Humanism and Nihilism

Philosopher William Lane Craig once wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, of all places, in which he succinctly explained a crucial problem with naturalism, particularly the naturalism of those who call themselves secular humanists.

Humanism is essentially the view that we should act so as to promote the well-being of the human race. There are Christian humanists (indeed, all Christians should be humanists in this sense), and there are secular humanists who are atheistic or naturalistic. This variety of humanism denies any supernatural warrant for their humanism.

They believe that we should care about humanity simply because it's the right thing to do which is rather silly since it's based on an obvious circularity: we should care about others because caring about others is what we should do.

In his op-ed Craig argues that the secular humanist is in a real bind. Not only does he have to show that theism is wrong, he also has to show that nihilism is wrong. Here's part of his column, which, unfortunately, is no longer available online:

• The theist maintains that objective moral values are grounded in God.
• The humanist maintains that objective moral values are grounded in human beings.
• The nihilist maintains that moral values are ungrounded and therefore ultimately subjective and illusory.

The humanist is thus engaged in a struggle on two fronts: on the one side against the theists and on the other side against the nihilists. This is important because it underlines the fact that humanism is not a default position.

That is to say, even if the theist were wrong, that would not mean that the humanist is right. For if God does not exist, maybe it is the nihilist who is right. The humanist needs to defeat both the theist and the nihilist. In particular, he must show that in the absence of God, nihilism would not be true.

In fact, the inescapable conclusion of atheism is that moral nihilism is true. In chapter 5 of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, atheistic philosopher Alex Rosenberg describes the downside of the moral nihilism which he himself espouses:

In a world where physics fixes all the facts, it’s hard to see how there could be room for moral facts. In a universe headed for its own heat death, there is no cosmic value to human life, your own or anyone else’s. Why bother to be good?....

First, nihilism can’t condemn Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or those who fomented the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan one. If there is no such thing as “morally forbidden,” then what Mohamed Atta did on September 11, 2001, was not morally forbidden. Of course, it was not permitted either. But still, don’t we want to have grounds to condemn these monsters? Nihilism seems to cut that ground out from under us.

Second, if we admit to being nihilists, then people won’t trust us. We won’t be left alone when there is loose change around. We won’t be relied on to be sure small children stay out of trouble.

Third, and worst of all, if nihilism gets any traction, society will be destroyed. We will find ourselves back in Thomas Hobbes’s famous state of nature, where “the life of man is solitary, mean, nasty, brutish and short.” Surely, we don’t want to be nihilists if we can possibly avoid it. (Or at least, we don’t want the other people around us to be nihilists.)....

Yet, in the absence of God, Rosenberg admits, there's really no way to escape the conclusion that nihilism is the most plausible option:

To avoid these outcomes, people have been searching for scientifically respectable justification of morality for least a century and a half. The trouble is that over the same 150 years or so, the reasons for nihilism have continued to mount.

Both the failure to find an ethics that everyone can agree on and the scientific explanation of the origin and persistence of moral norms have made nihilism more and more plausible while remaining just as unappetizing.

He's surely correct that if God doesn't exist then there's nothing upon which to base objective moral values.

Regrettably, this is either unrecognized by most atheists or it's too unpalatable for them to swallow. Unwilling to admit that philosopher Richard Rorty was right when he stated that "For the secular man there's no answer to the question, 'Why not be cruel?'" and unwilling to accept the existence of a transcendent moral authority as the necessary ground of all moral obligation, they remain irrationally suspended in moral mid-air.

They try to live as if there are objective moral obligations incumbent upon us all while simultaneously denying that objective moral obligations exist. They live as if there is a God while simultaneously denying that God exists.

And then they scoff at theism for being irrational.