The death of God

Nietzsche was not a cut and dry figure. He was, like most European philosophers, very complex and had a lot of points in one - cognitive dissonance even.

He came from a theologian background and a very religious family. When he said that "God is dead" he meant what the Christian God represented. It was not necessarily a statement for or against God, it was a statement against the Hellenistic rule of the poor people who had taken the ruling power from the strong. They took the power by making it morally and politically good to be poor, understanding and temperate. The hero figures were no longer Odysseus or other strong men who "fought the dragon" and took home the spoils, they were poor people helping other poor people.

Nietzsche felt that poor people with other moral and ethical standpoints was against nature and therefore bad for humanity. He called for a complete reevaluation of what the Christian religion teaches people. He wanted us to go back to brutes who fought for what we had, and looked up to people who were as close to the natural person as possible. In this way he was very closely connected to the Ancient Greek world-view, which of course is the world view that created our civilization.

So in conclusion, Nietzsche wasn't commenting on the status of Gods mortality, but the political and sociological implications of Christian teachings of humility and understanding. He felt that it wasn't natural and would ultimately lead to our demise as a species.

If you want to know more, I can highly recommend his theory on the "will to power", which says that all humans are motivated by their own desire to have as much power as possible.
 
Maybe but I'm not sure its necessarily so, its a little like the ideas, still popular, that people who suffer some sort of sensory impairment develop accuteness of other senses when that's not necessarily so at all. The blind dont necessarily possess more developed hearing, smell or other senses for instance. You know?

I don't think that's the same thing

I am talking about what motivates people

I have read a lot of autobiographies and biographies and listened to why successful people become high acheivers....you need something to drive you on

often people are driven by a demon (an unresolved emotional issue); the demon can give them great strength but it can also cause chaos in their life

Its not a case of senses compensating its a case of what is mentally motivating a person to push so hard in one direction? Most people do not push that hard
 
Nietzsche was not a cut and dry figure. He was, like most European philosophers, very complex and had a lot of points in one - cognitive dissonance even.

He came from a theologian background and a very religious family. When he said that "God is dead" he meant what the Christian God represented. It was not necessarily a statement for or against God, it was a statement against the Hellenistic rule of the poor people who had taken the ruling power from the strong. They took the power by making it morally and politically good to be poor, understanding and temperate. The hero figures were no longer Odysseus or other strong men who "fought the dragon" and took home the spoils, they were poor people helping other poor people.

Nietzsche felt that poor people with other moral and ethical standpoints was against nature and therefore bad for humanity. He called for a complete reevaluation of what the Christian religion teaches people. He wanted us to go back to brutes who fought for what we had, and looked up to people who were as close to the natural person as possible. In this way he was very closely connected to the Ancient Greek world-view, which of course is the world view that created our civilization.

So in conclusion, Nietzsche wasn't commenting on the status of Gods mortality, but the political and sociological implications of Christian teachings of humility and understanding. He felt that it wasn't natural and would ultimately lead to our demise as a species.

If you want to know more, I can highly recommend his theory on the "will to power", which says that all humans are motivated by their own desire to have as much power as possible.

There's a danger with that end of the spectrum that it becomes a philosophical justification for cruelty. For example it can be used to go down the social darwinist route and that then leads to eugenics as the perceiver inevitably begins to perceive themself as superior to others and that their genes should be passed on to the exclusion of others

The greeks were not all the same. The athenians were very cultured whilst the spartans were more austere. The spartans were all about the will to power. They were social darwinists who would throw any deformed babies off a cliff. They sent their children off to military boarding schools at a young age to be brutalised (have the emotional empathy bashed out of them). They would be paired with an older kid who would often use them for sex.

they were training as soldiers so that they could control a slave class of people called the healots who did all the work. Some spartan children who showed a particularly vicious streak would be selected to form gangs who would sneak down at night into the valleys where the healot settlements were; they were tasked with ambushing and murdering any healots they caught walking around outside after the curfew

The spartans were an unbalanced and brutal people who ultimately failed as a society. Some commentators such as Noam Chomsky have likened the militaristic israelis and their control and exploitation of palestinean labour to the ancient spartans

The british boarding school system styled itself on the spartans and created many hard hearted individuals who then created the british empire which saw the subjugation and oppression of millions of people around the world and is the source of many of the problems around the world today

This is why the buddhists advocate a middle way between aceticism and nihilism. The social darwinist model is an extreme dog eat dog approach and it makes a very harsh and unforgiving world
 
There's a danger with that end of the spectrum that it becomes a philosophical justification for cruelty. For example it can be used to go down the social darwinist route and that then leads to eugenics as the perceiver inevitably begins to perceive themself as superior to others and that their genes should be passed on to the exclusion of others

You're completely right. Hitler, famously, was fond of Nietzsche and his ideals for the natural übermensch. I find comfort in the thought that Nietzsche wasn't an anti-semite, but rather revered Judaism for its straight-forwardness. His sister was, however, a staunch anti-semite and later nazi. She ran his archive for 30-odd years, and took some liberties with his writings.

Most famously the story goes that Nietzsche wrote "die Deutsche ist nimmer gut" (The Germans are never the good guys) and she decided that he had made a typo and corrected it in her state funded archie to "die Deutsche ist immer gut" (The Germans are always the good guys). Charming lady. Sorry, that's off topic.

Regarding Friedrich Nietzsche and social darwinism. To me there are no doubts that a society formed after Nietzsche's ideals of the natural state and human would mean social darwinism and a bad time for every one except the ultra rich and strong. Nietzsche, however, would argue that all people have within them "the will to power" which drives them to achieve their goals and persevere. I doubt it.

The greeks were not all the same. The athenians were very cultured whilst the spartans were more austere. The spartans were all about the will to power. They were social darwinists who would throw any deformed babies off a cliff. They sent their children off to military boarding schools at a young age to be brutalised (have the emotional empathy bashed out of them). They would be paired with an older kid who would often use them for sex.

they were training as soldiers so that they could control a slave class of people called the healots who did all the work. Some spartan children who showed a particularly vicious streak would be selected to form gangs who would sneak down at night into the valleys where the healot settlements were; they were tasked with ambushing and murdering any healots they caught walking around outside after the curfew

The spartans were an unbalanced and brutal people who ultimately failed as a society. Some commentators such as Noam Chomsky have likened the militaristic israelis and their control and exploitation of palestinean labour to the ancient spartans

Once again you are completely on point. The Athenian model for democracy that we know has been extremely vital to how we perceive and form democracy and our customs. I'm not sure that the Spartans were as crazy and as into eugenics as history tells us. They were beaten and had been a pest for the rest of Persia and Greece for a long time. If ancient history has shown anything then it shows that myths and folklore quickly becomes truth if there is no counter point. What we do know is that there was a separatist strong-hold that was completely wiped out after many years of withholding central over-sight. I'm sure that parts of it is true, it might all be true for all I know, but the historical truth can be tricky when you only hear one (highly biased) side of the argument.

The british boarding school system styled itself on the spartans and created many hard hearted individuals who then created the british empire which saw the subjugation and oppression of millions of people around the world and is the source of many of the problems around the world today

This is why the buddhists advocate a middle way between aceticism and nihilism. The social darwinist model is an extreme dog eat dog approach and it makes a very harsh and unforgiving world

Is that true? Was the British boarding school system inspired by the spartans? That sounds unbelievable and sad. I have heard stories of "divide and conquer" but Spartan inspiration sounds very "out there".
 
You're completely right. Hitler, famously, was fond of Nietzsche and his ideals for the natural übermensch. I find comfort in the thought that Nietzsche wasn't an anti-semite, but rather revered Judaism for its straight-forwardness. His sister was, however, a staunch anti-semite and later nazi. She ran his archive for 30-odd years, and took some liberties with his writings.

Most famously the story goes that Nietzsche wrote "die Deutsche ist nimmer gut" (The Germans are never the good guys) and she decided that he had made a typo and corrected it in her state funded archie to "die Deutsche ist immer gut" (The Germans are always the good guys). Charming lady. Sorry, that's off topic.

Regarding Friedrich Nietzsche and social darwinism. To me there are no doubts that a society formed after Nietzsche's ideals of the natural state and human would mean social darwinism and a bad time for every one except the ultra rich and strong. Nietzsche, however, would argue that all people have within them "the will to power" which drives them to achieve their goals and persevere. I doubt it.



Once again you are completely on point. The Athenian model for democracy that we know has been extremely vital to how we perceive and form democracy and our customs. I'm not sure that the Spartans were as crazy and as into eugenics as history tells us. They were beaten and had been a pest for the rest of Persia and Greece for a long time. If ancient history has shown anything then it shows that myths and folklore quickly becomes truth if there is no counter point. What we do know is that there was a separatist strong-hold that was completely wiped out after many years of withholding central over-sight. I'm sure that parts of it is true, it might all be true for all I know, but the historical truth can be tricky when you only hear one (highly biased) side of the argument.



Is that true? Was the British boarding school system inspired by the spartans? That sounds unbelievable and sad. I have heard stories of "divide and conquer" but Spartan inspiration sounds very "out there".

Consider this in part. Someone tells you about some thing you have no knowledge on or at least little. Because they sound like they know what they are talking about do you adopt what they say as truth or think, "this is the best information I have because I had none previously so I will adopt this as the best information I currently have." Until you hear differently, it becomes truth for you thouvh you may or may not argue aggressively for it. This is one of the biggest issues with liberal media right now. They are spewing out ...well tripe for lack of a better word but many of the people that watch dont have time to go out and get the facts. Essentially the half truths and lies they tell become the truth for the people though truth may be the smallest of the ingredients.
 
I think it was a statement of concern more than anything else. Nietzsche wrote "God is dead and we killed him". Nietzsche feared the damaging effects of nihilism on society.

At the same time, he also referred to Christianity as slave morality. And he also deliberately left himself open to interpretation.
 
Consider this in part. Someone tells you about some thing you have no knowledge on or at least little. Because they sound like they know what they are talking about do you adopt what they say as truth or think, "this is the best information I have because I had none previously so I will adopt this as the best information I currently have." Until you hear differently, it becomes truth for you thouvh you may or may not argue aggressively for it. This is one of the biggest issues with liberal media right now. They are spewing out ...well tripe for lack of a better word but many of the people that watch dont have time to go out and get the facts. Essentially the half truths and lies they tell become the truth for the people though truth may be the smallest of the ingredients.

You have to include ALL media in that statement...liberal and conservative.
It isn’t just the the liberal media...you should independently check your facts yourself if you want to be really informed.
There was a study done...I can find it if you are interested in reading it...but it basically said - Those who are far right or far left leaning in their politics will actually double down their initial argument when presented with the facts rather than succumb to the truth.
 
I think it was a statement of concern more than anything else. Nietzsche wrote "God is dead and we killed him". Nietzsche feared the damaging effects of nihilism on society.

Again, it's important to remember Nietzsche's theologian background and his deeply religious upbringing. He was critical of what the Christian God had become a representation of. Very apt observation. Regarding nihilism - are you referring to Nietzsche's master-slave morality theory? Regardless, you are right that he feared a sense of human nihilism/despondency in the "modern human". His theories of the natural and returning to ones roots are very classic and representative of the times.

Out of curiosity, would you say that these theories were the main reason that he proclaimed God dead? I feel that his religious opinions were very secondary to his philosophical opinions, and were mostly used as a means of analogies and as a way of getting attention to what he really cared about - the state of the modern human.

At the same time, he also referred to Christianity as slave morality. And he also deliberately left himself open to interpretation.

He did indeed refer to organized Christianity as an expression of slave morality, and with a great deal of success. Like you said, he left himself open to a great deal of interpretations. My interpretations is that wasn't really outraged by The Bible or Jesus, but at the people that were at the top of the church. He did not like that the slaves had become the masters, and that young people were taught to be understanding and charitable instead of strong and powerful. What do you think?
 
You have to include ALL media in that statement...liberal and conservative.
It isn’t just the the liberal media...you should independently check your facts yourself if you want to be really informed.
There was a study done...I can find it if you are interested in reading it...but it basically said - Those who are far right or far left leaning in their politics will actually double down their initial argument when presented with the facts rather than succumb to the truth.

Absolutely. Its just that these days the liberal media will lie directly to your face and not even try to hide it anymore. Obviously though everyone exploits the lack of facts to their advantage though.
 
Reading this thread spurred me to read up on Nietzsche again. I read some excerpts from The Gay Science a few years ago and read 'Parable of the Madman'. This brought me to stumble upon Arthur Schopenhauer, who is said to have influenced Nietzsche, among many other thinkers and philosophers. So, I find him more insightful than Nietzsche, but like him, he seems too dismissive of materialism. Of course, it is reasonable to criticize materialism, as it is any other philosophy. I'll have to read more to be able to speak more about it; I'm currently reading too many books to take on any more.
 
I think it was a statement of concern more than anything else. Nietzsche wrote "God is dead and we killed him". Nietzsche feared the damaging effects of nihilism on society.

At the same time, he also referred to Christianity as slave morality. And he also deliberately left himself open to interpretation.
Well said. Nietzche was a real atheist. He knew the implications of the absence of God, and he was in despair. All his writtings have a hiden pain, despair and concern for the meaninglesness of existence and human life.

In comparison to Nietzche, the atheists today are a joke. And this is because they haven't thinked at the full implication of their philosophy. Even if they do remember it, they do it only inside the philosophy class, but outside, in the real world, they literary steal values, morals, hope, and will from religion. And they aren't aware of it.
 
Consider this in part. Someone tells you about some thing you have no knowledge on or at least little. Because they sound like they know what they are talking about do you adopt what they say as truth or think, "this is the best information I have because I had none previously so I will adopt this as the best information I currently have." Until you hear differently, it becomes truth for you thouvh you may or may not argue aggressively for it. This is one of the biggest issues with liberal media right now. They are spewing out ...well tripe for lack of a better word but many of the people that watch dont have time to go out and get the facts. Essentially the half truths and lies they tell become the truth for the people though truth may be the smallest of the ingredients.

I'm not spewing out tripe

You can go and research my claims if you're interested
 
Is that true? Was the British boarding school system inspired by the spartans? That sounds unbelievable and sad. I have heard stories of "divide and conquer" but Spartan inspiration sounds very "out there".

This was called a 'classical education'

Britain idolised the ancient greeks. Its architecture built on the money raised from the empire is heavily influenced by greek architecture

It saw itself as the torch bearer of civilisation carrying light into the dark corners of the world. The british model of 'democracy' has been exported around the world

Edinburgh the capital of scotland was nicknamed the 'athens of the north' because of its architecture

British upper class children were sent away to militaristic boarding schools were they were paired up with an older child (a prefect) who they would be subserviant to. The schools often had a militaristic angle to them incorporating for example the cadets and the officer class of the army was made up of the upper class of society

Bullying was common and probably tolerated because it was perceived as a means to toughen people up. Cold showers and morning runs were used to the same end. Boys and girls went to different schools. Athletics and boxing were seen to be very important. Rape was also common and still goes on in boarding schools (see recent scandal in article below). These are all aspects of the spartan military boarding school system

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...vile-scandal-easier-victims-come-forward.html
 
Well said. Nietzche was a real atheist. He knew the implications of the absence of God, and he was in despair. All his writtings have a hiden pain, despair and concern for the meaninglesness of existence and human life.

In comparison to Nietzche, the atheists today are a joke. And this is because they haven't thinked at the full implication of their philosophy. Even if they do remember it, they do it only inside the philosophy class, but outside, in the real world, they literary steal values, morals, hope, and will from religion. And they aren't aware of it.

Not true. There is great diversity among atheists. Many are knowledgeable in theology, have an exceptional understanding of the Bible and of other religions. Many understand how language and society shape thought and beliefs and understand the philosophies that have shaped our conceptions of religion, and ideologies in general. Of course, many can be dogmatic to the point of irrationality, but I have found many who are very compassionate and open minded, a result of being willing to question the beliefs that they were given as a child. Many want to know the Truth.

Could you explain why you think religion has a monopoly on values, morals, hope, and will? Is this not a trait of being human?
 
Not true. There is great diversity among atheists. Many are knowledgeable in theology, have an exceptional understanding of the Bible and of other religions. Many understand how language and society shape thought and beliefs and understand the philosophies that have shaped our conceptions of religion, and ideologies in general. Of course, many can be dogmatic to the point of irrationality, but I have found many who are very compassionate and open minded, a result of being willing to question the beliefs that they were given as a child. Many want to know the Truth.
I know that atheists today are not ignorant toward other beliefs, but they are ignorant toward their beliefs, which is atheism.

My point was that the only atheist that can logically be valid is nihilistic atheism. That's why I said Nietzche understood the implications of a world whithou God.
Could you explain why you think religion has a monopoly on values, morals, hope, and will? Is this not a trait of being human?
I think this article puts it really well:


The Absurdity of Life without God

William Lane Craig

Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.

The Necessity of God and Immortality

Man, writes Loren Eiseley, is the Cosmic Orphan. He is the only creature in the universe who asks, "Why?" Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has leamed to ask questions. "Who am I?" man asks. "Why am I here? Where am I going?" Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. "You are the accidental by-product of nature, a result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death."

Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man's life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever. Therefore, everyone must come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called "the threat of non-being." For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call "myself" will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

I remember vividly the first time my father told me that someday I would die. Somehow as a child the thought had just never occurred to me. When he told me, I was filled with fear and unbearable sadness. And though he tried repeatedly to reassure me that this was a long way off, that did not seem to matter. Whether sooner or later, the undeniable fact was that I would die and be no more, and the thought overwhelmed me. Eventually, like all of us, I grew to simply accept the fact. We all learn to live with the inevitable. But the child's insight remains true. As the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre observed, several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

Whether it comes sooner or later, the prospect of death and the threat of non-being is a terrible horror. But I met a student once who did not feel this threat. He said he had been raised on the farm and was used to seeing the animals being born and dying. Death was for him simply natural—a part of life, so to speak. I was puzzled by how different our two perspectives on death were and found it difficult to understand why he did not feel the threat of non-being. Years later, I think I found my answer in reading Sartre. Sartre observed that death is not threatening so long as we view it as the death of the other, from a third-person standpoint, so to speak. It is only when we internalize it and look at it from the first-person perspective—"my death: I am going to die"—that the threat of non-being becomes real. As Sartre points out, many people never assume this first-person perspective in the midst of life; one can even look at one's own death from the third-person standpoint, as if it were the death of another or even of an animal, as did my friend. But the true existential significance of my death can only be appreciated from the first-person perspective, as I realize that I am going to die and forever cease to exist. My life is just a momentary transition out of oblivion into oblivion.

And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.

The Absurdity of Life without God and Immortality

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose. Let's look at each of these.

No Ultimate Meaning without Immortality and God

If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.

Look at it from another perspective: Scientists say that the universe originated in an explosion called the "Big Bang" about 13 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred. Suppose the universe had never existed. What ultimate difference would it make? The universe is doomed to die anyway. In the end it makes no difference whether the universe ever existed or not. Therefore, it is without ultimate significance.

The same is true of the human race. Mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitos or a barnyard of pigs, for their end is all the same. The same blind cosmic process that coughed them up in the first place will eventually swallow them all again.

And the same is true of each individual person. The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race--all these come to nothing. This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.

But it is important to see that it is not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence does not make that existence meaningful. If man and the universe could exist forever, but if there were no God, their existence would still have no ultimate significance. To illustrate: I once read a science-fiction story in which an astronaut was marooned on a barren chunk of rock lost in outer space. He had with him two vials: one containing poison and the other a potion that would make him live forever. Realizing his predicament, he gulped down the poison. But then to his horror, he discovered he had swallowed the wrong vial—he had drunk the potion for immortality. And that meant that he was cursed to exist forever—a meaningless, unending life. Now if God does not exist, our lives are just like that. They could go on and on and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, "So what?" So it is not just immortality man needs if life is to be ultimately significant; he needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.

Twentieth-century man came to understand this. Read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. During this entire play two men carry on trivial conversation while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. Our lives are like that, Beckett is saying; we just kill time waiting—for what, we don't know. In a tragic portrayal of man, Beckett wrote another play in which the curtain opens revealing a stage littered with junk. For thirty long seconds, the audience sits and stares in silence at that junk. Then the curtain closes. That's all.

French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus understood this, too. Sartre portrayed life in his play No Exit as hell—the final line of the play are the words of resignation, "Well, let's get on with it." Hence, Sartre writes elsewhere of the "nausea" of existence. Camus, too, saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus's hero discovers in a flash of insight that the universe has no meaning and there is no God to give it one.

Thus, if there is no God, then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.

No Ultimate Value Without Immortality and God

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one's destiny is ultimately unrelated to one's behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: "If there is no immortality then all things are permitted." On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid. Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits,

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.1

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre's words, the bare, valueless fact of existence. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning. In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, "to say that something is wrong because . . . it is forbidden by God, is . . . perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong . . . even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. . . ." "The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone."2 In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.

No Ultimate Purpose Without Immortality and God

If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail, then what is the goal of life? Is it all for nothing? Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space the answer must be, yes—it is pointless. There is no goal no purpose for the universe. The litter of a dead universe will just go on expanding and expanding—forever.

And what of man? Is there no purpose at all for the human race? Or will it simply peter out someday lost in the oblivion of an indifferent universe? The English writer H. G. Wells foresaw such a prospect. In his novel The Time Machine Wells's time traveler journeys far into the future to discover the destiny of man. All he finds is a dead earth, save for a few lichens and moss, orbiting a gigantic red sun. The only sounds are the rush of the wind and the gentle ripple of the sea. "Beyond these lifeless sounds," writes Wells, "the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives—all that was over."3 And so Wells's time traveler returned. But to what?—to merely an earlier point on the purposeless rush toward oblivion. When as a non-Christian I first read Wells's book, I thought, "No, no! It can't end that way!" But if there is no God, it will end that way, like it or not. This is reality in a universe without God: there is no hope; there is no purpose.

What is true of mankind as a whole is true of each of us individually: we are here to no purpose. If there is no God, then our life is not qualitatively different from that of a dog. As the ancient writer of Ecclesiastes put it: "The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust" (Eccles 3:19-20). In this book, which reads more like a piece of modern existentialist literature than a book of the Bible, the writer shows the futility of pleasure, wealth, education, political fame, and honor in a life doomed to end in death. His verdict? "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (1:2). If life ends at the grave, then we have no ultimate purpose for living.

But more than that: even if it did not end in death, without God life would still be without purpose. For man and the universe would then be simple accidents of chance, thrust into existence for no reason. Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists. As for man, he is a freak of nature— a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. Man is just a lump of slime that evolved rationality. As one philosopher has put it: "Human life is mounted upon a subhuman pedestal and must shift for itself alone in the heart of a silent and mindless universe.''4

What is true of the universe and of the human race is also true of us as individuals. If God does not exist, then you are just a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life.

So if God does not exist, that means that man and the universe exist to no purpose—since the end of everything is death—and that they came to be for no purpose, since they are only blind products of chance. In short, life is utterly without reason.

Do you understand the gravity of the alternatives before us? For if God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. Do you understand why the question of God's existence is so vital to man? As one writer has aptly put it, "If God is dead, then man is dead, too."

Unfortunately, the mass of mankind do not realize this fact. They continue on as though nothing has changed. I'm reminded of Nietzsche's story of the madman who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace, lantern in hand, crying, "I seek God! I seek God!" Since many of those standing about did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. "Did God get lost?" they taunted him. "Or is he hiding? Or maybe he has gone on a voyage or emigrated!" Thus they yelled and laughed. Then, writes Nietzsche, the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes

'Whither is God?' he cried, 'I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? . . . God is dead. . . . And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?5

The crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment. At last he dashed his lantern to the ground. "I have come too early," he said. "This tremendous event is still on its way—it has not yet reached the ears of man." Men did not yet truly comprehend the consequences of what they had done in killing God. But Nietzsche predicted that someday people would realize the implications of their atheism; and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism—the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

Most people still do not reflect on the consequences of atheism and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. But when we realize, as did Nietzsche, what atheism implies, then his question presses hard upon us: how shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?

The Practical Impossibility of Atheism

About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely. Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote that we must build our lives upon "the firm foundation of unyielding despair."6 Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life. Camus said that we should honestly recognize life's absurdity and then live in love for one another.

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if one lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God.

Let's look again, then, at each of the three areas in which we saw life was absurd without God, to show how man cannot live consistently and happily with his atheism.

Meaning of Life

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God, life has no meaning. Yet philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action. Sartre himself chose Marxism.

Now this is utterly inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say one may create meaning for his life. If life is really absurd, then man is trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for this leap. Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life. Sartre's program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. Sartre is really saying, "Let's pretend the universe has meaning." And this is just fooling ourselves.

The point is this: if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.

Value of Life

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are logically incompatible. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For though he was an atheist, he was an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views "incredible." "I do not know the solution," he confessed."7 The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong cannot exist. As Dostoyevsky said, "All things are permitted."

But Dostoyevsky also showed that man cannot live this way. He cannot live as though it is perfectly all right for soldiers to slaughter innocent children. He cannot live as though it is all right for dictators like Pol Pot to exterminate millions of their own countrymen. Everything in him cries out to say these acts are wrong—really wrong. But if there is no God, he cannot. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity a few years ago as I viewed a BBC television documentary called "The Gathering." It concerned the reunion of survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, where they rediscovered lost friendships and shared their experiences. One woman prisoner, a nurse, told of how she was made the gynecologist at Auschwitz. She observed that pregnant women were grouped together by the soldiers under the direction of Dr. Mengele and housed in the same barracks. Some time passed, and she noted that she no longer saw any of these women. She made inquiries. "Where are the pregnant women who were housed in that barracks?" "Haven't you heard?" came the reply. "Dr. Mengele used them for vivisection."

Another woman told of how Mengele had bound up her breasts so that she could not suckle her infant. The doctor wanted to learn how long an infant could survive without nourishment. Desperately this poor woman tried to keep her baby alive by giving it pieces of bread soaked in coffee, but to no avail. Each day the baby lost weight, a fact that was eagerly monitored by Dr. Mengele. A nurse then came secretly to this woman and told her, "I have arranged a way for you to get out of here, but you cannot take your baby with you. I have brought a morphine injection that you can give to your child to end its life." When the woman protested, the nurse was insistent: "Look, your baby is going to die anyway. At least save yourself." And so this mother took the life of her own baby. Dr. Mengele was furious when he learned of it because he had lost his experimental specimen, and he searched among the dead to find the baby's discarded corpse so that he could have one last weighing.

My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that at Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all the Ten Commandments were reversed. Mankind had never seen such a hell.

And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: there is no absolute right and wrong; all things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the issue of the composer's anti-Semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly Sartre, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste, of equal value with its opposite.8 In his important essay "Existentialism Is a Humanism," Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

A second problem is that if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wurmbrand, who has been tortured for his faith in communist prisons, says,

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners.9

And the same applies to acts of self-sacrifice. A number of years ago, a terrible mid-winter air disaster occurred in which a plane leaving the Washington, D.C., airport smashed into a bridge spanning the Potomac River, plunging its passengers into the icy waters. As the rescue helicopters came, attention was focused on one man who again and again pushed the dangling rope ladder to other passengers rather than be pulled to safety himself. Six times he passed the ladder by. When they came again, he was gone. He had freely given his life that others might live. The whole nation turned its eyes to this man in respect and admiration for the selfless and good act he had performed. And yet, if the atheist is right, that man was not noble—he did the stupidest thing possible. He should have gone for the ladder first, pushed others away if necessary in order to survive. But to die for others he did not even know, to give up all the brief existence he would ever have—what for? For the atheist there can be no reason. And yet the atheist, like the rest of us, instinctively reacts with praise for this man's selfless action. Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.

Purpose of Life

Finally, let's look at the problem of purpose in life. The only way most people who deny purpose in life live happily is either by making up some purpose, which amounts to self-delusion as we saw with Sartre, or by not carrying their view to its logical conclusions. Take the problem of death, for example. According to Ernst Bloch, the only way modern man lives in the face of death is by subconsciously borrowing the belief in immortality that his forefathers held to, even though he himself has no basis for this belief, since he does not believe in God. By borrowing the remnants of a belief in immortality, writes Bloch, "modern man does not feel the chasm that unceasingly surrounds him and that will certainly engulf him at last. Through these remnants, he saves his sense of self-identity. Through them the impression arises that man is not perishing, but only that one day the world has the whim no longer to appear to him." Bloch concludes, "This quite shallow courage feasts on a borrowed credit card. It lives from earlier hopes and the support that they once had provided."10 Modern man no longer has any right to that support, since he rejects God. But in order to live purposefully, he makes a leap of faith to affirm a reason for living.

We often find the same inconsistency among those who say that man and the universe came to exist for no reason or purpose, but just by chance. Unable to live in an impersonal universe in which everything is the product of blind chance, these persons begin to ascribe personality and motives to the physical processes themselves. It is a bizarre way of speaking and represents a leap from the lower to the upper story. For example, Francis Crick halfway through his book The Origin of the Genetic Code begins to spell nature with a capital "N" and elsewhere speaks of natural selection as being "clever" and as "thinking" of what it will do. Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer, attributes to the universe itself the qualities of God. For Carl Sagan the "Cosmos," which he always spells with a capital letter, obviously fills the role of a God-substitute. Though all these men profess not to believe in God, they smuggle in a God-substitute through the back door because they cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the chance result of impersonal forces.

And it's interesting to see many thinkers betray their views when they're pushed to their logical conclusions. For example, certain feminists have raised a storm of protest over Freudian sexual psychology because it is chauvinistic and degrading to women. And some psychologists have knuckled under and revised their theories. Now this is totally inconsistent. If Freudian psychology is really true, then it doesn't matter if it's degrading to women. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. But people cannot live consistently and happily in a world where other persons are devalued. Yet if God does not exist, then nobody has any value. Only if God exists can a person consistently support women's rights. For if God does not exist, then natural selection dictates that the male of the species is the dominant and aggressive one. Women would no more have rights than a female goat or chicken have rights. In nature whatever is, is right. But who can live with such a view? Apparently not even Freudian psychologists, who betray their theories when pushed to their logical conclusions.

Or take the sociological behaviorism of a man like B. F. Skinner. This view leads to the sort of society envisioned in George Orwell's 1984, where the government controls and programs the thoughts of everybody. If Skinner's theories are right, then there can be no objection to treating people like the rats in Skinner's rat-box as they run through their mazes, coaxed on by food and electric shocks. According to Skinner, all our actions are determined anyway. And if God does not exist, then no moral objection can be raised against this kind of programming, for man is not qualitatively different from a rat, since both are just matter plus time plus chance. But again, who can live with such a dehumanizing view?

Or finally, take the biological determinism of a man like Francis Crick. The logical conclusion is that man is like any other laboratory specimen. The world was horrified when it learned that at camps like Dachau the Nazis had used prisoners for medical experiments on living humans. But why not? If God does not exist, there can be no objection to using people as human guinea pigs. The end of this view is population control in which the weak and unwanted are killed off to make room for the strong. But the only way we can consistently protest this view is if God exists. Only if God exists can there be purpose in life.

The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. And insofar as he denies the existence of God and the objectivity of value and purpose, this dilemma remains unrelieved for "post-modern" man as well. Indeed, it is precisely the awareness that modernism issues inevitably in absurdity and despair that constitutes the anguish of post-modernism. In some respects, post-modernism just is the awareness of the bankruptcy of modernity. The atheistic world view is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose. If we try to live consistently within the atheistic world view, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving the lie to our world view.

Confronted with this dilemma, man flounders pathetically for some means of escape. In a remarkable address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991, Dr. L. D. Rue, confronted with the predicament of modern man, boldly advocated that we deceive ourselves by means of some "Noble Lie" into thinking that we and the universe still have value.11 Claiming that "The lesson of the past two centuries is that intellectual and moral relativism is profoundly the case," Dr. Rue muses that the consequence of such a realization is that one's quest for personal wholeness (or self-fulillment) and the quest for social coherence become independent from one another. This is because on the view of relativism the search for self-fulfillment becomes radically privatized: each person chooses his own set of values and meaning. If we are to avoid "the madhouse option," where self-fulfillment is pursued regardless of social coherence, and "the totalitarian option," where social coherence is imposed at the expense of personal wholeness, then we have no choice but to embrace some Noble Lie that will inspire us to live beyond selfish interests and so achieve social coherence. A Noble Lie "is one that deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, [and] race." It is a lie, because it tells us that the universe is infused with value (which is a great fiction), because it makes a claim to universal truth (when there is none), and because it tells me not to live for self-interest (which is evidently false). "But without such lies, we cannot live."

This is the dreadful verdict pronounced over modern man. In order to survive, he must live in self-deception. But even the Noble Lie option is in the end unworkable. In order to be happy, one must believe in objective meaning, value, and purpose. But how can one believe in those Noble Lies while at the same time believing in atheism and relativism? The more convinced you are of the necessity of a Noble Lie, the less you are able to believe in it. Like a placebo, a Noble Lie works only on those who believe it is the truth. Once we have seen through the fiction, then the Lie has lost its power over us. Thus, ironically, the Noble Lie cannot solve the human predicament for anyone who has come to see that predicament.

The Noble Lie option therefore leads at best to a society in which an elitist group of illuminati deceive the masses for their own good by perpetuating the Noble Lie. But then why should those of us who are enlightened follow the masses in their deception? Why should we sacrifice self-interest for a fiction? If the great lesson of the past two centuries is moral and intellectual relativism, then why (if we could) pretend that we do not know this truth and live a lie instead? If one answers, "for the sake of social coherence," one may legitimately ask why I should sacrifice my self-interest for the sake of social coherence? The only answer the relativist can give is that social coherence is in my self-interest—but the problem with this answer is that self-interest and the interest of the herd do not always coincide. Besides, if (out of self-interest) I do care about social coherence, the totalitarian option is always open to me: forget the Noble Lie and maintain social coherence (as well as my self-fulfillment) at the expense of the personal wholeness of the masses. Rue would undoubtedly regard such an option as repugnant. But therein lies the rub. Rue's dilemma is that he obviously values deeply both social coherence and personal wholeness for their own sakes; in other words, they are objective values, which according to his philosophy do not exist. He has already leapt to the upper story. The Noble Lie option thus affirms what it denies and so refutes itself.
 
I'm not spewing out tripe

You can go and research my claims if you're interested

You assume this has something to do with you? Very arrogant except for, what I say is of so little importance.
 
You assume this has something to do with you? Very arrogant except for, what I say is of so little importance.

Of course i assumed you were speaking about me because you quoted the persons response to my post

They were responding to me

You then quoted their response to me in which they were asking me if what i said was true

You then said that people often say things in an authoritive way not expecting anyone to look into what they are saying

If you go back and read over the posts you will see what i mean

So what i'm saying to you is that if there is anything in my post which vandyke was responding to, or any other of my post for that matter, that you doubt then go and look into it

I am not relying on you not researching into what i'm saying...i am hoping that you WILL look into what i'm saying; that's why i mention certain things so that people who are interested can then use those things as a launchpad for further research
 
Of course i assumed you were speaking about me because you quoted the persons response to my post

They were responding to me

You then quoted their response to me in which they were asking me if what i said was true

You then said that people often say things in an authoritive way not expecting anyone to look into what they are saying

If you go back and read over the posts you will see what i mean

So what i'm saying to you is that if there is anything in my post which vandyke was responding to, or any other of my post for that matter, that you doubt then go and look into it

I am not relying on you not researching into what i'm saying...i am hoping that you WILL look into what i'm saying; that's why i mention certain things so that people who are interested can then use those things as a launchpad for further research

You have a sharp mind, if not a little misguided.
 
You have a sharp mind, if not a little misguided.

If you'd like to explain how you perceive me to be missguided i will show you how you are missguided

:)
 
Nietzsche was not a cut and dry figure. He was, like most European philosophers, very complex and had a lot of points in one - cognitive dissonance even.

He came from a theologian background and a very religious family. When he said that "God is dead" he meant what the Christian God represented. It was not necessarily a statement for or against God, it was a statement against the Hellenistic rule of the poor people who had taken the ruling power from the strong. They took the power by making it morally and politically good to be poor, understanding and temperate. The hero figures were no longer Odysseus or other strong men who "fought the dragon" and took home the spoils, they were poor people helping other poor people.

Nietzsche felt that poor people with other moral and ethical standpoints was against nature and therefore bad for humanity. He called for a complete reevaluation of what the Christian religion teaches people. He wanted us to go back to brutes who fought for what we had, and looked up to people who were as close to the natural person as possible. In this way he was very closely connected to the Ancient Greek world-view, which of course is the world view that created our civilization.

So in conclusion, Nietzsche wasn't commenting on the status of Gods mortality, but the political and sociological implications of Christian teachings of humility and understanding. He felt that it wasn't natural and would ultimately lead to our demise as a species.

If you want to know more, I can highly recommend his theory on the "will to power", which says that all humans are motivated by their own desire to have as much power as possible.
His theory I think was more of a response or compesation for the absurdity of life whithout God.

He declared the death of God with despair and crying, terriefied by the meaninglesness of the existence. Nietzche was in a abys, a nihilistic depression, where everything was black and whithout any meaning. He celebrated in despair the absurd, the blindness, the disorder, the illusion of beauty and values, moral values, the absence of meaning in everything, the absence of a ultimate purpose to all the existence, the vanity and absurdity of all. Its a wonder he kept his sanity for such a long time.

Than he come up with the idea that all what is left in the absence of ideals, values, menaing, morals its the will to power, the fulfiling feeling and state of having as much power as you can. Nietzche theory was not just something merely intelectual, merely a philosophical answer. For him it was everything very real. He wanted to find something to forget about the pain, something to live for. He found the power of will. But I think he knew the truth about this one too.
 
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