Materialism’s Inevitable Nihilism

On my college campus, one of the best places to have a deep discussion is at our chapter of Ratio Christi Apologetics Alliance, which is an ISI-affiliated group. Last Monday, we discussed materialism and meaning. Our group contains Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, and Deists. At one point in the discussion, we strayed to the topic of scientific discovery. We asked questions like, “Is there any legitimacy in feeling pleasure at the acquisition of knowledge or discovery?” My materialist friends contended that even though there is no meaning and our feelings of pleasure are no higher than a beast’s sensation, we can still enjoy them just as much. I met this idea with utter consternation. My friends seem to honestly believe that nihilism’s truth should not diminish the legitimacy of our pleasure in deep intellectual pursuits.

There is a very serious problem with this notion. In tracing it back, I believe we reach a profound confusion in our culture. We have been told for decades that as long as you don’t hurt anyone, it does not matter what you take pleasure in or value. This statement implies a type of relativism. If there is no best way to live, then you cannot think your own way of life is superior. If this thinking is correct, then the pleasure of our discovering a cure for cancer is no better than inventing a deadly biological weapon. By this same logic, neither of those discoveries is any better than sitting on your coach watching Jerry Springer for the rest of your life. But if all of these activities have no more merit than any others, how can the consistent materialist genuinely enjoy his intellectual pursuits. If I were truly convinced that there was no ultimate meaning, I would always be haunted by the incredible emptiness of life. The vitiating effects of nihilism should reduce us to tears. It is a profoundly sad commentary on our culture’s degraded state that people try to console themselves from nihilism by a blind embrace of neurologically induced pleasures. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky’s dictum, if God is dead then there is no meaning.