My idea is that one finds a more nihilistic description of the human condition in many religious works (I'm speaking specifically of Christian works) than in most books by "freethinkers," as they used to be called. To see this, all we have to do is take out the religious parts. What's left over are some very correct nihilistic comments.
This is from William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728):
http://www.worldinvisible.com/.../law/seriouscall/scch17.htm
think how soon the world will disregard you and have no more thought or concern about you than about the poorest animal that died in a ditch. Your friends, if they can, may bury you with some distinction and set up a monument to let posterity see that your dust lies under such a stone; and when that is done, all is done. Your place is filled up by another, the world is just in the same state it was, you are blotted out of its sight, and as much forgotten by the world as if you had never belonged to it.
or from Pascal's Pensees:
"Thus passes away all man's life. Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable."
IIS 8.5 Detailed Error - 404.0 - Not Found
Here's a similar idea from Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. The thesis of this book is that human happiness is impossible. It's not obviously religious, but anyone familiar with Johnson knows what he's getting at: forget happiness: do your religious duty. It's about this rich prince that travels around the world trying to find out what mode of life will make him happy. This passage is about a Pyramid in Egypt:
"It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must always be appeased by some employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy, must enlarge their desires. He that has buiilt for use, till use is supplied, must begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance, that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish. I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another."
http://www.worldwideschool.org/...nceofAbyssinia/chap32.html
Moving along in time, we find T. S. Eliot in the 1940s writing in his deeply Christian (and modernist) poem Four Quartets,
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations,
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about . . .
http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/coker.htmlBeing terrified by "nothing to think about" is not only quite amusing; it is also a very accurate depiction of the psychological condition of humans, who are purpose-oriented, being lost in a purposeless world. Here we have the tedium vitae, the "vacuity" of life, to use Samuel Johnson's term.
I would conclude, therefore, the following: the depiction of the human condition as described by Christian writers (if we omit references to God) has a nihilistic flavor to it.
There might be two issues here:
1. Is the traditional Christian view of life as depicted above?
2. Ought it to be the view of life for a Christian?
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2