Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes--epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness--have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.

1. Origins

"Nihilism" comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. It appears in the verb "annihilate," meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Jacobi used the word to negatively characterize transcendental idealism. It only became popularized, however, after its appearance in Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons (1862) where he used "nihilism" to describe the crude scientism espoused by his character Bazarov who preaches a creed of total negation.

In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (C.1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. In his early writing, anarchist leader Mikhael Bakunin (1814-1876) composed the notorious entreaty still identified with nihilism: "Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life--the passion for destruction is also a creative passion!" (Reaction in Germany, 1842). The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge and individual freedom as the highest goal. By rejecting man's spiritual essence in favor of a solely materialistic one, nihilists denounced God and religious authority as antithetical to freedom. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy, and by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination.

The earliest philosophical positions associated with what could be characterized as a nihilistic outlook are those of the Skeptics. Because they denied the possibility of certainty, Skeptics could denounce traditional truths as unjustifiable opinions. When Demosthenes (c.371-322 BC), for example, observes that "What he wished to believe, that is what each man believes" (Olynthiac), he posits the relational nature of knowledge. Extreme skepticism, then, is linked to epistemological nihilism which denies the possibility of knowledge and truth; this form of nihilism is currently identified with postmodern antifoundationalism. Nihilism, in fact, can be understood in several different ways. Political Nihilism, as noted, is associated with the belief that the destruction of all existing political, social, and religious order is a prerequisite for any future improvement. Ethical nihilism or moral nihilism rejects the possibility of absolute moral or ethical values. Instead, good and evil are nebulous, and values addressing such are the product of nothing more than social and emotive pressures. Existential nihilism is the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and it is, no doubt, the most commonly used and understood sense of the word today.

Max Stirner's (1806-1856) attacks on systematic philosophy, his denial of absolutes, and his rejection of abstract concepts of any kind often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. For Stirner, achieving individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed. Even beyond the oppression of the state, though, are the constraints imposed by others because their very existence is an obstacle compromising individual freedom. Thus Stirner argues that existence is an endless "war of each against all" (The Ego and its Own, trans. 1907).

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2. Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism

Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the façades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent. "Every belief, every considering something-true," Nietzsche writes, "is necessarily false because there is simply no true world" (Will to Power [notes from 1883-1888]). For him, nihilism requires a radical repudiation of all imposed values and meaning: "Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; one destroys" (Will to Power).

The caustic strength of nihilism is absolute, Nietzsche argues, and under its withering scrutiny "the highest values devalue themselves. The aim is lacking, and 'Why' finds no answer" (Will to Power). Inevitably, nihilism will expose all cherished beliefs and sacrosanct truths as symptoms of a defective Western mythos. This collapse of meaning, relevance, and purpose will be the most destructive force in history, constituting a total assault on reality and nothing less than the greatest crisis of humanity:
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end. . . . (Will to Power)
Since Nietzsche's compelling critique, nihilistic themes--epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness--have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Convinced that Nietzsche's analysis was accurate, for example, Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1926) studied several cultures to confirm that patterns of nihilism were indeed a conspicuous feature of collapsing civilizations. In each of the failed cultures he examines, Spengler noticed that centuries-old religious, artistic, and political traditions were weakened and finally toppled by the insidious workings of several distinct nihilistic postures: the Faustian nihilist "shatters the ideals"; the Apollinian nihilist "watches them crumble before his eyes"; and the Indian nihilist "withdraws from their presence into himself." Withdrawal, for instance, often identified with the negation of reality and resignation advocated by Eastern religions, is in the West associated with various versions of epicureanism and stoicism. In his study, Spengler concludes that Western civilization is already in the advanced stages of decay with all three forms of nihilism working to undermine epistemological authority and ontological grounding.

In 1927, Martin Heidegger, to cite another example, observed that nihilism in various and hidden forms was already "the normal state of man" (The Question of Being). Other philosophers' predictions about nihilism's impact have been dire. Outlining the symptoms of nihilism in the 20th century, Helmut Thielicke wrote that "Nihilism literally has only one truth to declare, namely, that ultimately Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless" (Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer, 1969). From the nihilist's perspective, one can conclude that life is completely amoral, a conclusion, Thielicke believes, that motivates such monstrosities as the Nazi reign of terror. Gloomy predictions of nihilism's impact are also charted in Eugene Rose's Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age (1994). If nihilism proves victorious--and it's well on its way, he argues--our world will become "a cold, inhuman world" where "nothingness, incoherence, and absurdity" will triumph.

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3. Existential Nihilism

While nihilism is often discussed in terms of extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the 20th century it has been associated with the belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself--all action, suffering, and feeling--is ultimately senseless and empty.

In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life (1994), Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning. The Skeptic Empedocles' observation that "the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life," for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesis. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide. Centuries later during the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarized the existential nihilist's perspective when, in this famous passage near the end of Macbeth, he has Macbeth pour out his disgust for life:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In the twentieth century, it's the atheistic existentialist movement, popularized in France in the 1940s and 50s, that is responsible for the currency of existential nihilism in the popular consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre's (1905-1980) defining preposition for the movement, "existence precedes essence," rules out any ground or foundation for establishing an essential self or a human nature. When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom but also existential horror and emotional anguish. Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being "thrown" into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning. It's a situation that's nothing short of absurd. Writing from the enlightened perspective of the absurd, Albert Camus (1913-1960) observed that Sisyphus' plight, condemned to eternal, useless struggle, was a superb metaphor for human existence (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness, and they expended great energy responding to the question of whether surviving it was possible. Their answer was a qualified "Yes," advocating a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism. In retrospect, it was an anecdote tinged with desperation because in an absurd world there are absolutely no guidelines, and any course of action is problematic. Passionate commitment, be it to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Enter nihilism.

Camus, like the other existentialists, was convinced that nihilism was the most vexing problem of the twentieth century. Although he argues passionately that individuals could endure its corrosive effects, his most famous works betray the extraordinary difficulty he faced building a convincing case. In The Stranger (1942), for example, Meursault has rejected the existential suppositions on which the uninitiated and weak rely. Just moments before his execution for a gratuitous murder, he discovers that life alone is reason enough for living, a raison d'être, however, that in context seems scarcely convincing. In Caligula (1944), the mad emperor tries to escape the human predicament by dehumanizing himself with acts of senseless violence, fails, and surreptitiously arranges his own assassination. The Plague (1947) shows the futility of doing one's best in an absurd world. And in his last novel, the short and sardonic, The Fall (1956), Camus posits that everyone has bloody hands because we are all responsible for making a sorry state worse by our inane action and inaction alike. In these works and other works by the existentialists, one is often left with the impression that living authentically with the meaninglessness of life is impossible.

Camus was fully aware of the pitfalls of defining existence without meaning, and in his philosophical essay The Rebel (1951) he faces the problem of nihilism head-on. In it, he describes at length how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilism, characterized by profound hatred, pathological destruction, and incalculable violence and death.

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4. Antifoundationalism and Nihilism

By the late 20th century, "nihilism" had assumed two different castes. In one form, "nihilist" is used to characterize the postmodern man, a dehumanized conformist, alienated, indifferent, and baffled, directing psychological energy into hedonistic narcissism or into a deep ressentiment that often explodes in violence. This perspective is derived from the existentialists' reflections on nihilism stripped of any hopeful expectations, leaving only the experience of sickness, decay, and disintegration.

In his study of meaninglessness, Donald Crosby writes that the source of modern nihilism paradoxically stems from a commitment to honest intellectual openness. "Once set in motion, the process of questioning could come to but one end, the erosion of conviction and certitude and collapse into despair" (The Specter of the Absurd, 1988). When sincere inquiry is extended to moral convictions and social consensus, it can prove deadly, Crosby continues, promoting forces that ultimately destroy civilizations. Michael Novak's recently revised The Experience of Nothingness (1968, 1998) tells a similar story. Both studies are responses to the existentialists' gloomy findings from earlier in the century. And both optimistically discuss ways out of the abyss by focusing of the positive implications nothingness reveals, such as liberty, freedom, and creative possibilities. Novak, for example, describes how since WWII we have been working to "climb out of nihilism" on the way to building a new civilization.

In contrast to the efforts to overcome nihilism noted above is the uniquely postmodern response associated with the current antifoundationalists. The philosophical, ethical, and intellectual crisis of nihilism that has tormented modern philosophers for over a century has given way to mild annoyance or, more interestingly, an upbeat acceptance of meaninglessness.

French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives," those all-embracing foundations that we have relied on to make sense of the world. This extreme skepticism has undermined intellectual and moral hierarchies and made "truth" claims, transcendental or transcultural, problematic. Postmodern antifoundationalists, paradoxically grounded in relativism, dismiss knowledge as relational and "truth" as transitory, genuine only until something more palatable replaces it (reminiscent of William James' notion of "cash value"). The critic Jacques Derrida, for example, asserts that one can never be sure that what one knows corresponds with what is. Since human beings participate in only an infinitesimal part of the whole, they are unable to grasp anything with certainty, and absolutes are merely "fictional forms."

American antifoundationalist Richard Rorty makes a similar point: "Nothing grounds our practices, nothing legitimizes them, nothing shows them to be in touch with the way things are" ("From Logic to Language to Play," 1986). This epistemological cul-de-sac, Rorty concludes, leads inevitably to nihilism. "Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have the ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain" (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989). In contrast to Nietzsche's fears and the angst of the existentialists, nihilism becomes for the antifoundationalists just another aspect of our contemporary milieu, one best endured with sang-froid.

In The Banalization of Nihilism (1992) Karen Carr discusses the antifoundationalist response to nihilism. Although it still inflames a paralyzing relativism and subverts critical tools, "cheerful nihilism" carries the day, she notes, distinguished by an easy-going acceptance of meaninglessness. Such a development, Carr concludes, is alarming. If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. Worse still, the banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies. It's a conclusion that dovetails nicely with Nietzsche's, who pointed out that all interpretations of the world are simply manifestations of will-to-power.

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5. Conclusion

It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilism's impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. It's helpful to note, then, that he believed we could--at a terrible price--eventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind:
I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength. It is possible. . . . (Complete Works Vol. 13)


 Few things are more embarrassing to witness than a flagrant display of belief in the ridiculous, especially when it occurs in people that are clearly smart enough to know better - if they would just try. Religious people are not all fools, although the vast majority excel at foolish thought and behavior, they just have an inborn weakness that predisposes them to slavishly adopt the facile beliefs surrounding them - especially when it comes with the imprimatur of authority. People that always want to do what is 'right' don't ask questions and will follow the rules regardless of the logic, or lack of it, underlying those rules.

Think of the most idiotic, asinine, foolish rituals and practices imaginable and some religion or cult somewhere has turned it into a sacred tenet of their belief system. The list of examples is nearly endless but a few are listed below. And remember that every one of these religions and cults believe that they and they alone are the one true faith and all the others are just heretics.

    "In many places in Africa it is quite polite when visiting friends or relatives to express one's sympathy with them for having such "ugly" or "unpleasant" children. The idea is that witches, always on the lookout for nice children to "eat "will be fooled by this naive stratagem. It is also common in such places to give children names that suggest disgrace or misfortune, for the same reason." [1]

    Lightning burns down many Amish buildings but they refuse to use a simple metal lightning rod because it would contradict God's will. Many Amish won't even use buttons on their clothing.

    Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo ('supreme truth') was founded by Shoko Asahara who fancies himself the reincarnation of Jesus, among other things. Blind in one eye and nearly so in the other as a result of congenital syphilis, Shoko Asahara naturally gravitated towards a career in acupuncture. Aum Shinrikyo’s beliefs consisted of hastening the arrival of an imminent apocalypse. Recruitment consisted of kidnapping, drugging, and brainwashing. After their botched nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway most of the key members were arrested and the remaining cast of flotsam changed their name to Aleph, generally repackaging the cult. Despite the façade change that was pre-planned anyway, Aleph remains wildly unpopular amongst the Japanese public - go figure. Aum Shinrikyo had some highly educated scientists working on their arsenal of weapons of mass-destruction, demonstrating that in a country where education consists of wrote memorization rather than independent learning even educated people can fall prey to their own gullibility.  

    Fun times in Mesoamerica - gimme that old time religion!The Aztecs, considered 'deeply religious people' by historians, performed human sacrifices in the most brutal and painful ways possible because they believed that if they stopped appeasing the god of death the world would end. This 'powerful' religion (and empire) proved to be no match for a few dirty Spaniards on horseback. 

    Buddhism doesn’t technically have a god-deity but in practice the once human Buddha, often in the form of obese and gaudy statues, comes remarkably close. Buddhism fulfills the standard religious mold because it's based on escaping life, Earth and reality in general rather than in simply addressing it head-on as the Nihilist does. Buddhism like all beliefs forsakes the issue of the here and now for a fraudulent and impossible goal i.e. higher spiritual planes, nirvana, etc. Careless diet finished off Buddha Siddhartha who was sickened by tainted pork. The great Buddha died as he lived: carelessly ignoring the immediate significance of reality for escape in fantasy.

    Tantric Buddhism of Bhutan: And the kernels of corn? They are the calculus of devotion. Each time the gray-haired woman named Tum Tum prostrates herself, she slides one of the 108 kernels (a sacred number) across the floor. In three months she has moved the kernels 95,000 times—1,000 prostrations a day—and will continue until she reaches 100,000. "Sometimes I get so tired I fall over," says Tum Tum, whose knees have left grooves in the floorboards. "But I won't stop. This is our tradition." [4]

    Cargo cults sprang up as a result of the culture shock, invasion and infection, created by the American military bases built throughout the previously isolated south Pacific during World War II. Keep the faith: salvation and prosperity will arrive any day now...The astounded natives did not know what to make of these new people and their mysterious machines but they began to believe that all of it really belonged to them and not the thieving white man - they just had to lure it back. The cargo cult worshippers began to mimic the devices they had seen, making wooden copies of rifles, radios out of pots and rope, and idolizing dollar bills and photographs. All they had to do was parade around acting like American soldiers and soon the giant metal ship will land and bring heaven along with it! Needless to say the believers are still waiting.

    Cargo cults are an intriguing example of seemingly foolish rituals because they demonstrate the fundamental nature of belief: the human mind unsystematically grasping at explanations for unusual events using a forced context consisting of the limited range of everyday experiences.  As the cargo cults show the anthropocentric and teleological views of reality are fundamental flaws characterizing all belief systems.

    The Church of Christ, Scientist (CCS), otherwise known as Christian Science, was founded by Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy who wrote the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. CCS preaches that evil and sickness are jut illusions but with faith they can be overcome, spiritual powers are stronger than physical, and even denies the existence of all matter including the human body. Christian Scientists are notorious for refusing to receive medical treatment for themselves and their children with predictable consequences for everyone except the believers.

    A Jewish sect known as the Essenes took observation of the Sabbath to a new level by refusing to use the toilet at all on that day. They considered using the bathroom an unclean act in the sight of God and as a consequence their latrines had to be located out of sight of the village, and not a minor distance either, the scrolls researchers have studied that date from about 2,000 years ago indicate a distance of over a kilometer! This distance didn't even offer any health benefits because of the particular waste disposal methods the Essenes used, spreading disease and parasites. [2]

    In Haiti, land of voodoo, a major worry is that witches will steal the body of a recently deceased relative. In order to prevent this from happening they will bury thread and a needle without an eye in with the body because this will keep the witches occupied for centuries as they attempt, in vain, to thread the needle and then forget about stealing the dead body. [1]

    Hindus believe that certain animals are so sacred they can only be worshipped and never harmed. Consequently cows wandering through a town will cause traffic jams and leave steaming piles of waste everywhere even as the humans live in disease and on the verge of starvation.Load of bull: behold the great god Nandi - bow down before him in worship! Because Hanuman the monkey God is highly revered, aggressive monkeys are a common plague on rural Indian villages. Using their attentive monkey senses they are quick to detect weakness in the humans and often take over entire villages, carefully targeting the soft throat and genital regions of any puny human foolish enough to threaten their new domain. All efforts to convert the monkeys to the peaceful ways of the Buddhist and Hindu have met with failure; hopes remain high.

    Lacking an abundance of ATM cash machines and displaying a concern for women typical of nearly all religions, Hindu men that need a quick buck can burn their wives alive and collect the dowry.

    Islam requires its followers to pray five times a day facing the direction of Mecca, preferably with the knees and forehead on the ground and the ass in the air. A Shiite Muslim beats his head with a sword and bleeds for Allah.Islam strictly forbids pork and alcohol as well as any depiction of the human form so for instance cross-walk signs in Middle Eastern countries will feature black silhouettes with the heads rubbed out! Despite the fact that Islam is one of the simplest religions around followers find no lack of details to interpret in different ways and then kill each other over the disagreement, as evinced by the bloody religious civil war in Iraq brought to you courtesy of the faith-based leadership of one George W. Bush.

    Christianity isn't the only religion that has a problem with the human body in its natural form, conservative Islam even forbids unclothed bathing.

    Genital mutilation is either highly suggested or outright mandatory for Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and many primitive tribal cultures as well. Various forms of self-inflicted mutilation can also be found in many religions and cults. Mutilation ceremonies are often conducted as a means of indicating the believer’s faith, suffering and devotion for God.

    Followers of the Jain sect often wear scarves or surgical masks to prevent breathing in an insect and snuffing out the life of a reincarnated soul.

    Jehovah’s Witness', notorious for endlessly pushing their ‘Watch Tower’ tract onto anyone who can fog a mirror, refuse to serve in the military, salute a flag, or celebrate any holiday or birthday - apparently because their religion forbids them from forming an allegiance to an earthly power. JWs also believe that only 144,000 people will go to heaven and that they will remain behind to take over the Earth after everyone else is killed when the world ends … soon, really, it will happen any day now!

    Jews and Muslims believe that their animals must be slaughtered in particular ways otherwise the meat is 'unclean'. Unfortunately for the animals, scientific evidence, and modern sensibilities these religious slaughtering methods are torture killings.

        They bleed to death in what government advisers say is "very significant pain". … Religious slaughter is exempt from the provisions of the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995, which insist that creatures such as cows, goats and chicken be stunned first. Under the Jewish shechita system, kosher cows, lambs and poultry have their throats slit and then bleed to death. Halal animals also bleed to death, but some of them are stunned after the incision is made, depending on the interpretation of the Koran. [5]

    Even the non-religious end up supporting these practices when they buy meat because the extra cuts are sold in the regular market without any markings indicating how the animal was killed. And the scale of this activity is enormous. In Britain alone over 100 million animals a year are killed by kosher (Jewish law) and halal (Islamic law) methods.

    Jim Jone's People's Temple follower expresses their beliefLunatic cult leader Jim Jones, infamous for forcing his flock to drink poisoned punch in the jungles of South America killing over 900 in mass suicide, came from the mainstream Christian denomination Disciples of Christ. But what pushed him over the edge?

    Ancestor worship is a resilient tradition in Chinese culture, never fully extinguished by secular Maoist Communism. The tradition called minghun (afterlife marriage) involves burying a dead woman along with a dead unmarried man, after a posthumous marriage ceremony, in order to ensure his happiness in the afterlife. Although illegal it is not uncommon for profit-seekers to kill women and sell them as ‘ghost brides’! Minghun is just one particularly egregious belief-practice characterizing a culture that places a higher value on women dead than alive. [3]

    The Holy Book of Mormon originated from metal plates buried in a forest in New York that were discovered by Joseph Smith, Jr. after supposedly being guided to the secret location by God, Jesus and an angel named Moroni. Smith hid behind a sheet and translated the mysterious symbols to his followers using special glasses found with the plates. The origin of the Mormon religion reads like a joke without a punch-line yet over 10,000,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) actually believe what’s written in their holy book. Although Brigham Young had between 28 and 49 wives (but who's counting, right?), polygamy is no longer officially sanctioned by the Church of LDS.

    Orthodox Jews take adherence to rules and rituals to an extreme refusing to use mechanical and electrical devices or do any kind of work, including cooking, on the Sabbath.* Warping vulnerable young minds is necessary to perpetuate the delusion of belief.The G-d of Orthodox Judaism is a very active deity obsessed with minutia and not surprisingly just about everything that happens is caused by God. Otherwise, like all forms of Judaism, it is based on a severe form of exclusivity where all gentiles are the lowest form of life and all Jews are the highest; multiple, and often imaginative, forms of duplicitous behavior stem from this warped belief.

    The slaughter of animals (torture killing) and every other aspect of diet are regulated by kosher rules that are so arcane and bizarre that not even the Rabbis can agree on them, but they make a small fortune putting their kosher stamp on as many food, and even non-food, products as possible. Kosher marks can even be found on laundry detergent, revealing that it's all just a scam anyway - and you get to pay for it through the added price!

    In Roman Catholicism, Catholics are forbidden to eat meat on Friday as decreed in the law of abstinence. In a marriage between a Catholic and a non-Catholic, the Catholic is required to convert the non-believer; and of course the kids will be raised Catholic.

    Saint Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey, martyred in the year 305. St. Nicholas is better known today as Santa Claus and once did double duty as the patron saint of pawnbrokers and beer drinkers. Sadly you may need to find another deity to pray to as you binge drink since Nicholas was un-sainted by the Catholic Church in 1969.

    The Catholic Church excommunicated many animals even as recently as the 20th century including eels, dogs, horses, and rats, to name a few. Ecclesiastical (religious) courts even put animals on trial. France in 1522 put all rats on trial for damaging barley crops but the case was eventually adjourned without verdict because the rats never showed up in the courtroom! And when court orders failed to alter the behavior of the offending animals or insects it was blamed on Satan. These numerous and lengthy legal trials against animals were funded through tithes paid to the Church by the public, i.e. taxes. [6]

    The Seventh-day Adventist church is based upon the hallucinatory visions experienced by Ellen Gould White after sustaining a serious head injury. The SDA church is fanatical about vegetarianism, the imminence of Jesus’ second coming AKA the end of the world, and the fact that the seventh day of rest is on Saturday not Sunday! The infamous Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh split off from the SDA church.

    The Church of Scientology originated in 1952 with science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and his Dianetics book. Scientology believes in past and present lives as well as the strong financial and mental control of its flock.

    People that follow animistic religion in Siberia are careful to watch what they say and how they express it because malicious spirits eavesdrop on conversations and will attempt to sabotage human efforts. Yet by simply using metaphorical language when discussing important topics they are protected against the machination of evil spirits because the spirits, despite superhuman powers, cannot understand language expressed in metaphors. [1]

    Apologies to any religion, cult or belief system not maligned or listed. Gullibility is divine, thus sayeth the Lord.

    Can I get an ‘Amen’?!

Mental Illness or Mental Religion?

Why is it that when some people fervently believe in ghosts or when they follow commanding ‘voices in their head’, these people are treated as delusional, crazy or even psychopathic? These people are given medical treatment and brain-chemical balancing drugs in order to manage their mental illness. Yet when people profess the most intense beliefs in certain other things no one has ever really seen, such as demons, Allah, God, angels, heaven, hell, and so on, these people are treated with the greatest of reverence and social respect and even made into leaders and wise gurus who become rich from the donations of their faithful followers!

What is the difference here? The fantasies and delusions are equally foolish whether it’s the belief and obedience to a psychotic voice in the head or an imaginary deity residing in some magical place no one can see. Religious beliefs should be placed in the same class as mental sickness or any other serious psychological disorder that degrades the quality of life and the individual's ability to deal with reality.

One of the fundamental (but understandable) flaws with modern psychology is its assumption that sanity is defined using the mental character of the majority as a benchmark. But this standard isn’t really objective, it’s subjective and merely based on a relational comparison that is used incorrectly to define an aberrant standard for mental health. Just because many people believe in something that doesn’t make it valid, and just because a lie is repeated a billion times that doesn’t make it any more truthful than it was to begin with! 04.06.05

Why Do People Go to Church?

For many people church attendance is just about gaining a level of acceptance and trying to find solace with others. Church is about the comfort that comes from fitting into a crowd where the shared belief is just a common delusion. Another unstated benefit of church attendance is the intellectual equalization effect, which is especially appealing for lukewarm minds. It can be quite comforting to be with a friendly crowd that all hold the same childish beliefs because it puts all the members on the same (low) intellectual plane.

Many people say that religion doesn’t really hurt anyone because at least it gives people something to believe in and a reason to work together but those benefits can be gained from any idea-set as long as it’s consistent. All people are really gaining from religion is the comfort that comes from a life of staid habit and the illusory elimination of ambiguity from knowledge. By pretending to hold an absolute truth life becomes much easier because sides and boundaries are clearly defined and everything becomes black and white. This is just like saying life is easier as a slave because you don’t have to think for yourself and someone else makes all the tough decisions for you. It may be true but it is hardly a desirable status!

Why Do People Believe?

Beliefs are difficult to explain using standard terminology precisely because they seem to defy common sense. Human beliefs are so often detrimental to the individual, forced to maintain them with considerable effort against all evidence to the contrary, that the model of the meme was introduced to try and explain the phenomenon.Toss 'em out! Memes are used to explain how beliefs can take hold of a mind and spread even though they are so often surprisingly useless to the believer. Memes are the equivalent of genes except instead of being part of physical reproduction they function to reproduce ideas. However, just like a virus memes need an external host with which to replicate, hence the human mind works quite well as a vehicle to convey and magnify ideas and beliefs without regard to the benefit of the host but merely for the benefit of the meme and its increased propagation.

Despite the convincing appeal of the meme model, other explanations can suffice to explain the spread and tenacity of beliefs such as simple human social dynamics - the need for acceptance, the protection that comes from cooperation, and the stability that comes from consistency and habit made even more stable through artificial, reality-immune constructions.

Individuals that lack a sufficient sense of personal efficacy in life, be it of thought or action, will default towards authoritarian modes of living where everything is divided between the powerful that dominate and the weak that submit. But in reality personal power is all in the mind and outside of obvious physical limitations everyone is only as constrained as they think they are. Post to minimize harassment from Mormons, Jehovas Witness', etc.And this is another reason why the stranglehold of religion on the mind is such an insidious threat – it intentionally constrains the efficacy of the individual and it engenders the belief in a fundamentally false authoritarian view of reality based upon the exploitation of one group over another just as God dominates his creations and the priests deliver orders for their flock to obey and so on down the line. Further, in this warped world of faith, salvation can only arrive from an external and by definition more powerful source. The only real ‘salvation’ that can ever be achieved has to be self-motivated, but this is why people that have a weak sense of personal efficacy also lack any sense of personal responsibility – I have no power to control my life therefore nothing I do is my fault. Welcome to the hell that religion and belief creates.

    “No matter what the Church authorities tell you to do – do it. If it’s right, it’s right. If it’s wrong, they’ll be accountable, not you.”
    Chauncey G. Webb (Mormon) 1903

How this strong versus weak power distribution forms in never fully explained except through tautology and the excuse of divine intervention. But in practice the ‘strong’ get to the top because they create their own free will, they seize opportunities and lead an active and engaged existence. While the ‘weak’ achieve their status because they accept the authoritarian order and agree to live a passive and unengaged life disconnected from responsibility and any sense of real efficacy.

Always remember: belief is a choice

The lesson of Nihilism, contrary to religious belief, is to not run from life, 'evil', and the world in general but instead to meet it head-on with aggression and aplomb.

Belief and Purpose: The Challenge of Absurdity

I’ve stated before that a reduction to the level of survival is a convenient basis for a common cause, but what exactly does a person really need for survival? Food, shelter, and clothing are tangible, standard issue necessities sufficient for a non-sentient being. But humans have complex minds attached to their physical bodies and they've evolved as social creatures that exist within, and because of, collective interdependence. Consequently, a sense of community is another element necessary to human survival. Because humans have a conscious awareness of reality they also have another need, which is a sense of identity, or to put it another way, a social context with which to place themselves in relation to other persons and objects in time and space. Finally, every person needs a sense of self-worth and a purpose within that context of community and identity otherwise they are faced with a very potent absurdity that must be mentally rectified one way or another to maintain sanity.

When community and the necessary sense of social bonding to others breaks down individuals become isolated and alienated from their social and physical environment. Individuals cut-off without any social context lose their sense of purpose in life because the individual either cannot deliver any value to society or what they can do or produce is not needed by society, consequently they lose a sense of purpose in life. If this situation carries on long enough then existence becomes an absurdity for without any purpose or point to anything the individual lacks any reason to continue the struggle of life. Thus the thinking goes that ‘if I am worthless, then so is everything around me and further life is pointless’. At this stage the individual becomes like a computer on a classic episode of Star Trek that self-destructs when faced with a reflective non sequitur as the ego returns conflicting and erratic output from the irrational input.

This is the unstable and anti-social state of mind that the school shooters find themselves trapped within. Full of anger from an ego cheated of its sustenance these kids ask themselves: ‘if no one wants me and I have no purpose, then why am I here?” The resulting spree of violence and self-destruction from this chain of thought is sometimes referred to as an expression of nihilism. But nihilism is a result not a cause of anomie! A society that makes vast segments of its own feel worthless and redundant is a society on the road to ruin anyway.

It may well be that school shooters are acting rationally but basing their actions upon irrational input; however this alone is not enough to produce the outburst of deadly violence. Psychotropic drugs have been used by nearly all of the school shooters. Anti-depressant medication, such as Prozac and Luvox, can lower inhibitions and in extreme cases the individual begins to live in a dream where the counter-balancing force of intellect is no longer sufficient to prevent the emotional response from taking over. When this is combined with a conditioning to violence through an immersion and obsession with shooting and killing, such as through movies and games, this individual may eventually act out in a deadly school shooting. 

The religious and superstitious take another track to the absurdity of existence, they argue: “… since I am here, then I must have a purpose!” However, this is merely employing an absurdity they like to counteract an absurdity they don’t like. Superstition and religious beliefs are just a means of psychological self-preservation in a situation that is full of apparent absurdities; they protect the ego by mitigating the influence of the simplified logic of self-destruction. Like a duckling that will follow the first thing it sees after hatching from its egg people also imprint by adopting whatever belief system they discover upon self-awareness, usually the beliefs of their parents, and so the cycle continues. But what is religion and spiritual belief really about, what is it trying to find? Religion is really just the attempt to find some sort of cosmic meaning that comports with subjective values and generates a divine purpose behind everything, but since such a thing doesn’t exist it must be concocted!

These convoluted efforts to circumvent absurdity indicate the importance of purpose and self-worth to the health and survival of the human psyche. Widespread feelings of inadequacy compound the problem as they are propagated throughout cultures influenced by the incestuous echo chamber of corporate driven mass-media, promoting unrealistically high expectations and standards in wealth, beauty and social esteem (fame). Today many people work longer hours not because they actually have to but because they think they have to; they need the extra cash to compete for the status symbols of living based on mass-consumption. Instead of one car, now they need three. Instead of one television sufficing, now they need three – one for the bedroom, one for the living room, one for the den. Instead of a 1200 square foot ranch house being enough for a family of five, now a family of three needs at least a 2800 square foot home. The issue is: given that competition is instinctive, what do we compete for when we already have everything we need?! So, this is not really an issue of competition, which is woven into human nature, but rather the character of the competition itself and the metric people are using to rate their self-worth.

In an environment of foolish competition it becomes imperative that we reassess the values that are driving us to collective self-destruction one individual at a time. Today we live in a cultural environment that is largely antithetic to human mental and psychological health and one that even promotes anti-social behavior through TV, music, films, and a broad assortment of media while many of the physical structures fracture community and direct human interaction. A surfeit of primary desires such as food, clothing, personal time, and entertainment - far beyond the survival level is such a recent phenomenon in history that human nature has not yet evolved an adequate response to deal with it. Consequently, self-destructive behaviors emerge such as eating to sickness and obesity or promiscuous sex until death by virulent disease.

    "Our brains misfire when presented with a situation to which we have not evolved a response." - Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, 2005

Although teenage school shooters are probably the most visible product of the absurdity of existence without meaning they are by no means the only expression. Indeed modern existence has become a veritable carnival of self-destruction. The hedonistic lifestyles of many gay men are another example, for once one assumes a completely homosexual lifestyle their purpose as a biological being is entirely negated for they cannot reproduce and their sense of chronological context is lost. Homosexual men have no biological function within society; their existence is entirely redundant ergo all they have left is to seek short-term pleasure even at the cost of a painful death by horrible diseases in the long-term.

The existential dilemma is largely a problem of social redundancy. An individual that has no sense of purpose becomes introspective and depressed. Thus as social and economic redundancy has increased in modern society so has depression, suicide, and similar deleterious mental and physical conditions.

There in no such thing as meaning without context for such a situation is an absurdity. Meaning is a subjective creation that emerges from the confluence of four primary elements: food-shelter-clothing, self-worth, identity, and the social context of community. Individual purpose is meaning directed into action; the solution is action in a social context because purpose, just like life itself, is a tautology – you create it by doing it. 26.03.05

Defeating Religion, Superstition and the Culture of Stupidity

The gap between the world of the believers and the faithless is so deep and profound that it really marks a rift in the species, a biological differentiation between the thinkers and the drones. Everything in our modern world from space travel to electronics to modern medical care is a result of the rational thinkers, the people who have ceased to believe in and use God as their guidance at least long enough to function productively according to rational thought. The sky won’t come crashing down upon us all when we challenge the authenticity of religion and beliefs. The public once believed that when a train topped 50 miles an hour it would crash into a wall of air and that human powered flight was impossible because God didn't give people wings. Faith never built a train or an airplane – careful objective research, engineering and construction did!

The essence of belief is escape; it is about inventing a comfortable lie to avoid an uncomfortable reality, a reality that many believers are completely incapable of processing. A surprising number of humans are simply unable to exist in a universe that doesn’t revolve around an anthropocentric, self-centered perception of events that provides them with answers to every question in monochrome simplicity. Believers are incapable of interfacing with reality because reality requires independent thought and responsibility.

Our biological evolution operates on a scale far in excess of our own lives. In the meantime we have to operate with the material already present, such as it is. We can’t directly change the religious faithful because their beliefs are carefully constructed to be immune to common sense while the believers are programmed to be resistant to all reason and logical counter-arguments. But we can do it indirectly by changing the environment, by altering the cultural landscape. The majority of religious followers are not really beyond hope; they merely follow the course of least resistance along the cultural topography, like a river down a valley. The path to collective health and sanity requires a revision of the constraints of culture, ambient values and the standards of acceptability. We have to begin to make the cultural environment less friendly and tolerant of superstition, foolish belief and other forms of willful stupidity.

Mock the Christians and every ridiculous notion they hold so dear but can never prove or substantiate in any way; make them embarrassed and ashamed to continue believing in their childish fantasies. The religious should feel embarrassed not because they can never be anything but hopeless losers but because they don’t really have to be hopeless losers! Since believing is a choice, religion is a case of optional maladaption to the environment. Where is the excuse?!

Mock all the religious be they Mormon or Baptist, Sunni or Shiite, Orthodox or Hassidic or anything else. The world is too small and dangerous to allow collectively suicidal beliefs to perpetuate and inflict suffering upon everyone regardless of whether they’ve earned it or not. No more excuses for gullibility; no more special exceptions, foolish behavior and especially not for the fools that promote it. Instead, promote intelligence, criticism, healthy skepticism, and a challenging intellectual environment that doesn’t roll over and die just to make people feel good about their self-inflicted disabilities. 18.09.05