The Secular Case Against Nihilism (and for Meaning)

England and America are two of the most irreligious countries in the world, with England standing at an estimated 69% irreligiosity and America standing at around 39% of people who consider themselves irreligious. These gains or losses as it were, of religious beliefs are beyond a statistic, they represent a mass abandonment of faith-based assertions and irrational ideas of god figures.

Increasingly, as the statistics show, more and more people are losing their faith, and for good reason too: the current variations of religion are often tyrannical and exploitative, demanding by force the money of the working man regardless of whether they attend, some parishes taking up to 20% of earnings.

That isn't even to mention the horrors committed by followers and subscribers of so-called 'extremist variations of otherwise harmless faiths' faiths which do indeed justify and call for the harm enacted by terrorists.

No, there are reasons to be sceptical of faith in all its forms, not least because it demands so much trust from individuals and from the group in terms of financial demands, and unjustified assertions of superiority and the demand we all blindly follow holy writ simply because it is written down.

Many atheists have, thus, become hostile to any idea or assertion of belief at all, have become distrustful and moved from becoming sceptics to cynics. The line is fine, so it is rather easy to do so. And with cynicism comes that old friend whom so likes to harm: nihilism.

It is unavoidable that all atheists will feel some level of nihilism, but it is true for any transition of faith or transformation of identity or massive change that occurs to us. When I lost whatever semblance of faith I once had, I felt simultaneous relief, and I felt a great void in my being. I was never religious, but I did believe that there was something vague and nebulous enough to never be reachable.

It's only with the realisation that it was unreachable and seemingly self-manufactured so, that I realised faith was a sham, a scam and a hoax. All holy men that spoke were liars and conmen, desiring nothing more than monetary and personal gain using deception and coercion. That's what I thought, and felt in my most extreme moments.

It's also, at this point, that I realised I believed in nothing, that my purpose on this world was designed by no one, and I began to adopt an at first healthy positive nihilism, then a crushing negative nihilism.

We should probably define nihilism, then. Nihilism is the absolute opposite to meaning. Meaning is to nihilism what life is to death. Meaning is the purposeful sense of living, of breathing and of enjoyment of the fact you live and breathe and exist in the moment. Nihilism is not that, and it is everything that isn't that. It's the world turned bitter and the air turned fowl.

It's the cloak around existence that hides meaning, and it's more than simply an idea set or an abandonment of faith in existence/the goodness that is humanity, it's the abandonment of hope itself, of aspirations and desires and the want to simply persist in existence, or in more extreme cases, to want to end existence itself.

People lose more than their religion often, especially in massively religious America, where abandonment from your family can be the result of coming out as an atheist to your family. People lose purpose, too.

In the later stages of nihilism, you become resentful of what you have, of what others want, and grow to hate every aspect of your being. Once that happens, you become depressive in the clinical sense, and I honestly have and am there. But I am recovering, slowly but surely.

Nihilism is born of a vacuum of faith or belief structure, secular or otherwise. It's also worsened by the fact, realisation and forced acceptance that life is a losing game, and there is no way at all to win. That on its own can make you extremely bitter and resentful, and even suicidal.

So, what is the solution or fix to this disease of being? I have said it before in a prior article, but I wanted to say it again in a more personal setting: the solution is to get out there and find something to do, a reason to live. Start a family, make friends, design something, write something. Doing is the opposite of dying, therefore do and by doing you laugh in the face of nihilism and death itself.

Live your life as if there were a purpose, because one day you will find something so wonderfully fulfilling that you'll question why on earth you felt the way you did at all. I know several friends who sat in their rooms and vegetated, doing nothing for years but playing games and eating themselves to death, but the very moment they got out there and tried to do something, to be something better, they became alive and vibrant and their nihilism faded away.

A lack of belief in a god isn't any excuse to make The State or government a god either, and you will find no lasting comfort in the words of Karl Marx and his capital accumulation scam called socialism, you must be the change you want to see. Go out there and speak, do and make.

And if you feel you have slipped into the depressive stage, please as a sufferer of both nihilism and depression, I implore you to get the help you need.

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