Are men that bothered about having children?

That wasn't quite my point though - I just intuit that there would be a correlation between not wanting kids and moral nihilism mostly because I treat moral nihilists with contempt as I think it's a very teenage and very intellectual immature (in most scenarios) type of belief. One which hopefully they will grow out of despite it becoming more and more common for some bizarre reason.

I see what you saying in the people who just either do, or feign not caring about anything. But there are genuine reasons for not wanting them that stem from the opposite of being a moral nihlist, I should know because I am that.

I should know that too since I specilalise in ethics and meta-physics in my philosophy degree which I have studied 2years in.

It's just the vast majority of moral relativists/nihilists either vastly misunderstand the terms of the debate in the first place or they are greatly ignorant of the literature and rather unwilling to engage in it thereafter, presumably because they think themselves intellectually justified in doing nothing to help others and being a lazy, selfish, immoral bastard unless they believe in a deity.

I used to be a moral nihilist for a good 2years, before which I was mostly just apathetic to the idea of morality as I hadn't gave it much serious thought. I think nihilism is the naive answer anyone would come to when they first start thinking about it.

Don't get defensive. Just saying, I am the opposite of a moral nihlist but if I see things around me that I loathe, and so much of modern relationships is predicated on contraception, and there's so many other things to do, I can see perfectly mature reasons for not having them.

So are you saying here that people who don't believe in a deity are immoral or selfish, or specific individuals? And 'selfishness' is far from being the morally simplistic, unequivocally bad thing you portray. In fact peoples lives are wrecked by those who claim to do good, and are wil do so with zeal.

Selfishness is, objectively, unequivocally bad. It has no place in any sensible definition of good, especially long-term selfishness or selfishness as an end in itself. It has nothing to do with God; I am an atheist. Of course it can and is the case that many people who think they are good are indeed bad and likewise people who think themselves bad are actually good. Whether a person is good or not depends on their intentions. Whether an action is good or not depends on its effects and of course good intentions can cause bad outcomes and vice versa. Granted only doing good to others in the hopes of getting rewarded in the afterlife is NOT being a good person.

Someone who only does good things because . Granted, many theists have far better justifications for doing good than that and indeed, deists do too, they only require the deity to exist in order to exploit its omnipotence to get over the meta-physical problems associated with objective morality.

There are conscious and subconscious intentions though, and these differ infinitely in my view. And selfishness is not bad, there are those 'empathisers' who thnk of thers, manipulate and give patronisingly to reinforce their power and the others servilty or gratitude. Like charity. You cannot say that someone who has virtues like honesty, being free of power games, manipulation etc, yet is 'selfish' is simply bad, it's rubbish.

That wasn't quite my point though - I just intuit that there would be a correlation between not wanting kids and moral nihilism mostly because I treat moral nihilists with contempt as I think it's a very teenage and very intellectual immature (in most scenarios) type of belief. One which hopefully they will grow out of despite it becoming more and more common for some bizarre reason.

If I don't want kids it is not because I am a nihilist lol.

Also most people (including me) don't construct massive philosophical arguments to justify whether they want kids or not. It isn't that simple anyway. Someone could be a doctor, who never has kids, but has none the less helped the human race survive. The doctor that saves a mother and child when a pregnancy goes wrong also helps other people have children. Just by paying taxes that go towards the NHS you are helping other people having kids.

I wasn't suggesting it was that deep but w/e

"Also most people (including me) don't construct massive philosophical arguments to justify whether they want kids or not. It isn't that simple anyway." - That's an oxymoron. Unless you rather arrogantly think even massive philosophical arguments are simple. Har-har.

Should have been a new paragraph and I was referring to the statement that if you don;t want kids you are somehow selfish, as if you are not pulling your weight.

I never said that you are selfish for not wanting kids. I actually said the opposite, people who want kids are likely to be more selfish.

In my original post I said that I perceived a correlation between selfishness and not wanting kids, I didn't say there was a causal link. Granted, I'm not sure how valid that perception even is after sleeping on it

or nihilistic :fuhrer:

For someone who believes everything is most likely probably devoid of meaning/significance I'm very much not nihilistic.

Nihilism can mean a lot of things, moral nihilism you mean? I am an existential nihilist too, aka an atheist...

I don't know what any of this means

I think humans are just constructed out of the laws of nature and shaped by them when we evolve. Morality is not a law of nature like say how EM waves propagator or gravity. They are created by us as we are social animals. But these morals that are a human construct can be ground down to fundamental human morality that is universal throughout humanity. But since the world is so complicated these fundamental morals conflict with each other when we stick them together and try to use them to work out what is the 'moral' thing to do in more complicated situations. Sort of like how a small number of particles can form the building blocks of nature and it's complexity. So the same moral fundamentals can be built into such a wide ranging mish mash of world views (using politics as an example) such as socialism, libertarianism, anarchism, conservatism, progressive etc and miss mashes of them.


But this doesn't take into account stuff like psychopathy and other ways in which human beings can be different :/ **** knows.

Yes, well, all of that is plainly obvious. So I don't disagree, but it's not like you've said anything that a 14 year old wouldn't have noticed either :P