Elemental morality being instinctive and hard-wired automatically generates ideas about ethics and law because that’s what a human being does – we make stuff mean something. Fundamentally ‘morality’ is a self serving concept as agreed upon rules for yourself and others help YOU survive.
Dammit, you’re better educated than I.

The brain in a vat – your only access to appreciating what is real is your subjective consciousness, so it’s not falsifiable the idea that you are a brain in a vat being fed ‘experiences’ artificially.

Good and evil are not real beyond the limit of your self interest. Sure it exists, Global Corporations poisoning the environment many would agree is evil. But those that are part of the corporations don’t own that they personally are evil, indeed almost certainly they imagine themselves to be good and can defend that claim! Evil becomes vague and indistinct outside of your subjective experience.

Happiness describes 3 very different things. If you win a lottery prize, most likely you would experience the most common form of ‘happiness’, and it passes quickly. The interpersonal sexual/passionate response between lovers delivers a brain chemical delivered form of happiness. And lastly, and most rarely, happiness can describe a life lived in self aware satisfaction.

All but the third form of happiness can become their opposite – suffering. The lottery winnings wasted, what remains is regret, even shame. The joy in finding love can become jealousy or suicide inducing emotional pain if there is rejection.

So I generally find a lot of wisdom in Buddhism. Buddha concentrated on the problem of ‘evil’ which he distinguished as the suffering in the world. Buddha’s distinction in relation to suffering is the foundation of all Buddhism: Suffering is a function of attachment.

So where there is attachment to a lover, there can be suffering in the form of jealousy and wounding in the circumstance of a separation. Where there is attachment to money, suffering becomes possible over the loss of money.

Billionaires that became poor with the crash of the economy, many of them have considered if not committed suicide. How many of America’s poor committed suicide in response to the economic downturn?

So thinking in terms of good and evil, I don’t believe it’s necessary or helpful. Good and evil are concepts that are projected upon reality and are not really of reality in my opinion.

And, of course, the life led in happiness. Such a person will accept what they have in life and aren’t attached to living in any way they are not. The rare Christian or religious person has accomplished this. The key is, naturally – accepting things as they are. Then suffering isn’t possible and happin ess, I suppose it’s a choice.

You figured it out for yourself of course. To believe in nothing is itself a positive assertion. Knowing nothing means yes, the purpose or lack thereof of existence is unknowable as well.

To me Nihilism is like a brat throwing a temper tantrum, insisting nothing can be real because their pet ideas, those they cherished to and made an identity out of -have been revealed untrue to them. There’s too much possibility to discount everything known and unknown wholesale.