Where atheists and theists may find common ground for discussion

[eomer]

33. Nihilism is clearly orthogonal to theism, not opposite.

That atheists can be nihilists apparently is a given. But that theists can be nihilists should be just as obvious, you're just conditioned not to think of that possibility. Deists in particular may take the view that there is a god that created the universe but doesn't really care what humans do. So deists like that would be both theists and nihilists.

You've already made the point that atheists can propose various sources of morality, in which case they would not be nihilists. Other atheists may say there is no intrinsic source of morality.

So theists can be either nihilists or not nihilists and atheists can be either nihilists or not nihilists. Theism and nihilism are orthogonal, not opposite.

But from a more practical point of view there don't seem to be many theists these days who are nihilists. And the atheists I know are also not nihilists but rather secular humanists who do believe they can find a source of morality that isn't god.

So to me the question is more whether two camps of not-nihilists, the theist camp and the atheist secular humanist camp, can find common ground to discuss morality. And I think the answer would be mostly no for theists who take an ancient book as the source of their morality unless they take that book with a very large grain of salt, which is to say unless they say the book is their source but are mistaken in saying so and are really getting their morality from somewhere else. In that case they are not really different than secular humanists. In other words, maybe liberal theists and secular humanist atheists are not really different with regard to their source of morality and therefore can find some common ground for a fruitful discussion of morality. One way to find out would be to just try and see what happens. In other words, what morals do you propose and why?