RE: I love religion!
January 15, 2010 at 4:40 am
(This post was last modified: January 15, 2010 at 4:53 am by ghostlighter.)
No, no, no. I meant "problem" in the sense that it is hard to convey your interest in religion to others while identifying yourself as an atheist without invoking the sense that your perpective is somehow paradoxal. I myself have an interest in religion, yet find no need to believe in some "big imaginary dude who controls shit". I find your love of religion to be valid. That's what I was trying to say: that I appriciate your point of view.
Be careful in interpreting Nietzshe. I suppose the fact that you haven't studied him much might make it easy for you to take the quoted passage out of context. To Nietzsche, power is everything. He wasn't mocking "outdated" power. He was praising it. But also, he points out that it is the cultural ESTEEM that the belief in an ideal provokes that is of real value and not the thing that is actually believed. (sorry if that's confusing) For instance, he admired druids and pagans because they LOVED LIFE and their beliefs repesented and acceptance and appriciation of LIFE, though he did not believe in gods of the rocks and fertillity and such. I was proposing that maybe you shared his awe and wonder at the cultural diversity (and, indeed, cultural divergence). On the other hand he saw Christians as weak and despicable because they always are WEARY of life and HATE life and DENY life and claim that the only important life was some IMAGINARY life or "eternal" life in "heaven". The doctrines of denial of the passions also put him at odds, to a lesser extent, with buddhism. But a knowlegable person knows that Buddhism is about REALIZING passions by letting them go and not being attatched to them like a weak spirit, but I digress...
Birth of Tragedy is a pretty good mind opener, but it reprents his thinking before it passed through a certain threshold never to return. To get a better presentation of what were Nietzsche's mature ideas check out "Twilight of the Idols" (very short) or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (medium length). Now to get a scholastic-grade familiarity with his most powerful and culturally relevant arguments you must read (in this order) "Beyond Good and Evil" (long, but opens up the mind magically) "Geneology of Morals" (fairly short) and finally "The Antichrist" (very short and one of my favorite titles by him, garenteed to blow your mind if you can grasp it-- you might not need to read the two former titles to "get it" but it would most surely help. If you understand "Antichrist" you understand basically the whole of Nietzsche).
Finally, I just wan't to point out that I do NOT agree with about 75% of the man's philosophy. But I do so love his accurate portrayal of the psychology of the "believer"-- a liar who hates life so much he has adopted a system of thought and ritual to deny it. And his style is magnificent and stylish. But one thing you will find by studying Nietzsche is that he has his own dogma as well. And as a non-dogmatist, I just can't groove with that.
In summary, I was just saying that your love of religion is completely valid, that I too love religion along with any other great work of fiction, for its inherent literary value as did Herr Nietzsche. But even Christianity has some truth to it. Afterall, it "should be considered unclean to lie with animals" shouldn't it?
Peace
PS: We will never know if Buddha was an atheist. I think he probably WAS because there is no trace of "God" in his core truth. I think that BUDDHA was an atheist, but most BUDDHISTS aren't. How ironic. But this is coming from the guy who wonders if Jesus might have been an atheist...
Be careful in interpreting Nietzshe. I suppose the fact that you haven't studied him much might make it easy for you to take the quoted passage out of context. To Nietzsche, power is everything. He wasn't mocking "outdated" power. He was praising it. But also, he points out that it is the cultural ESTEEM that the belief in an ideal provokes that is of real value and not the thing that is actually believed. (sorry if that's confusing) For instance, he admired druids and pagans because they LOVED LIFE and their beliefs repesented and acceptance and appriciation of LIFE, though he did not believe in gods of the rocks and fertillity and such. I was proposing that maybe you shared his awe and wonder at the cultural diversity (and, indeed, cultural divergence). On the other hand he saw Christians as weak and despicable because they always are WEARY of life and HATE life and DENY life and claim that the only important life was some IMAGINARY life or "eternal" life in "heaven". The doctrines of denial of the passions also put him at odds, to a lesser extent, with buddhism. But a knowlegable person knows that Buddhism is about REALIZING passions by letting them go and not being attatched to them like a weak spirit, but I digress...
Birth of Tragedy is a pretty good mind opener, but it reprents his thinking before it passed through a certain threshold never to return. To get a better presentation of what were Nietzsche's mature ideas check out "Twilight of the Idols" (very short) or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (medium length). Now to get a scholastic-grade familiarity with his most powerful and culturally relevant arguments you must read (in this order) "Beyond Good and Evil" (long, but opens up the mind magically) "Geneology of Morals" (fairly short) and finally "The Antichrist" (very short and one of my favorite titles by him, garenteed to blow your mind if you can grasp it-- you might not need to read the two former titles to "get it" but it would most surely help. If you understand "Antichrist" you understand basically the whole of Nietzsche).
Finally, I just wan't to point out that I do NOT agree with about 75% of the man's philosophy. But I do so love his accurate portrayal of the psychology of the "believer"-- a liar who hates life so much he has adopted a system of thought and ritual to deny it. And his style is magnificent and stylish. But one thing you will find by studying Nietzsche is that he has his own dogma as well. And as a non-dogmatist, I just can't groove with that.
In summary, I was just saying that your love of religion is completely valid, that I too love religion along with any other great work of fiction, for its inherent literary value as did Herr Nietzsche. But even Christianity has some truth to it. Afterall, it "should be considered unclean to lie with animals" shouldn't it?
Peace
PS: We will never know if Buddha was an atheist. I think he probably WAS because there is no trace of "God" in his core truth. I think that BUDDHA was an atheist, but most BUDDHISTS aren't. How ironic. But this is coming from the guy who wonders if Jesus might have been an atheist...
