On Atheists and Nihilists

Are atheists necessarily nihilists? Is it possible to believe in anything if one rejects the existence of a god who presides over everything? Insert Title, a terrific blog I just recently began reading, has posted an essay seeking to answer this question. The title, “Atheists are Not Nihilists”, gives away the conclusion, but the argumentation is thorough and well reasoned.

Much contrarily to the popular perception that atheists don’t believe in anything, atheists actually are capable of believing in much more than those who adhere to a specific dogma because they do not limit themselves. An atheist is capable of believing that the meaning of life can be found in countless places, while a Christian is only capable of believing that the meaning of life is found in God.

This is an example of what I’m getting at when I refer to religion as a failure of the imagination. All of the wonders of the world and of human existence, for the theist, boil down to “God did it.” How drab. How wholly without wonder and the drive for wide-eyed exploration. Not having the answers means reveling in the process of discovery — and, for many, that quest for solution is much more a meaning of life than having it right there in front of you, written in a book by desert nomads thousands of years ago.