A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)
If physicalism were true, and abiogenesis happened without any intervention of &quot;higher being&quot;(s), and Darwinism were correct; then life wouldn&#x27;t be meaningless. Neither would its purpose be determined by each individual. Life would have exactly two objective purposes: to survive and to reproduce.<p>It&#x27;s actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will continue to live.<p>That also means that there&#x27;s no good or bad. There are only what traits are advantageous to survival and what traits aren&#x27;t.<p>For example, being trustworthy is &quot;good&quot; because trust within a group is a prerequisite for achieving a relatively advanced society like Homo Sapiens has built. Breaking into someone&#x27;s house is &quot;bad&quot; because otherwise we would only be as advanced as other primates that take each other&#x27;s territories all the time.<p>But when you think about it, there are &quot;good&quot; things that aren&#x27;t advantageous (or even are harmful) to survival, and there are things advantageous to survival that are considered &quot;bad&quot; by most people. Many examples would be highly controversial, so I&#x27;d pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics.<p>So, how exactly do we know which is good, which is bad? Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?