Nietzsche, A Critic Of Religion

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

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,

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

Nietzsche suggest the alternate path of morality based on faith in oneself. ‘One could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such as a freedom of will’. To go down this path, one must become aware that their actions can be their own, rather than in accordance with faith in God.

In Nietzsche’s aphorisms 90-95 and 146-162 he attacks what he believes to be the fundamental basis of the “slave” morality prevalent in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as other religions and societies. From the beginning, he distinguishes the two different types of moralities he believes to exist: the “master morality”, created by rulers of societies, and the “slave” morality, created by the lowest people in societies. The former stresses virtues of the strong and noble while looking down upon the weak and cowardly. This type of morality, however, is not as widespread as the “slave morality” that has been adopted by so many religions. Nietzsche looks through the psychology and logic of

In the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche has addressed several religions in effort to counter Christianity. A religion he has used countable times is Buddhism, however his knowledge of Buddhism may have been incomplete. His understanding of Buddhism was based on a nineteenth century European society. With the current western understanding of Buddhism, he may not have labeled it life denying or nihilistic. Nietzsche did not fairly compare Buddhism with Christianity because he was lacking facts and was merely trying to undermine Christianity in order to affirm his philosophies.

Nietzsche points out that morals were not given to humans by God, nor was knowledge or instinct instilled in us by God: we have created morality just as we have decided standards for "truth" and explanations for our "human nature," and so there is no transcendent external standard. If God is dead, there are no objective values and we are free to create our own values. Nietzsche says that although the death of God liberates us, leaving us free to rule ourselves, this results in a cage-like freedom: while no value is objectively "right" or "true", if we can not choose then we are not free. Nietzsche supports the individual who, despite a lack of objective correctness or "truth", makes a decision anyway, accepting responsibility for her self-created values and actions, knowing she is these actions.

As perhaps one of the most important pieces of work written by Nietzsche, “On the Genealogy of Morality” contains some of his most complex and provocative thoughts on the nature of morality and its origins. It is evident throughout his essays that Nietzsche has a profound discontent with modern society and its values, a discontent that Nietzsche attempts to explain through a thorough critique of the modern values that have stemmed from the rise of Judeo-Christianity values that have shaped today’s civilization. In his analysis of concepts such as morality and guilt, he explores the history of the deformation of the once noble and animalistic human society that succumbed to its death

Storms, floods, thunder, lightning, etc. all of these things would explain that God was doing something. The God concept was a strong belief and it still is somewhat today. People in this world from the 5th century till the 17th century everything was about, came from and existed because of God.This is what Nietzsche knew that the God concept was import to know as well as should be the dominant way to think. Many people already believed in an all powerful Creator which is what they had been taught. Yes religion dominated the landscape as well as in everything people learned and was taught. No new concept had come along, the world was stuck in this daze of God in science, Agriculture, medicine, business, and law etc.This was what many people

They both see the values of society as being a result of and necessary for civilization, rather than natural phenomena. Both theorists see guilt as stemming from a restriction of humanity’s natural urges, Nietzsche believing that it was a tool used by the priests to control the masses. Freud on the other hand thought it developed from a repression of humanity’s aggression towards one another. Equally, Freud and Nietzsche show a similar disdain for religion, the former seeing it as a delusional, infantile way to limit the pain and suffering that existence brings with it and the latter, due to what he sees as the transvaluation of values that the Judeo-Christian religions have brought about and the perceived cultural inaction that stems from this. As well as this, Nietzsche disliked the apparent inherited debt that comes with Christianity and the obligated guilt from Christ’s

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 describes in The Gay Science chapter that the madman figures out that God is dead and that humans are murderers of him. Nietzsche is trying to say that the madman comprehended God is not the reason there is good and bad anymore. There is no existence of the initial motive to have Christian morals. Individuals are now in control of their own judgement after they view God as dead, just like the madman. God is not the reason to be moral, people can now look to science and also find reasons of their own to be good or bad. People can define their own ideas of so they are not obligated to live guilty. Nietzsche reflects that God put a great deal of stress on people and made feeling guilty for their sins all the time. What was once a sin

Humans need the appearance of some sort of structure to live. They need rules to live by to tell them whether or not they are living “right”, in a good way or a bad way. We humans have come up with many different ways to tell whether we are living right “right” or not. We have come up with all of the different types of religions and the different sets of morals , all of which change throughout history and time depending on and reflecting it’s episteme. How can any religion or set of morals be considered the “right one” when there has been no consistency with either? Both Feuerbach and Nietzsche have the same belief, that religions and morals are only a crutch that humans grab on to in order to give some meaning to the random assortment of life on earth. Both think that religion was a crutch for humans because of our inability to be perfect. Religions especially Christianity (Jesus) have their own destruction built in to them because of the humanity aspect. Though Feuerbach and Nietzsche agreed upon this they had very different opinions on how it would come about.

3). In his most basic claims, Nietzsche implicitly negates the possibility of a “disinterested” or “objective” truth. He would not urge so definitively for an affirmation of reality, if he held out for the possibility of fantasy or god. The ‘innocence of becoming’ is a clear example of how Nietzsche, for all intents and purposes, “debunk[‘s]” the relevance of claims made by traditional authorities. In essence, Nietzsche basically nullifies the relevance of societal hierarchy. Not only this, but the further claims made by such a society regarding morality and philosophical thinking, are seen to be – at best – gullible and naïve. The ‘innocence of becoming’ refers to even the lowest classes of society finding power in their status. In lieu of accepting that we are completely alone in the world, Nietzsche asserts that we have a constant need to blame others for our state. It is simply much easier to do than to accept that everything we do has no genuine or reaching consequences. While the ‘innocence of becoming’ is not necessarily an innocent process as those we choose to blame are usually blameless, it is fair to say that we are innocent of it; much like the ‘will to power’ it also works through self-deception. Evidently we are able to commit to life affirmation by essentially taking no responsibility for our weakness. Christianity itself is closely connected with the ‘becoming’ process as in its