Monday, February 9, 2009

Nietzsche and Religion


From some college lecture notes quite back, "Modern Christian civilization, Nietzsche declared, is sick and must be overcome."

And I must agree with that statement.  But first, before I speak about the illness of modern Christianity, I will give you a passage from "The Madman" 

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

If there's one question that Nietzsche stirs controversy up in, it's his Who created Who question. 

Did God create us, or did We create god?

The Greeks and Romans answered many of the world's famous questions with either science or Gods.  Are your crops bad?  Maybe you should go sacrifice something to Demeter.  Need children?  Worship Hera.  All questions, wants needs and hopes, answered with a different God.

Does this not sound similar to modern day "Jesus"?  We don't know how we got here... well really, the scientists (aka the only people who are smart enough to tell us) say that we are here due to evolution and shear chance.  They sort of answer our questions, but really in the end leave us hungry for those missing gaps and links.  Whereas the only people who rival their opinion have even less evidence and proof.

Did we create God, as some sort of answer to all of our questions? Or did God create us, and we somehow fabricated the bits and pieces of the story we forgot?

Either way, whomever created whom, this still does not justify the corruptness of the modern church.

I do not plan on, and will not plan on ever becoming a member of a large scale church. Why? Because if you haven't noticed, they're always trying to take your money. As someone who knows a bit about church, I know that you are entitled to give 10 percent, but no more or no less. You may give extra, but only if you feel spiritually moved to do so. However, with larger churches, they always have some money scheme going on which basically forces half your paycheck out.  

I don't believe that you need a church to go to in order to honor God, or whomever you worship. One must always remember that when thinking of the classical sense of God, he is always there, so why go to a giant fancy building to talk to him? Why not go to a humble environment?

Religion is a touchy subject with many rituals and nuances, both of which I'm not too fond of.

Modern day religion is so corrupt right now, that I think someone could get away with creating a new division of it. It's sad to say, but I'd rather have my little sister watch Disney channel than go to church on Sunday. In my area of Texas alone there have been 20 molestation charges in the past 5 years that were church related.

When Nietzsche speaks about his disdain about religion, he wasn't speaking of the faults of God, or our creator whomever they are, but of the people who represent the Holy figure.

1 comment:

  1. Ok, very immature, but I always want to write Nietzsche as Neechy or Neechie =P But it's veeeeery interesting; I want to do Philosophy at uni; it'd be cool to study him in detail then, or even indeed now =)

    SuperStizzle

    ReplyDelete