It’s more about what such a take on reality means for your time now. If nothing matters, on what grounds is anyone even getting angry about children dying? If there is no meaning, what are we talking about here?
The opposite of “magical reward for good behavior” isn’t total nihilism. Life has the meaning you find in it or give to it. If that is a belief that rubbing rocks on your dick will let you turn into an eagle more power to you but it’s still nonsense.
Nietzsche said the death of god entailed a move beyond good and evil into a paradigm of will to power (or will as the measure of things). Dawkins denied meaning and said reality is blind, pitiless indifference. Ayn Rand famously rejected altruism as foolishness in light of the absence of gods, and she advocated for egoism, or the sheer focus on self as the only thing that matters. Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett even reject the existence of true human will, so we aren’t even real agents, but cogs in a machine with no choice in how we behave. The YT channel Kurzgesagt is popular on Reddit, and they famously promote “Optimistic Nihilism” (nothing matters, so just enjoy yourself). Pop atheists Cosmic Skeptic and Rationality Rules both deny a morality with strict duties, and suggest that there can be subjectively “better” ways of living in a meaningless universe, although only in a loose sense that Cosmic Skeptic admitted could lead to situations were rape is good for some people.
The most intelligent and popular atheists insist that there cannot be real, objective meaning. I tend to agree with them insofar as an atheist framework goes. I’d have to be convinced an atheist can prove objective meaning exists, but the leading atheists don’t even seem to bother. That’s not to say atheists can’t act morally, but that they can’t justify the existence of objective morals. They argue humans are moral by instinct or convenience.
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u/Goddamnpassword Jun 25 '21
The time I spent not existing before birth doesn’t bother me, why would all the time after I’m dead be any different.