Comparing Nietzsche And Religion

In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche emphasizes that the Christian Church is a false idol. He dares to say, “..God to be an enemy of life..” and, “Life ends where the ‘kingdom of God’ begins..” because he believes that Christian morality is against life itself (Idols, 23). The reason for this is because Nietzsche believes that, “to have to fight against the instincts- this is the formula for decadence: so long as the life is ascendant, happiness equals instinct” which simply means that if one goes against instincts, or an intuitive way of carrying ones life, then as a consequence it will lead to the degeneration of society and intellect while if life is on the rise, happiness must be equivalent to following ones’ instinct (Idols, 15). Because of his belief it is understood that Nietzsche wants one to embrace their instincts. Nietzsche states that a life in which

Nietzsche hopes there will be a transvaluation of values so that the Will of Power will take prominence. It states in the text," Need I say expressly after all thus that they will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future." (pg.222) Nietzsche introduces the Will to Power in opposition to the old Christian values of compassion. According to Nietzsche, Christians reject the Will to Power and suppress it

Nietzsche sets the scene for the current moral situation of society in the beginning of his allegory: the madman “in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, “I’m looking for God!” (§125). The madman is distressed because many fundamental beliefs of Christianity--the belief in God and “sin, repentance,

At this point of life, Nietzsche saw a complicity between morality and the Christian God that perpetuates a life-denying, and ultimately nihilistic. (Crowell, 2004) I do agree that Nietzsche’s view would lead him to cross between his beliefs and morals in a way that it would be hard to ignore one or the other. Nietzsche's idea behind moral prescriptions lie in nothing but a “will to power”. (Crowell, 2004)

Nietzsche argues that Christianity is repressive, sanctimonious and provides too much solace which prevents one from living an ideal life. The conditions inherent in Christianity thwarts man’s desire to live an instinctual, free and creative life where man can exercise his will to power. Instead he says, the “Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice. The sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation” (Nietzsche,1886 , p.45). He sees it as being out of touch with reality and irrelevant and cautions us to at the least question its morals and teachings and not being a blind, following sheep, or in Nietzsche’s lexicon, a ‘herdman’. Radically, Nietzsche took the power from God and attributed it instead to mankind.

I showed hopefully that Nietzsche was trying to show that the church no longer dominates with its dogma morality teachings. I clearly showed that the God concept had been around for thousands of years and most people believed in the church and God. I also showed how the church dominated the world for seventeen hundred years before Nietzsche wrote the Gay Science. I gave this information about the Church and the God concept to show that when Nietzsche wrote his famous words God is dead he was not literally saying God was dead, but that the concept of God believing in him for moral teachings is dead, are is no longer the only way to moral teachings. Nietzsche was brilliant in what he wrote he even wrote that the murder’s are human beings we

The Christian Bible, in all of its glory and mystery, is the book with the most translations than any other book ever written. Translated into nearly 400 different languages and has well over 100 different versions within the English language alone, it's hard to think of another book so widely known. But why is it so controversial? Many people do not truly believe the words that live between these pages. However, according to the world clock, there are currently around 2.3 billion Christians today out of the nearly 7.5 billion people roaming the earth. When calculated, this comes to about 31% of the planet self identifying as Christ followers. That’s quite a lot of people, and though we are currently the largest religion, we are slowly shrinking in size and Islam, currently at 23% of the population, is slowly growing in numbers.

As mentioned previously, Nietzsche is one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. The main reason that inspires me to research him and his ideas is that Nietzsche’s philosophy is something that I have never been exposed to in my life. Being an Orthodox Christian, many of the ideas that I was exposed to are from the church’s perspectives. On the other hand, Nietzsche is known for his criticism of Christianity as well as his controversial and radical ideas that are considered very influential in the western world. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s philosophy is so powerful and difficult to comprehend as they are often misinterpreted which presents a challenge for me to study and understand. Finally, I believe that studying Nietzsche’s philosophy will

Friedrich Nietzsche, an extremely controversial thinker of his time, was an “outspoken critic of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and religious dogmatism” (Kellner). Indubitably, Nietzsche has had a great impact on the improvement of twentieth century social thought. Key ideas from Nietzsche are included in the following: The Gay Science, On the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil. In the Gay Science, Nietzsche presents the famous image of the madman declaring “God is dead… and we have killed him”. Much of Nietzsche’s work problematizes Christianity and urges humanity to rethink the basis of morality. The artful self-stylization that may be implied by this is also suggested, and how to live without religious certainty. After the loss of religion as a guide and path to follow in his time, Nietzsche acknowledged the need for direction and understood that this could be possible by creating certain values for society to accept and follow.

There are numerous arguments presented on the modern death of God by the German Idealist (Hegel, Feuerbach), the existentialists (Nietzsche, Frederick Depoortere Paul Sartre), and the modern scientists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris). Nietzsche, argues that from the modern death, it does not imply that experiences a physical death, but he theorizes that if Christians doubt the availability of the spiritual being, then the community’s morality will be separated. On the other hand, Richard Dawkins argues that, God’s notion should be observed or considered just like the other scientific hypothesis. The German Idealists Hegel and Feuerbach argue that God is also a complete being and that God is the holy mystery that people cannot understand the same way they understand other things in the world.

As a result of Nietzsche's support for his argument, Christianity does reject life, for it rejects master morality. Christianity rejects life overall because it does not allow people to grow as a human and to expand humanity in its best interest. This is through the following instances that it promotes hatred of the earth, slave morality, an inferior lifestyle, and finally self-denial. From all of these examples Nietzsche provides, Christianity is not in humanity's best interest. Christianity does not care about one's capability to succeed and to evolve in life. However, a person does, in fact, have the potential to do so. Nietzsche strongly believes in this, and clearly, continues to state the endless possibilities man has to offer towards

Friedrich Nietzsche is a German philosopher known for his challenging ideas against common morality and his ideas commonly associate with anarchism. Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844 in Röcken, Lützen, Prussia (currently Germany), where his father was a Lutheran priest. Nietzsche suffered from two terrible tragedies at a young age as his father passed away when he was only five years old and his younger brother also died only a year later. One year later, Nietzsche’s family moved to Naumberg and at the age of 14 Nietzsche earned a scholarship to the Pforta, a Lutheran boarding school known for academic excellence, near Naumberg. At Pforta Nietzsche excelled in Greek and Latin, but still did not show any signs of his radical philosophy

Nietzsche claims that religion and morality is a set of strict rules that don’t only not benefit the follower but also causes them to become enslaved to the rules. On the one hand I agree with Nietzsche when he writes about the false ideology of causality and the belief that “God is dead”. Nietzsche describes causality as people misunderstanding that God is not the cause of events that happen to people and that people need to understand that they themselves are the causes in their lives. On the other hand, I believe that Nietzsche is wrong when he says that these religious guidelines creates slaves out its followers.

Nietzsche uses an example of pity and how pity shouldn’t be valued because it weakens the body. Nietzsche is against pity. He argues that fundamentally if you pity someone you lower yourself to their level so when you think about pity you think about this poor person, feel bad for them, sense of that could have been you but for the grace of god, it wasn’t. Healthy individuals don’t think this way they think I wouldn’t be like that because I’m not that kind of person. Constantly fighting over the will to power, when you say I’m just as bad as that contemptible individual you make yourself contemptible. Beyond Good and Evil, “Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity.” (572) Nietzsche reminds us of Christianity in

Karl Marx is a German materialist philosopher, socialist, economist and journalist whish was born in5 May 1818. His philosophy and thoughts have been influenced by Hegel’s philosophy and believes that the essence of human beings is relationship with nature and other beings. In the case of religion, he has a negative and pessimistic view about religions .Marx believes that, there is no God and there is no need of God. He believes that religion is an illusion of human being minds that avoid people to seek the reality as it does not allow people to question religions. As he compares it to opium; “It is the opium of the people”( Eggers). Opium reduces the pain from human’s body in the short term, but it is harmful in a long time and it reacts like poison in human’s body. Religion is also like this; it reduces the suffering, but it will reduce the energy and willingness to fight against the oppressive system of capitalism. Religion cannot find the real cause of suffering. He mentions that for having a real