Nietzsche and God

Every time Nietzsche is mentioned people instantly cite the oft-quoted phrase “God is dead.” However, many people then surmise that Nietzsche advocated for atheism and some are brazen enough to suggest that he is a nihilist, but these are all gross misinterpretations of Nietzsche’s actual position. Perhaps a reason for such blatant error may be the fact that the large chunk of Nietzsche’s writing is highly biblical in nature and it can be hard to extract the meaning from his work without sufficient experience in philosophical principles (or if you have an unhealthy obsession with philosophy). I chose Nietzsche because I believe he addresses the topic of God with ‘gravitas’ and doesn’t limit himself to purely ontological proofs and/or clever syllogisms that are reserved for the upper echelon of intellectuals. Instead, he approaches it from a human perspective, tackling issues that are more relevant to our daily lives today than it ever was to him during his time.

---

Nietzsche disliked not just the notion of a God but the value structure associated with the concept, particularly the Christian values attributed to God. He insinuates that these values are ascetic and ‘life-denying’, the product of a people who ‘despised their body’ and preferred for their minds to roam in the ‘afterworld’. He once said “drunken joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to lose himself”, referring to the fact that belief in God and the afterlife stems from mans inability to withstand suffering. He argues that concepts like morality and justice are merely man-made and they all must be overcome. His Ubermensch (overman) is a person who is capable of creating his own values that are ‘life-affirming’ instead of relying on the values of others. In short, the overman is his own God.

---

Nietzsche also disliked the nihilists and those who ‘preached’ about the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. He feared that these thinkers put too much emphasis on rational thinking, suppressing their emotions and impulses, ultimately replacing a dogmatic and ascetic Christian value system with an equally dogmatic and ascetic Enlightenment value system or even worse not replacing Christian values at all, resulting in nihilism. “Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time”, this playfulness and embracing of the emotions is what Nietzsche suggested should form the basis of ones value structure (“Life-affirming”) and not blind faith expressed towards archaic and undue values, or for that matter new values to replace those archaic values. Nietzsche doesn’t want you to propagate your value system towards others, because this would create an ideology, which he viewed as bad for humanity. Instead, he wants you to create your own values for yourself. You must become both a “commander” (by creating your own values and expressing no regret for your prior actions) and a person who “obeys” himself (by binding and disciplining yourself to your newly created values).

---

Overall, Nietzsche is aware of the place God has in people’s lives (acting as a bridge between the known and the unknown, which bridge Nietzsche viewed as necessary for human beings) but he noticed how the current culture surrounding God was warped and distorted to undermine the human experience. He also noticed how an absence of that ‘bridge’ (created by the Enlightenment) in people’s lives led to the chaos of nihilism. He doesn’t propose an answer to this but merely suggests that one should design ones own ‘bridge’, but that in order to do so one must surpass or ‘overcome’ what it means to be human. He must be reborn as a child in order to view the world with the innocence and purity necessary to create his own values. God is dead? Well then we must do what it takes to become him for ourselves lest we fall into meaninglessness and the void of nothing.