A Refutation of Nihilism
This is a response to 'Introduction' -the first entry in Late Night Philosophy
Imagine nothing. Is there a house? ... No, of course not. You also said, 'nothing comes from nothing...' There must first be something eternal. So now we have the creation of some 2 x 4 beams of wood, some nails, hammers, drywall, shingles...and now, is there a house? No...not unless there is some forces working on them! Matter does not yeild a house. It does not have the right form. Matter needs the right form to be a (human) house. It also needs something else, right? A carpenter! So there is a carpenter...extrinsic forces...but still no house. Oh - one last thing is needed! the carpenter needs a purpose - he needs blueprints to make a human house.
I am not saying the carpenter has no free will, I am just saying that he has a purpose. If a series of chemical reactions caused the carpenter to form the house, which in turn were caused by another series of chemical reactions etc... all the way to something outside the carpenter (which eh was not responsible for), he could not be free. However, this mode of thought is obscuring causality and freedom. Think of it like this: imagine something floating through the air, half way between a virus and a cell. If we were trying to answer the question, 'what is life?' we would not start there! Now imagine a cat purring, walking back and forth and rubbing against your shins. And imagine a corpse...Okay, now we can start to know the commonalities of living things. Thus, we do not know about freedorm from nearly imperceptible particles or invisible forces, but through an experience of truth. We encounter God through Jesus Christ. He has given us the freedom to always grow in confidence in God's sure help (like in times of suffering). He always offers (and we are free to respond to the gift) assurance of the invisible realities casunig our hearts to beat at this very moment. We are always free to grow in love through the knowledge of the good in our neighbor and steadfast service. We experience freedom in and through our bodies even though there are forces like gravity at work around us.
Say there was an alchemist who tried to invent a potion that would make him live forever, but he failed and died. From this, we would say something like, "I believe that humanity will endevour to exist," or, 'living things tend toward life.' This natural tendency toward life is the basis for the widely known fact that murder is evil. Further, we ought not to just consider our lives, or the lives of the significant majority, but of all people, especially the marginalized and the defenseless. The rationalization, 'living things tend toward death,' is a mere equivocation.
Our desire for unlimmited life will not be frusterated. Our bodies wil be raised and God will create a new heavens and a new earth. There we are invited to dwell in communion with the Trinitarian God and in communion with all the saints.
Nihilism says that we are not meant to do anything, "...nothing we do really matters..." Frankly, the onus is on nihilism to prove that human beings are not meant to do anything when our bodily form implies such purpose. This false philosophy masquerades as freedom from the 'confines of love', saying, 'WE should not LIE TO OURSELVES, putting RESTRICTIONS on ourselves LIKE, 'I MUST do this' or 'I MUST NOT do that...there is NO POINT in APPRECIATING the WONDERS OF LIFE and love. However, it is not a lie to strive to perfection and happiness.
On the other hand, Christians are encouraged to plummet into the depths of wonder. God even imparts a supernatural gift called Wonder and Awe (the experience of which is 'Super-Natural'). We sometimes say it with such conviction but then we ignore it later: 'nature is beautiful'. Scientists can gain special enjoyment from it, having observed some of its inner workings. For people with open minds, the more they know, the more they wonder. The more they wonder, the more they desire to know. To say that 'we are not meant to understand these things, but we should just sit back like dumb globs of cells,' is really crazy. You yourself said that you want our species to "live forever and learn everything there is to know." You KNOW that humans are meant to understand. There is the catch word: we are meant to do something. God is reflected in all of nature, especially human people. Light shines through the darkness.' We are "fearfully and wonderfully made."
-szak |
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