[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[emjay]

Does that mean Nietzsche was some sort of Idealist? 

Depends what you mean by Idealist, I guess. Platonic idealists are the opposite of Nietzsche, holding that there is an eternal realm of ideas. German Idealist -- maybe so, in a kind of extreme way. 

But I'm not clear on how we should use "Idealist" here.

What I personally meant by it was the view that there is no physical reality beyond the perceptions of the mind, which sounded like what you were describing.

Seems a pretty extreme position to hold. 

Probably safe to say that any sentence beginning "Nietzsche believed __________," could end with "which was a pretty extreme position."

Yeah, I gathered. 

We wouldn't be here if there wasn't at least some reliable causal structure to the universe.

I think so too. So, as the OP is asking, we'd want to inquire as to what those unchanging and reliable causal structures are exactly.

Well I don't have much to say on that, beyond accepting the fundamental natural laws as brute facts. I'm currently (slowly) reading On The Origin Of Time by Thomas Hertog (who worked with Stephen Hawking until his death), which is expected to maybe have something to say on these issues. 

There's no doubt that his ideas have been way more influential in the social sciences than in physics. As Rev. Rye said, the Ubermensch is reinventing values. Not laws of mechanics. The sorts of causal structures we tend to question today are more societal, traditional, and cultural -- or thanks to Nietzsche we see that what used to be called science is now seen as culture, and therefore may be questioned. 

So post-Nietzscheans have made careers on the challenging and reinterpretation of things that were once taken as objective science, but which they showed to be definitions or values that might in fact change. Foucault, famously, attempted to demonstrate that human sexuality and mental illness are far less physical/scientific fields and more related to power dynamics and tradition.

I think I'd need to read Nietzsche directly to get a better idea of what you're talking about here. Funnily enough he is on my bucket-list so to speak but for a different reason; I've started learning German, and I thought it would make a nice goal to aim for to eventually be able to read it in German... but that's a long ways off, if ever. Doesn't mean I can't still read it in English obviously, and I might do if this all grabs my interest enough, but just saying about that secondary goal.

The whole trans debate that's going on now is a descendant of Nietzsche's provocations. For a long time people thought that maleness or femaleness were objectively determined by anatomy or, later, chromosomes -- hard science. But now people have declared that this objective science has no value, and that a person can overrule anatomy through feeling. Basically, will overcomes anatomy.

I have to say I agree with everyone else here, gender is not the same thing as sex. I don't personally have any experience with transgender issues; ie I'm gay but I don't have any gender issues, but if I did... if I had a deep seated discomfort living in my own skin so to speak, and the strong cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria, then contrary to what you seem to be implying, I don't think that would be any more a whim, or a choice, or a fleeting idea than sexuality is. Ie not at all. Also I disagree with characterising it as the will overcoming anatomy/overrul[ing] anatomy through feeling; because that implies that they should always be perfectly aligned and/or that anatomy should dictate feeling/identity, but where it's blatantly obvious that that's not the case; the brain and its development is largely 'plastic', and factors both genetic and environmental influence our mental development.