“Nihilism is a denial of any philosophy or worldview—a denial of the possibility of knowledge, a denial that anything is valuable. If it proceeds to the absolute denial of everything, it even denies the reality of existence itself. In other words, nihilism is the negation of everything—knowledge, ethics, beauty, reality. In nihilism no statement has validity; nothing has meaning.” — The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James W. Sire

Nihilism is a toxic understanding of reality (i.e., a worldview) that is spreading like a cancer throughout our culture. Of all the false worldviews, it is the most dangerous. Nihilism is the spawn of the worldview of naturalism. When one takes seriously the idea that matter is all there is, the Biblical concept of humanity is annihilated. If one follows naturalism consistently to its logical conclusion, they will inevitably end up with nihilism. But why then do most naturalists not become nihilists? It is because the vast majority of naturalists do not—and cannot—live consistently within their own worldview. They are unwilling to follow naturalism to its logical conclusion and walk off the cliff into insanity.

For example, naturalists will illegitimately borrow the concept of morality from the Christian worldview. Naturalism leads to nihilism because of the implications of the death of God and the disappearance of any transcendent values. However, most naturalists are inconsistent within their own worldview, affirming a set of values; they simply cannot commit intellectual suicide and follow their worldview to its logical, fatal conclusion. On the other hand, a consistent naturalist is a closet nihilist who does not know where he is.

Consider Samuel Beckett’s nihilistic “art” in Breath, a thirty-five-second play that has no human actors. The props consist of a pile of rubbish on the stage, lit by a light that begins dim, brightens (but never fully), and then recedes to dimness. There are no words, only a “recorded” cry opening the play, an inhaled breath, an exhaled breath, and an identical “recorded” cry closing the play. For Beckett life is such a “breath.” Consider Marcel Duchamp’s ordinary urinal purchased on a common hardware store, signed with a fictional name, and labeled Fountain.

To read Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and more recently, Douglas Adams is to begin to feel—if one does not already in our depressing age—the pangs of human emptiness, of life that is without value . . . without purpose . . . without meaning. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams’s cosmic science-fiction novels picture the situation for those who seek an answer to human meaning. By the end of the second novel, the time travelers discover that the “question itself” (the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything) is “What is six times nine?”

“For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two—and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.” Huh? Both the question and the answer are inane. Not only is forty-two a meaningless answer to the question posed, it is bad mathematics. Nihilism reduces the most rational academic discipline (mathematics) to absurdity.

One of the worst consequences of embracing epistemological nihilism is that it has caused some to question the very facticity of the universe. When one embraces full-blown nihilism, nothing is real . . . not even themselves. People who reach this state are in deep trouble for they can no longer function as human beings. We usually do not recognize this situation as metaphysical or epistemological nihilism. Rather, we often prefer to blame a physical cause in the brain and call it schizophrenia, or bipolar, or delusion. And we treat the person as mentally ill.

Nihilism asserts there is no God and everything is meaningless. Its’ chief proponent, Nietzsche, went insane at age 44 and died at age 55 in an institution. Nihilism has no objective value system – nothing matters. Transgenderism represents the resurgence of Nihilism and explains its exorbitant suicide rate (20% suicide with 40% attempting suicide) and astounding depression rate (80%) among transgenders.

In fact, nihilism fuels the existing transgender insanity.

“This exposes a sad, largely unacknowledged truth about the nonbinary movement. It is driven in large part by a desire to mutilate one’s body for its own sake. It is an act primarily of negation, of nihilism. Nonbinaries want to erase the physical signs of their sex.” – Malcom Clark

“One knows my demand of philosophers that they place themselves beyond good and evil—and that they have the illusion of moral judgement beneath them. This demand follows from an insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgment has this in common with religious judgment that it believes in realities which do not exist.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind”

In a universe where God is dead, people are not guilty of violating a moral law; they are only “guilty of guilt”. And that is quite serious, for nothing can be done about it. If one had sinned, there might be atonement. If one had broken a law, the lawmaker might forgive the criminal. But if one is only guilty of guilt, there is no way to solve that problem.

The strands of ethical nihilism weave a rope long enough to put an entire culture on the gallows. In nihilism, we end up in total despair of ever seeing ourselves, the world, and others in any significant way. Nothing has meaning.

Next, in Part 2, are five reasons that nihilism is unlivable.

Part 2 is here