From The Retrospective
This comes closest to upending my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind. People tap me on the shoulder and ask "can you seriously believe that the Holocaust or abusing children or cold-blooded murder is not inherently, necessarily immoral?"The problems with moral nihilism can be illustrated by simply thinking about historical and present social events which provoke most of us into feelings of moral disgust. Think of, say, events like the Holocaust, terrorism, child abuse, or murder. The moral nihilist’s account of morality prevents them from condemning these sorts of events in any persuasive way, since the moral nihilist thinks that morality as a concept is completely redundant.
And, sure, the part of me that would never, could never imagine my own participation in things of this sort has a hard time accepting that, yes, in a No God world they are still behaviors able to be rationalized by others as either moral or, for the sociopaths, justified given their belief that everything revolves around their own "me, myself and I" self-gratification.
And what is the No God philosophical -- scientific? -- argument that establishes certain behaviors as in fact objectively right or objectively wrong? Isn't it true that philosophers down through the ages who did embrace one or another rendition of deontology always included one or another rendition of the transcending font -- God -- to back it all up?
For all I know, had my own life been different...for any number of reasons...I would myself be here defending the Holocaust. Or engaging in what most construe to be morally depraved behaviors.
After all, do not the pro-life folks insist that abortion itself is no less a Holocaust inflicted on the unborn? And do not the pro-choice folks rationalize this behavior with their own subjective sets of assumptions.
Far enough? Well, for some that means bringing morality around to God. For others around what they construe to be "nature's way". The Know Thyself mentality of those like Satyr. For still others it is one or another "ism" in the Humanist catalogue. Or one or another political ideology.The moral nihilist may defend their opposition to these events by stating the correctness or desirability of social conventions which dictate the sorts of behaviour which given cultural and social communities consider morally wrong. But the nihilist does not enquire far enough into the reasons why people think some actions and events are morally wrong.
Though, okay, if someone here is convinced they have in fact discovered the optimal reason why we should behave one way and not any other, let's explore that in a No God world.
What would be argued when confronting the Adolph Hitlers and the Ted Bundys and the 9/11 religious fanatics and the sociopaths among us. Arguments such that they would be convinced that the behaviors they choose are indeed inherently, necessarily immoral.
How would you reason with them?