An Honest Debate.com

In my conversations with atheists lately I’ve encountered an affected inability to understand why morality is impossible without God. On several occasions now I’ve noted a fained inability to understand what Dostoevsky meant when he said, “If there is no God then everything is allowed.”  So, ever ready to help honest seekers (and even a dishonest ones) I’ve decided to let an atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche, help them out.

As James Lewis pointed out in a column earlier this year, “There is an interesting contrast between [New-Atheist, Christopher] Hitchens and Nietzsche.” I would add that it’s an interesting contrast between the intellectually honest Nietzsche and the whole New-Atheistic crowd.

Nietzsche, notorious for the slogan that ‘God is dead; we have killed Him.’ Contrary to the Left, Nietzsche had the utmost respect and even reverence for religion. That’s because he was an extremely well informed scholar, who understood his own cultural history in depth. He studied works from the ancient Greeks to modern Europe with all the finicky care of a trained classical philologist.”

I find this an interesting observation because on of the thing that I find most troubling about all of the atheists I have conversed with over the last year is the superficiality of their knowledge of history, and thus, their lack of historical perspective.

[Nietczske] believed that Christian religion (and implicitly Judaism) were on their last legs in the 19th century. And he was not entirely wrong about that. But Nietzsche always spoke about the breakdown of faith as a great cultural disaster, and a devastating challenge for the future.

For him, “God is dead” was not a Hitchenesque self-preening slogan about the moral superiority of the secular Left. On the contrary. Nietzsche saw the loss of Western faith as the most profound historical shock, an invitation to cultural disaster. Well, the secular religions of the 20th century, like Nazism and Marxism, have certainly made a strong case for him.

Nietzsche expressed those feelings beautifully in his “Parable of the Madman. Just compare it to Hitchens’ [an all other New-Athiest's] slick superficiality:

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? — Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. 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? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.”

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”

Perhaps this will help my deliberately obtuse atheistic friends to figure out what Dostoevsky was talking about. If they still can’t figure it out, I don’t think I can help them further except to suggest that they consider some remedial thinking classes.

Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]