Good points.

1. I’d segregate the points I make in a philisophical discussion from how I treat people in real life. You and I only know each other via FB and mostly via these conversations so point taken. Most of my friends and acquaintences who are atheists, agnostics and doubters in “the sky daddy” aren’t nihilistic at all. What perhaps has convinced me is Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and their observations on human behavior based on rather unexamined foundations.

2. If I think about existence and limit my allowed universe to that which physics and science can penetrate there seems to have hope for no meaning beyond the meaning I experience in the now as an individual.

I’d encourage you to read (if you haven’t already) Bertrand Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship. http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/A%20Free%20Man’s%20Worship.htm . Russell IMHO makes the contemporary crew of atheists seem clumsy and inelegant. Russell knew his Bible far better than most contemporary atheists I think partly because he grew up during Christendom. The challenge of worldview propagation isn’t really rational argument, but whether it warms the heart and attracts the imagination. Russell had far more power with words than the contemporary sort. Alvin Plantinga wipes the floor with Dennett not just because he’s a better logician, but because he’s got wit and a sort of folksy humor that really works in the academy.

Anyway, I digress. I am in my core a very self-interested creature who isn’t satisfied doing my duty to better the race. I’ve produced 5 wonderful children, but that isn’t enough. I suspect I am not alone in this regard.

I can reasonable posit no meaning for this life if all I currently love and care for will either be obliterated by the inevitable cooling of the sun, or more personally by the cessation of my biological function. This problem does not belong to me alone, but to all of my race. I’m not satisfied with imagining a world of beauty, love and meaning that has been obliterated for the billions that have passed before us. For what have they labored? (Read Ecclesiastes up until 12:8, no further).

Some may say it is enough to enjoy family and friends, to see the sunset, to walk the beach. Our imperial victories have afforded many of us in North America the kind of indulgences few of our race have ever enjoyed, but that is still not enough. We play on the beaches where our ancestors slaughtered the whales and each other, and we will do it again. To make matters worse, I find in my self not only the capacity for such evil but a complicity to enjoy its fruits.

I’m not accusing atheists of being nihilistic, I am nihilistic. I as a rational being don’t find that science affords me anything but. Some will say “eat drink and enjoy” but I like Qohelet have seen much and fund much vanity in human pursuits.

What grips me rather is a vision of a love that is stronger than death, and stronger than my capacity to maintain it. I believe that the value of thousands of civilizations and billions of lives has been loved and not lost by one with the capacity to keep them. I believe that there is one who is capable of winnowing history in such a way that the chaff is consumed and the wheat preserved.

Science affords me no such belief. Neither do I find science prevents me from holding it.

As to not taking religion literally? I find that word too distorted in our present context. Christians have played stupid games with that word and have spoiled it. It’s better to ask what we believe in.

I can watch movies that give me a vision and make me feel a certain way. They can give me a feeling of meaning and that’s fun. I’m not satisfied with that. I know enough to know a movie is a masterful presentation of a story. I want the real thing, nothing less.