RE: Atheism worships a dead god.
August 20, 2010 at 4:14 pm
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2010 at 4:16 pm by Entropist.)
What a lot of people miss is the context in which Nietzsche wrote that, and also the full statement there: "God is dead, and we have killed him!"
That "we" is very important there, and in his little parable in Zarathustra he was trying to illustrate that it was western civilization, Christians included, that had "killed" their god. The seeds of its own destruction were within Christianity itself (I think Tertullian was the only one to recognize it): Christianity inherited the Greek need for explaining the world in rational terms. The arguments of the Christian god's existence are based in Greek philosophy, not the Bible). Christ was defined in terms of Greek philosophy, the Christian god is the "uncased cause," the "prime mover," (Aristotle) or the mystical unity of all things (Plato and Plotinus). Look at the all the quibbling over esoteric Christological terms: you could be killed over a nuance!
But it was also a crack in the dam that eventually spread-- and ultimately led to Copernicus and so on. By the time of the Enlightenment, Christianity was only a husk of its former self, its fervor spent. It it any surprise that Christianity was at its strongest during the Dark Ages? --And this is what Nietzsche was addressing. We live in a modern world where MOST people rely on reason to get through the day-- in fact, we take it for granted-- even MOST religious people. What remains of Christianity (and the Hellenic-based metaphysics it inherited) is mere inertia. The glory days of religion are over, Christendom is a thing of the past, even if Christianity nominally still exists today-- it is hardly what it used to be, shrill fundamentalists notwithstanding.
That "we" is very important there, and in his little parable in Zarathustra he was trying to illustrate that it was western civilization, Christians included, that had "killed" their god. The seeds of its own destruction were within Christianity itself (I think Tertullian was the only one to recognize it): Christianity inherited the Greek need for explaining the world in rational terms. The arguments of the Christian god's existence are based in Greek philosophy, not the Bible). Christ was defined in terms of Greek philosophy, the Christian god is the "uncased cause," the "prime mover," (Aristotle) or the mystical unity of all things (Plato and Plotinus). Look at the all the quibbling over esoteric Christological terms: you could be killed over a nuance!
But it was also a crack in the dam that eventually spread-- and ultimately led to Copernicus and so on. By the time of the Enlightenment, Christianity was only a husk of its former self, its fervor spent. It it any surprise that Christianity was at its strongest during the Dark Ages? --And this is what Nietzsche was addressing. We live in a modern world where MOST people rely on reason to get through the day-- in fact, we take it for granted-- even MOST religious people. What remains of Christianity (and the Hellenic-based metaphysics it inherited) is mere inertia. The glory days of religion are over, Christendom is a thing of the past, even if Christianity nominally still exists today-- it is hardly what it used to be, shrill fundamentalists notwithstanding.
“Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.” ~ E.M. Cioran
