible that it's happening. This is agnosticism. This is retarded.

The actual issue with nihilism is that it is a reactionary stance without purpose. It might as well be something called "antiunicism", which claims that unicorns do not in fact run denmark. That would be a silly thing to identify as.

Non-cognitivism is the logically sound reactionary position that states that because moral statements lack evidence, they cannot be truth-apt. This applies to nihilism.

Nothing emerges from what I described. Its the death of thought, which should be trivially obvious if you think about the point for a few seconds

So is the issue here that making any sort of claim requires adopting certain axioms, and adopting those axioms makes claiming nihilism self-contradictory, but we don't consider a claim being "impossible to make" a falsification?

>So is the issue here that making any sort of claim requires adopting certain axioms
The issue is that any and every proposition barring your own existence rests on axioms, and axioms are fundamentally unprovable, so any conclusion drawn from those axioms is also unprovable

>barring your own existence
The thing you are so sure of is not what you think it is.

Irrelevant, its still certain regardless of the specifics of its nature

"To conclude there is meaning in the universe, it would have to be observed. It is 100% objective to say "no evidence of meaning has been discovered by humans"

Im talking about ultimate meaning, there is clearly meaning in the universe otherwise your statement and this one would be unintelligible. other than that I agree with what you said.


"Your cog analogy is pure poetry"
ill take that as a compliment

"it proves nothing."
it wasnt meant to prove anything just illustrate my point.

"If there is no evidence to suggest something to exist, considering it's existence is up to you, but, why?"

because its a popular belief that influences people and society. I used to be a nihilist but I can no longer bring myself to that position.

anyway thanks for the thoughtful replies I appreciate it and it gave me alot to think about, I have to go now but I'll be back at a later date (if it hasnt 404d) to check and see if there is anything else mentioned here worth thinking about.

>Non-cognitivism is the logically sound reactionary position that states that because moral statements lack evidence, they cannot be truth-apt.

Non-cognitivism is pretty much dead by this point. Moral error theory (a form of moral nihilism) is by far the strongest form of moral anti-realism.

Nigger just greentext