RE: Nietzsche vs Christianity: Are Christians Nihilists? (The Meaning of Life Series, #5)
I suppose you have to ask what kind of life is worth living. You use the word "survival" several times, which connotes a biological impulse to exist, an instinctual desire to be. I would think that most, if not all, world religions would say that this isn't enough, that some greater purpose gives meaning to our lives beyond mere existence.
Maybe Nietzsche would say that the "will to power" is or should be the driving force that gives life/existence/survival meaning - that we exert our selves on the world, and this creates an internal drive that keeps us from nihilism. Yet all Nietzsche has done is replaced the Christian God with himself as God (Ubermensch - "Beyond-Man"). A faith in a divine being has been replaced with a faith in oneself.
I really appreciate the challenge of Nietzsche, and I believe he should be more widely read by Christians. But I don't fully understand his deep scorn for religious faith, as if it is the very thing that makes us sub-human. I think that everyone has faith in something or someone - Nature, God, Yahweh, Allah, Self - and you have to make a specific and deliberate choice to believe and put your faith there. For me, that isn't weakness, but courage.
Nietzsche has already decided what kind of life is worth living, and so anything that runs counter to that is by definition "nihilistic" - amounting to nothing. I think his critique in The Antichrist against weak, mealy-mouthed Christians that use their religion as a crutch is a good challenge. I think that many Christians do use their "faith" to evade the difficult places of life, remain in their weakness, and never learn to think for themselves. But this doesn't represent all Christians, or even Christianity as it was meant to be (from my own view).
I think that nihilism is really the giving up on life's potential, when mere existence is the ultimate goal. Some may find glory in that, or maybe peace or understanding of one's place in this world. However, I think this view falls far short of what Life is really about.
Thanks for the post! Good stuff to chew on!
Thanks for the reply!
Some of the issues you raise will be addressed in later posts on The Meaning of Life. But it might take a while!
For instance, a biological impulse to exist, I will argue, does not exist! All we have is our values. There's no "will to live". There's not even a biological survival instinct. So, in a way, "faith" as you put it is all we have.
I believe faith in gods causes harm, whereas the other kinds of faith you mentioned don't as much. Also, it's possible to lack faith in gods, but I don't know if it's possible to lack faith in the self, or something deep like that.
Just to mention one of the harms that I believe belief in gods - or specifically Christianity - causes: I believe it's possible right now, with adequate funding, to discover scientific immortality. However, for people who already believe in immortality, that would be a waste of resources. So, people are dying, in what could be described as a mass genocide, because people literally don't take death literally! So we have this paradox where you sit down with someone and try to convince them for hours that (scientific) immortality is desirable, and he just doesn't see why he should care: and that's the same person who believes in a religion that has immortality as one of its cornerstones, and it's one of the main reasons he believes, and finds comfort in, his religion.
To put all that differently, and more broadly: The hopes behind Christianity are valid. Who wouldn't want a perfect, just, all-good God, punishing the wicked, rewarding the good, etc.? But, if you believe such a being already exists, you're less likely to do everything you can to make the world a better place (why would you? heaven already exists), since at difficult times you can fall back on God, your big brother who will take care of the bullies that harass you.
So Nietzsche similarly, I think, saw Christianity as a kind of "deep sleep", or laziness, or a fake satisfaction of human desires, like Marx's "opiate of the masses".