Can a person be an atheist in relation to everything?
I found a strange acquaintance. This person does not believe in anything, has never believed in any religion, did not believe in friends, did not believe in love, did not believe that he is a person and does not believe in the world that he sees, calls it a fairy tale. According to him, one friend convinced him that all this does not exist, and he also does not exist, because he has been sitting alone for 9 years and avoids everyone, waiting for death, as he said, calls himself an illusion. And he claims to be an atheist about everything in the world. Is this correct? So drive people into disbelief.
This is not” atheism for everything”, it is nihilism. Personally, I'm not ready to believe in the “one friend convinced me” story. There are no people who are so convincing. Well, then the question is whether your friend is lying to you about his beliefs or to himself about the reasons for these beliefs.
Well, first of all, only a believer can confuse idiocy with atheism.)
And secondly, his picture of the world looks like a fierce mixture of nihilism and the simulation hypothesis. From nihilism is taken the denial of everything and everything, and from the hypothesis of simulation – that ” everything around us is a simulation, an illusion, not real.”
This is not driving disbelief: materialism implies that a person, denying the mystical, recognizes the fact of the existence of the material world and only it.
But your friend has an idealistic worldview, akin to religion, with the difference that he is exactly the same person.I BELIEVED that there is no world, there is no world, and there is nothing at all.
I would recommend starting a conversation with him on the topic of his worldview, having previously prepared a bucket of ice water. When he begins to” convincingly ” justify the unreality of what is happening (and you both delve into the wilds of his worldview), suddenly throw cold water over him from a bucket and ask: what does he think about the reality of wet and cold clothes on himself? If he says that the water is not real, he is not there, the world is not there, etc. – only a doctor, probably a psychiatrist, can help him. But if the reaction is adequate (for example, he will be angry, indignant or otherwise demonstrate sanity), then he is simply mistaken, you can directly point out to him that “the water is real”.
probably he was convinced of the illusory nature of being, and now he is a solipsist .. but at the same time, they did not convince him correctly, because he is “waiting for death” ..
I wanted to congratulate you, because real solipsists are rare to meet, but since it is defective, there is nothing to congratulate ..
and his “atheism” is more like “nihilism” – a denial of everything, a rejection, a refusal to recognize the value of anything for human existence .. hence apathy, which developed from a natural tendency to laziness, and unwillingness to realize any potentials ..
and again .. if you still somehow met him, and even communicated, then his position is hardly absolute .. and then marriage.