Woody Allen, Nihilist
By Matthew Boudway at Commonweal website
Bingo!
Well, one of them.
This encompasses my reaction to the Humanists among us. Of which I was once one myself. They reject the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God as 1] a font assuring a definitive differentiation between moral from immoral behavior, as 2] an omnipresent point of view assuring us that no one can ever get away with immoral behavior and as 3] an all powerful Being assuring us that the immoral behavior will be punished.
Yet, while accepting the actual existential reality of 2 and 3 in a No God world, they still insist their own philosophical or political or [for some] scientific assessments can at least determine which behaviors are in fact moral and which are not.
And, okay, I ask them to bring their own assumptions here out into the world and demonstrate to us why, in a world bursting with conflicting goods about practically everything, their own moral narrative and political agenda encompasses either the optimal perspective from which to concoct “rules of behavior” or is, in fact, the only rational perspective. Given that, down through the ages, there have been hundreds of them for us to choose from.
And, given the argument of the nihilists and the sociopaths that, in the absence of God, all things are permitted. How philosophically, politically or scientifically is that necessarily wrong?
Unless, of course, given a No God world, there is in fact an argument from the Humanists that transcends the arguments from the sociopaths and the nihilists. My own participation on this thread reflects the ambivalence that consumes me in confronting this. On the one hand, I would like to believe that my own frame of mind here is a reasonable point of view. That I am capable of being rational here. On the other hand, I would like to come across an argument that refutes it. Why? Because in believing it I remain “fractured and fragmented” here and now, preparing to topple over in the abyss that is oblivion there and then.
The irony being that if determinism gets “hard” enough, I am left believing that I am left believing only that which I was ever able to believe in a world where human volition is just a psychological illusion.
And yet I recognize that my own intelligence is hardly the most supple one around. Even here. So there is always the possibility that someone can come up with an argument that hopefully crumples mine to dust.