Nihilism & Its Effects (III)

Britannica Encyclopedia says of nihilism: 

"nihilism, (from Latin nihil, “nothing”), originally a philosophy of moral and epistemological skepticism that arose in 19th-century Russia during the early years of the reign of Tsar Alexander II. The term was famously used by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe the disintegration of traditional morality in Western society. In the 20th century, nihilism encompassed a variety of philosophical and aesthetic stances that, in one sense or another, denied the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejected the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserted the ultimate meaninglessness or purposelessness of life or of the universe."

The apostle Paul warned of the "doctrines of demons" (I Tim. 4: 1), and surely the philosophy of nihilism is such. It is just what Satan wants men to believe. This might seem to contradict the fact that he wants people to believe that he is god. If they believe in him then they do not believe in nothing. But, perhaps he knows that being a nihilist is a good trap for him to capture souls. This is his business, as we know from scripture. Wrote the apostle Paul:

"And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will." (II Tim. 2: 24-26 nkjv)

The philosophy of nihilism is a snare or trap of Satan and by it he enslaves them "to do his will." Oh how so few escape his traps and snares! How large a portion of the world's population "do his will" rather than the will of God. No wonder Paul called Satan "the god of this age." (II Cor. 4: 4) Believers pray that the will of God might be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6: 10) for they see that his will (his expressed code of conduct) is not done on earth as it is in heaven. There is no violation of the will of God in heaven and there is no doing the will of Satan there. But, this is not so with "this present evil age" (Gal. 1: 4). In this present evil world it is the will of Satan that is mostly done. Our Lord called Satan "the ruler of this age" (14: 30). 

Nihilism is one avenue for Satan to "have opportunity" (Eph. 4: 27) to deceive, to entrap, to destroy. The apostle Peter says this of the work of Satan:

"Be sober-minded; be watchful. "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (I Peter 5: 8)

Satan is on the prowl and he is highly successful in his work. His methods and wiles, his traps and snares, are effective. He has billions of captives today and each are, knowingly or unknowingly, doing his will. These prisoners of Satan are also his servants, his offspring. Said the apostle John:

"Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." (I John 3: 8)

So, even though Satan wants people to worship and follow him, and not strictly in nothing, yet he uses such nihilistic thinking to make believers of them. 

Satan also has no problem with people believing in their own divinity, so long as he remains the "god of gods." He is the "father of lies," said our Lord (John 8: 44), and every false idea about God and the meaning and purpose of life is from his inspiration. The only meaning in life, according to those who reject God and his purpose, is what each person is free to define and create for himself. There are no rules and each one is on his own. 

Solomon begins Ecclesiastes by saying "all is vanity," meaning "all is meaningless," all is nothingness. This is a fairly good description of nihilism. Thankfully, Solomon was no longer speaking from a mere human and demonic perspective at the end of Ecclesiastes for he said "let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (12: 13) Solomon spoke of the fruit of thinking "all is without meaning." He lived by that philosophy in his middle life and describes it in Ecclesiastes. Though there was pleasure in life, pleasures for the eyes, ears, and bodily cravings, etc., there was the consequential despair in knowing that death makes paupers of all. 

The Britannica also wrote in the same article:

"Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, a well-known conservative journalist who interpreted nihilism as synonymous with revolution, presented it as a social menace because of its negation of all moral principles.

It was Ivan Turgenev, in his celebrated novel Fathers and Sons (1862), who popularized the term through the figure of Bazarov the nihilist. Eventually, the nihilists of the 1860s and ’70s came to be regarded as disheveled, untidy, unruly, ragged men who rebelled against tradition and social order. The philosophy of nihilism then began to be associated erroneously with the regicide of Alexander II (1881) and the political terror that was employed by those active at the time in clandestine organizations opposed to absolutism.

Nihilism represented a crude form of positivism and materialism, a revolt against the established social order; it negated all authority exercised by the state, by the church, or by the family. It based its belief on nothing but scientific truth; science would be the solution of all social problems. All evils, nihilists believed, derived from a single source—ignorance—which science alone would overcome."

This philosophy is destroying civilization today as it has in the past. It is bringing the world into chaos once again, yet on a grander scale than both world wars. The spread of the gospel and word of God has often hindered the proliferation of nihilistic thinking, yet today that hindrance is no longer as effective in keeping back such thinking and we are seeing the evil effects of it.

Though the nihilist claims to be guided only by "scientific truth," it interprets that science in ways to promote destruction and evil ends. The Nazis thought they were following scientific truth when they were slaughtering those ethnic groups that they thought were inferior and worthy of death. Dictators do many things in the name of science, but it is a fake science, a "science falsely so called." (I Tim. 6: 20) Today's "science" is telling us that there are no distinctions between male and female, that sexual identity is a result of choice, not of nature. 

It is ironic that nihilists would promote education and science and decry ignorance in view of their theory of meaninglessness. If life is meaningless, what is the purpose of education? Is this not what many young people believe? And, as a result, are they not leaving high school without being able to read or read well? Further, who can condemn them? If they want to be uneducated, so what? Are they not free to create their world and give it the meaning they want? 

Further, there is a distinction between knowledge of the physical sciences and of the social sciences. In regard to the latter, there is much put out as scientific fact which is but unproven theory.

The article also says:

"Since nihilists denied the duality of human beings as a combination of body and soul, of spiritual and material substance, they came into violent conflict with ecclesiastical authorities. Since nihilists questioned the doctrine of the divine right of kings, they came into similar conflict with secular authorities. Since they scorned all social bonds and family authority, the conflict between parents and children became equally immanent, and it is this theme that is best reflected in Turgenev’s novel."

They are therefore "materialists." Man is but a material being with no soul or spirit. His "mind" is nothing more than his brain. His thoughts are but chemical reactions. This leads to fatalistic thought. Man is only physical and not in any sense metaphysical or spiritual. 

On "existential nihilism" we have this by the same source:

"Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. According to the theory, each individual is an isolated being born into the universe, barred from knowing 'why'. The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective 'meaning' or 'purpose'. Of all types of nihilism, existential nihilism has received the most literary and philosophical attention."

Involved in the lie of the serpent to Eve, was his tempting her with the thought that she could become a divinity, a creator, herself, and that God (Elohim) knew this, and because of his not wanting her to become such, not wanting her best condition, forbade her to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After thus enticing her, and producing distrust of her Creator in her, he then said "you will not surely die" but rather "become as Elohim." It was not really logical for it basically said - "become like Elohim by disobeying him." 

Said another scholar (here):

"Outside Russian revolutionary circles, nihilism has been a term whose alleged exponents rarely embrace it, particularly because it is seldom used favorably. Some scholars have attempted to classify it into several subtypes. Donald A. Crosby, in The Specter of the Absurd, sees five types of nihilism: political (essentially the Russian revolutionary sort), moral (in which all moral judgments are rejected as individual or arbitrary), epistemological (in which all truth claims are seen as purely relative), cosmic (in which the cosmos is seen as meaningless), and existential (in which human existence is seen as pointless). Karen L. Carr, in The Banalization of Nihilism, proposes a similar taxonomy. In her view, there are five types of nihilism: epistemological ("the denial of the possibility of knowledge"), alethiological ("the denial of the reality of truth"), metaphysical ("the denial of an independently existing world"), ethical ("the denial of the reality of moral or ethical values"), and existential or axiological ("the feeling of emptiness and pointlessness that follows from the judgment, 'Life has no meaning'")."

The same encyclopedia author says:

"With categories as broad as these, nihilism can be applied to a host of phenomena associated generally with a loss of values or centeredness. One might even say that nihilism as a label became so popular in the second half of the twentieth century that it was often left unspoken. A famous issue of Time magazine in 1966 posed the question "Is God Dead?" in stark red letters against a black background on its cover. In the article, whose immediate inspiration was the rise of the "death-of-God theology" practiced by a particular group of American theologians, John T. Elson reflected on his age as "a time of no religion," cited Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Nietzsche as prophets of modern godlessness, and offered this comment on modern art: "From the scrofulous hobos of Samuel Beckett to Antonioni's tired-blooded aristocrats, the anti-heroes of modern art endlessly suggest that waiting for God is futile, since life is without meaning."

The nihilists today in the USA are creating "anti heroes." They pull down statues of real heroes and make heroes of criminals, rioters, looters, and destroyers of property. Nietzsche is a hero, yea, even Lucifer himself. The Sodomites also are openly supported and eulogized. It is what the new testament writers referred to as "the spirit of antichrist." (I John 4: 1-6)

The author says further:

"Although nihilism and its accompanying existential despair are hardly anything but a pose for Americans, as the language derived from nihilism has become a part of their educations and insinuated itself into their daily lives, they pursue happiness in ways determined by that language. There is a whole arsenal of terms for talking about nothing—caring, self-fulfillment, expanding consciousness, and so on, almost indefinitely."

Oh how true this is today in America and the world. Again, it is fulfilling prophecy and bringing on the day of wrath, judgment, and tribulation. Warned the Spirit of God: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Psa. 9: 17) Hell on earth is coming and it is in large part due to saying "God is dead" and living a life without meaning and purpose, without a will to do what their Creator created them to do.

The author says further:

"Many, however, have not hesitated to name the illness. In 1987, for example, Allan Bloom (1930–1992) published his assault on American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind. He titled Part 2 of that book "Nihilism, American Style," taking aim at a pathological condition he saw in America both inside and outside the academy: "value relativism." The ultimate culprit is none other than Nietzsche. As Bloom saw it, Nietzsche's target was not only God but modern democracy. Displaying Nietzsche's own fondness for unsubstantiated, sweeping claims, Bloom declares, "Nobody really believes in anything anymore, and everyone spends his life in frenzied work and frenzied play so as not to face the fact, not to look into the abyss."

This is so true, except that I would say that "the ultimate culprit" is none other than Satan. Nietzche was but a parrot and puppet of the Devil. The nihilists today, whether they realize it or not, have become Faustian. 

"Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend, based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain." (See here)

This is what today's young people are doing. They are selling their souls to the devil for earthly pleasure. They are turning away (the great falling away?) from God and religion and the evil consequences of this are seen proliferating in our time. Satan's business is to turn away people from "the way of truth," from God and Christ. He is having a "hey day."