What the hell is the difference between Atheism and Nihilism?

Yeah yeah yeah, I can check google and wikipedia, but I wanna hear it from The Lords Of RTTP!

Atheism is when you dont believe in Jesus.And I have no clue what Nihilism is.

nihilism is believing in nothingness.

Where the hotties tonight?

I may be off...

atheism is when people don't believe in religion

nihilism is when people don't believe in existence.

Jugulator said:

so jews are atheists? no.
an atheist is simply one who follows no religion.

from what i understand, a nihilist is one who believes that everything, especially humanity and man-made things, is meaningless.

Ryan_M said:

bingo

these guys are nihilists

vee believe in nathink

I get it now.

As a side note, Flea should be in more movies. All I can remember him in is The Chase, The Big lebowski, and Back to the Future (III?).

iv always been pretty sure he was the guy licking lsd off of johnny depps arm in fear and loathing in las vegas

iv always been pretty sure he was the guy licking lsd off of johnny depps arm in fear and loathing in las vegas

someone who doesn't have any religious beliefs is an agnostic
an atheist is someone who doesn't just question the existence of god but outright denies it

kinda subtle difference but pretty important if you think about it

nihilism's complicated but yeah you could very basically say that it's the belief that nothing matters in any sense

baptizedinresin said:


yeah, thats one of my favorite parts of that movie. I learned today that Flea's real name is Michael Balzary. Horray for pointless trivia!

he was also in the original Suburbia (great movie - fuck the remake)

King Kong Kunt said:

He was in 'Dudes', but youre prolly too young to know anything pre 85.

I believe that the ultimate difference is that Nihilist believe that it is absolutely ludacris and rediculous to believe that there is an existence of anything that is more superior than man, and athiest just deny that there is a god.

Flea also did the monkey kid's voice in The Wild Thornberry's, probably the only really good cartoon Nikelodeon ever had after those first one's that we all loved so much. Well, I forget that there are a lot of people on here that are too old to have grown up with Ren And Stimpy and Rocko.

Nihilism, from what I've read and heard, seems to be little more than an excuse to take without giving and otherwise completely ignore morality. People who are righteous assholes seem to convince themselves that it's OK to be a douche, because they are nihilists. Not to say all nihilists are like this. I'm sure some people make it work...

It's strange though, because, I bet there isn't one person in the world who isn't nihilist about something, whether it be social customs, pointless traditions. Who knows. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that. But it seems that there are a lot of people who read Nietche, and for some reason come out of it with the impression that "nihilism is good", whereas, Nietche's (am I spelling his name right) big beef with Christianity (as well as lots of other religions) was that it is a pretty nihilistic religion, all but obliterating the value and importance of life on Earth with a promise of a much more redeeming and substantial afterlife. He didn't really preach nihilism, but people think he did because they don't realize that he said a LOT of things just for shock value, so the reader would think "Wait, that's ludicrous, and Nietche knows it, and now I know it too". I need to fucking stop ranting on this board.

Atheiesim is one without any religion taken from the latin "a" which means not and the suffix theos, which I think means religion. As for Nihlism, just watch the big lebowski