Returning to Church Won't Save Us From Nihilism
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The article argues that returning to church won't save us from nihilism, sparking a discussion on the role of religion and community in addressing existential crises.
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He explains in detail exactly why a "nostalgic return to religion" cannot save us from, not just nihilism, but the entire set of crises western society is undergoing.
The scaffolding we use for meaning, language, myth, causality, narratives, these are all Pleistocene tools that have long overstyed their welcome. Access to meaning is a total failure of imagination of the basics.
The problem with meaning is the problem with the words. Get rid of them and their agentic curse that lowballs meaning. There are glyphs, movies, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Chorti/Yucatec etc., Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
We use landfill for communication. Western languages are terrible hacks of sense-emotion-syntax. That got hacked in Gutenberg, ASCII, web now AI. It's dead.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb...
The Ancient Greek model of politics isn't compatible with liberal pluralism. The former assumes a common end and the latter assumes diverse conflicting ends. The Ancient Greek model looks more like modern China than it does like modern America or Europe.
Turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour, etc, etc, are not something they are keen on.
This undermines your thesis, because it's not the mystic woo about virgin birth and transubstantiation and resurrection (which they all profess to believe in) that's important - it's the canon - adherence to which is entirely orthogonal to faith.
It can't in large parts of the US because it's a fringe minority, but doesn't it behave in the exact same way in an area where it is the dominant social affiliation?
Its rituals are just as odd and esoteric as the practices of the stranger evangelical churches.
Because this is the case, and because of the hierarchy in place for interpreting scripture and handing down sacred tradition, it becomes less likely that there will be problematic theological dilution or drift.
Biden was closest to a traditional Catholic and they *loathed* him.
Because I can think of at least a few (Jainism, various Chinese schools of thought, etc) that capture the spirit if not the exact message of "love your enemy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism
To me, “Love your enemies”, feels abusive -- or being groomed for abuse. Love those who hurt you. I agree that is more emotionally demanding, mostly in a personally harmful way. I'll take Buddha's approach to Devadatta over the Jesus "love your enemy". I can have compassion and understanding for an enemy, I would even say it's vital to preventing further harm -- understanding them, their motives and having compassion with that understanding. But loving them? That feels more like inviting violence while pleading with them to stop while handing them a stick. Of course there is a fine line of overlap and in the end both can be taken the same way. I simply believe compassion and understanding is more meaningful and less likely to be used to keep one in an abusive situation.
The amount of emotional/psychological abuse coming from the women in charge of those bible study groups was absolutely maddening. I have many horror stories. Now, I can understand why they say and do the thing they do; and I can definitely be compassionate about their shortcomings that makes them behave that way. I could almost forgive them. But I definitely cannot "love" them under any circumstance. As far as I'm concerned, they are an illegitimate dominant force and need to be fighten for good.
I think the ideology of "love your enemies" is pushed hard precisely for case like this. They intuitively know they are pushing a lie to enslave others to their bullshit and if people ever figure out what's going on, they need to have a "failsafe" to avoid retaliation.
I dumbfounded when people push Christianity as something worthwhile and even good. They are responsible for a lot of suffering, obscurantism and unjustifiable domination and a whole lot of warmongerings. It still happens today and is still a way to brainwash a lot of people and forbid them from thinking for themselves. It is an utterly destructive ideology and the only reason the world is what it is today, is because some people got wiser in France a few centuries ago and said that they have enough of the bullshit.
I think the modern tentative of presenting Christianism as something good is because they have lost the war and have fully migrated to deceptive "argumentation", wolf in sheep clothing style.
I suggest a look at the Esoterica channel on Youtube for a perspective on Jesus as a historical figure in the context of Judaism at the time[0]
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82vxOBbYSzk
See my other response on eastern thought. “Babylonian Councils of Wisdom” is vague
Christianity may have inspired the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment succeeded because it was able to separate philosophy, ethics, law and science (such as it was, "natural philosophy") from Biblical dogma and the Church.
>pagans" [...] were routinely harassed and killed
Christianity incorporated a lot of paganism in the medieval era and still maintains it today. You can see it in the old architecture, iconography, and the holidays.
>kings ruled by divine right
Paradoxically, "The Church" was against this idea and it only came about after the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Thirty Years War.
>slavery was ubiquitous
The history of Christian abolitionists is well documented.
>women were essentially the property of men
Are you talking about Catholic/Orthodox church doctrine, state-run churches like the church of England, the streak of puritanism in the United States, or something else? Are you referring to the teachings in Leviticus/Deuteronomy? The gospel contains multiple instances where Jesus refused to condemn women accused of adultery.
Yes, Christianity employed syncretism to more easily convert pagans, but then killed or forcibly converted those who refused. Please don't pretend Christianity had some kind of equitable relationship with non-Christian religions, there are entire cultures laid waste by the Church with little remaining but what revisionist versions of their history and culture they chose to write down.
>Paradoxically, "The Church" was against this idea and it only came about after the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Thirty Years War.
The belief that kings ruled through divine blessing and were given authority over people by God comes directly from the Bible. It certainly existed prior to Protestantism, even if it wasn't explicitly codified as such. And the Church disagreed because they believed the authority claimed by kings belonged to the Pope, not because they believed in separation of church and state.
>The history of Christian abolitionists is well documented.
And yet slavery was ubiquitous and firmly justified by Biblical principles. Both are true, but the principle that freedom and dignity were universal and inherent to all human beings, and should not be explicitly tied to or contingent upon religious belief, is a secular ideal. When Paul wrote that "in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free," he was talking about equality among Christians, not a universal principle that applied to all people.
>The gospel contains multiple instances where Jesus refused to condemn women accused of adultery.
I would argue that Christianity is more influenced by Paul than Jesus. I understand that's controversial but the history of womens' rights and law (based on Christian principles) around marriage, property rights, sex and womens' sufferage seems to bear it out. You can argue certain things shouldn't have been Christian values, but I would argue that Christianity is what Christians do more so than what they say.
No. Search for "Alby's crusade", directly from the Romain church, spain crusades, and Bleda's Expulsion of moriscos (it's clearly a catholic priest idea, but it's not the church as an institution here).
In its first few centuries Christianity was community-centered, until about the 4th century when it started getting institutionalized in Rome.
I've long thought that Christianity held back human advancement for a good thousand years and now we have evil people pushing Christo-fascism and yet the church leaders seem very quiet.
As for your first statement, this is the correct explanation, that is supported by every historian that isn't a bible pusher.
Christianity is just the bullshit theory/moral code that took over when the roman empire started to fall under its own weight (and morals became bad enough that some counterbalance was necessary).
It is no coincidence that Hitler was a vegetarian. The roots are extremely similar: a deep hatred for humans, to the point that animals are declared not only equals but even better than humans. Hitler loved his dog more than any human; it just reveals a deep truth about his motivations and behavior.
You may not have researched or thought about it a lot but I can assure you this is a very valid observation.
And I think this is tangential to your point, but it has to be said that there are many different approaches to Christianity, many of which have lead (and are actively leading) to terrible violence.
Many religions today have this feature because they out-competed religions that didn't, but it's not a universal feature of religions by a long shot. If anything, religions that have this feature are inextricably connected to social coping mechanisms(evidently due the persecution).
Before Christianity took off there was plenty of “bad press,” to put mildly. Yet here we are.
I guess another way I might restate my point is to invoke the Streisand effect, or note the haters “doth protest too much” or similar notions. YMMV but repeated cathedral burnings and church and synagogue massacres had a remarkable effect on my perception of good and evil. Shooting toddlers at their morning mass; if that ain’t evil then nothing else makes any sense to me.
Say what you will of "wokeism" but it is an ethic that asks plenty of people. It constantly demands one to evaluate virtuous action or inaction. I don't think people are turning away from religion because it takes work. Because it requires real moral deliberation, it's actually more work than mere obedience to scripture.
My mileage does vary. Countless crimes of abuse and co-option of moral authority enabled by religion has proven to me that evil does exist and the presence of religion or the lack thereof is orthogonal to building a moral society.
Also, in some religions the temples are places for job searching, business networking... nothing wrong with that.
I wish I could have faith, a double major in science and philosophy killed all of that. But mystical moments still happen without all of the religious trappings, in conversation or nature.
I just don't know. Here in the US, Christian ethics still predominate, usually, and without organized religious participation, will that continue? Is it too much work to agonize over decisions without it?
Many philosophical problems informed my view of religion, but probably the most profound were Carl Sagan's invisible dragon and the problem that there are so many differing and incompatible religions. Many religious people will freely admit their beliefs have no evidence, and yet from my point of view, if that's true, how can anyone claim their particular religion is correct? Why should I believe in Hinduism instead of Catholicism? I never got a satisfactory answer to that in any of my philosophy classes or reading. (The problem of evil is another strong one, but didn't have as big of an impact on me as the first two.)
As far as science goes, the two main contributors to that were biology and physics (although there are some countervailing forces there: the order of the universe truly does seem miraculous). Jay Gould's essay "non-moral nature" where he describes parasites that lay their eggs on paralyzed victims, then the eggs hatch and the larvae eat the victims alive, was probably the first thing I read that had bearing on religion. But if you look at nature generally there is obviously an overwhelming amount of suffering. Kids who die from random genetic mutations, animals that get eaten alive crying. I could never square any of that with God.
As far as physics, what really gets me is the sheer immensity and seeming indifference to human scales. Because of the speed of light, we are basically trapped within our own universe. Space is mostly an enormous empty void, and there is no sign that any other planet would be especially hospitable to our species. On a more mundane level, human beings have been killed in incredibly stupid ways, like the guy who was irradiated to death because of a software bug in the x-ray machine. So you put all of that together and it just doesn't suggest any sort of divine guidance to everything going on around us. (Which isn't to say there aren't counterarguments, but that's the sort of evidence and thought processes I imagine the parent was referring to.)
Not necessarily trying to debate or anything—clearly you've put a lot of intellectual effort into this over the years already—but I find one point you made particularly interesting. (Disclaimer: I am a Christian.) Namely, that "religious people will freely admit their beliefs have no evidence." There are some (many?) religions where this is the case, but I honestly don't think Christianity is one of them—the Bible puts a strong emphasis on evidence. For example:
- The gospels themselves are composed of three primary sources as well as a secondary source.
- Jesus made specific prophetic claims (famously, the destruction of the Second Temple in Mark 13:2, or that he would be crucified in Matthew 20:18-19).
- 1 Corinthians 15:6 references more than five hundred eyewitnesses, most of whom were claimed to be still living.
- Acts 17:17 describes Paul as "reasoning" with secular Greek philosophers (instead of merely, say, "moralizing" or "persuading"), although I suppose these discussions may have been more philosophical than empirical given the Greeks' philosophical bent.
- The gospels claim that even the Pharisees did not deny Jesus' miracles, but merely attributed them to malign influence (Mark 3:22) or just decided to kill him (Matthew 12:14).
- Jesus' parable in Luke 16:19–31 implies that for some people, getting more evidence will not actually change their minds, regardless of how persuasive it would be.
Of course one could (and should) argue that an emphasis on historicity is not itself evidence; but I just wanted to point out that Christianity is not one of the religions where you just have to believe blindly. On the contrary, the Bible presents unbelief in the face of evidence as a main obstacle between us and God (cf. Romans 1:18–20).
My sentiment is very similar.
To the science part I will add that, at least, it has some explanatory power that is useful. It's finding checks out and makes many areas of our life better and more confortable. No religion can come close to the benefits of science, especially when you consider that humanity was actually doing science before it was even called that (in a cruder way but nonetheless).
Religion is systematically about imposing the morals and superiority of one group upon the others while offering very little in return. It has been the justification for plenty of domination and suffering and that alone should tell you that something is wrong.
If God existed, he would have killed the religious zealots creating the suffering or at the very least prevented their actions.
But that university specialized in analytical philosophy, which I learned decades later. You will never stop learning, that's for sure
But particularly hilarious is that he wrote this exact piece two months ago in the Atlantic[2]. He argued that the Greeks had it right and we all need to be more virtuous again.
As someone who’d describe themselves as a virtue ethicist I’d be inclined to agree. Utilitarianism leads to the bureaucratic tyranny Arendt discusses and deontology is just as hollow as belief in belief. The reality is that we can’t optimize ourselves out of where we are.
[0]: https://www.foodandwine.com/1911-smoke-house-bbq-david-brook...
[1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/142708/david-brooks-tyranny-...
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-admi...
Can you sketch your reasoning behind these claims? And put forth the most common criticisms against virtue ethics, and defend your position against these criticisms? I don't agree with you, but you have not given me a sufficiently tight argument to convince me or take issue with.
Deontology is answered by the parent article. Most deontological frameworks are defined as correct in and of themselves. If you genuinely believe in one you're likely a moral individual by other definitions so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Virtue Ethics is commonly criticized as not being normative enough, it doesn't really tell you explicitly how to act it instead tells you what a good person looks like, and too complex so at to be actually useful, the definition of virtues aren't simple. I like Hursthouse's defense and formation of it in her paper on Abortion[0][1]. It boils down the the criticisms being the reason that it's a useful theory. I like these two points she makes:
"Second, the theory is not trivially circular;it does not specify right action in terms of the virtuous agent and then immediately specify the virtuous agent in terms of right action. Rather,it specifies her in terms of the virtues, and then specifies these, not merely as dispositions to right action, but as the character traits(which are dispositions to feel and react as well as act in certain ways) required for eudaimonia"
"Third, it does answer the question "What should I do?"as well as the question "What sort of person should I be?" (That is, it is not, as one of the catchphrases has it, concerned only with Being and not with Doing.)"
In short the theory isn't trivial, unlike utilitarianism which can easily fall victim to being over trivialized as shown by today's AI effective altruists and utopias like Brave New World, and it provides answers to both what you should do and who you should be, unlike deontology which just answers what you should do. I like this paper because it makes a genuinely unique case for the ethics of abortion. She argues that you can both grant personhood to a fetus, or more accurately that personhood is irrelevant, and still ethically justify many abortions.
That likely is too nuanced for today's discourse but that's the point. As we've moved to either utilitarianism or deontology as the driving motivation behind our moral actions we've over simplified the world.
Anyways hope that's interesting, helpful and provides some insights into my thought.
[0]: stable jstor source https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265432?origin=JSTOR-pdf [1]: free pdf which may or may not go away https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PPP504/Hurst...
Regarding EA, I agree broadly with the basic ideas, but disagree with the focus on AI safety (in fact, I think that runaway AI is impossible due to fundamental limitations of computational complexity and of data ingestion required for accurate models).
I agree that utilitarianism itself is not very useful for any one entity in modeling reality. In practice, I use fallible intermediate principles that are more applicable to the situation at hand, and when they seem inadequate, or when they seem to contradict other principles, I would use as the yardstick to examine these principles some hedonistic consequentialist calculus that is heavily hedged by acknowledging a lack of good information and inability to predict the future well. I understand that there is always a risk that I do not do good by this calculus, but I try to maximize the expectation of it under what I know at hand, understanding that this does not account for what I do not know.
> It becomes a moral imperative to gather as much information as possible to enable the state to maximize utility.
It seems to me that the unsavoriness at this thought arises from the prospect of the state developing a surveillance apparatus that does not serve the citizens as well as it should. I assume that what you call bureaucracy refers to surveillance (via forms, regulations, procedures, amid others.) But I think we agree that we prefer to live in a society that has some surveillance and monopoly on violence, and the question is, to what extent. Then I don't think utilitarianism immediately asks the state to maximize surveillance on its citizens, but this is usually conditional on that the state has sufficiently robust institutions that its well-intentioned surveillance today will not be misappropriated in future, and that the surveillance apparatus is still net-pleasurable to run today, amid other considerations.
So I’ll grant them the title. But the stronger claim, that God won’t save us from nihilism, I disagree with entirely.
The third alternative, the difficult way, is social engagement on a path to social democracy, to limiting the reach of autocrats and robber barons, and to defetishizing the first two amendments.
But that path requires lifting one's eyes, abandoning one's out groups, working with all, and foregoing at least some comfort and self advantage.
It is the only way. I doubt I will see it (entered 7th decade recently, feel pretty confident about that).
It's almost as if he's trying to prevent those looking for help from considering religion.
"You don't want those gold bars over there, they're just painted rocks". But are they?
That’s a strange dodge. "The Left made me do it" is a child's excuse, not an analysis.
The deeper truth is that nihilism isn’t born of politics. Nihilism what's left when after the exhaustion of meaning under total commodification. It's born of the spectacle, the replacement of reality with its endless representations. Every human relation is mediated through an economic relation, and eventually every gesture, every feeling, every passing thought gets rendered into a commodity.
We are desperate for connection, and the spectacle knows it. So it offers us platforms that promise intimacy but can’t deliver it. They were designed not to connect us to other humans but to make us friends with brands. We log in for friendship and get advertising.
Go outside? Good luck. It's empty because this stupid city was designed around cars, and even if there are people, they're tucked into their phones. It's a social ghost town.
If I propose to decommission the spectacle, I'd expect to receive a bewildering array of responses: "naive," "utopian," "impossible." So here we are, trapped in a world of our making where no one has the choice to enter nor to leave and everyone has been leveraged to maintaining it despite no one wanting it.
Good job. We have only ourselves to blame.
The irony of the whole thing is that Humanism is a religion too, though many people won't recognize it as such. This makes the author's argument doubly misguided.
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