THE MADMAN
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?”
…where have WE to fix our hopes? In NEW PHILOSOPHERS—there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert “eternal valuations”; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of “history” (the folly of the “greatest number” is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed
Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby—and not they themselves. With equal right they might call themselves critics, and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense?
_Beyond Good and Evil
Nietszche was a life-long atheist- he hated Christianity with a passion- of course, he hated a lot of things: liberalism, demoracy, feminsm, ‘human rights’, capitalism, socialism- he regarded them as both two sides of the same coin- even atheism, if it meant the kind of atheism which thinks you can kick out God as the underpinning of Weatern civiliation but still keep the floating castle of democracy, liberalism etc.
Sorry about your friend. But there are certainly some extreme athiests out there as there are extreem christians, muslims etc. Whatever the beliefs, extremism is rarely a good thing.
Not sure why more people on either side cant put aside their egos and embrace being more agnostic about things they clearly dont actually know.
Atheist doesn’t mean that you know, it simply means that you don’t believe.
Agnosticism and “nones” to me, are people who are often either 1) too intellectually lazy to give it any real thought, or 2) don’t believe but are afraid to settle on that decision out of fear.
There are a lot of “Christians” who are Christian in name only. They say that the way you would say your part-Irish, and their beliefs only go about as deep as “when you die you go to heaven, and god makes good things happen sometimes”. Again because of points 1 and 2 above.
My view is that our existence is endless and the purpose of this sliver of physical life at the beginning is to allow us to freely chose who and where we want to be for eternity.
God doesn’t provide compelling proof of his existence during this time but does provides a roadmap to him – the Bible. If we follow this roadmap in good faith he’ll reveal his existence to us and making that spiritual journey is part of our making a completely free and uncoerced choice.
When he reveals his existence to us we know him in an experential way but not in a scientific way. We can’t provide scientific proof of that knowledge just as we’ll never be able to provide scientific proof that we love our spouses.
Don’t get me wrong, if you believe in God in that way more power to you, but you’re comparing apples and oranges here. I can provide a variety of evidence that I love my spouse and vice-versa. Love between people has many physical manifestations which take place over time. I would assume your beliefs about God are based entirely on your own mental experience and purely personal.
Well, scientists seem to be doing quite a lot in the way of demonstrating certain brain states. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some brain center associated with the emotion of love that evidence could be shown for, or some brain chemistry that could be pointed to. But I don’t know. Let’s say no. I can’t provide scientific proof that flying pink fairies exist either, or that the color brown actually exists, or that hate or any other emotion exists in my brain, or that Lucifer is not hiding in my closet. Does that make all of those things equivalent?
No, there are objective reasons behind it. I didn’t experience some kind of mystical attachment to a random person which created love between us with its own force. Love is an emotion between us which started for specific reasons based on our relationship and has continued for other specific reasons. For many people, it ends based on specific reasons. I could point to many events in our continuing relationship which are empirical manifestations of what we call love.
A ridiculous comparison. It’s like saying “Can you prove that friendship exists? You experience it and anyone can see it all around us, but can you prove it’s friendship?”
Love and friendship can be seen to exist whether experienced personally or not. I could know for sure that love existed before I ever experienced it for myself.
But let’s set this bad first comparison aside and try another one?
I’m of the belief that any evidence of god is better explained by something more ordinary.
But what intrigues me is not the belief in a god – it’s been an explanation used for tens of thousands of years, from all different cultures – what mystifies me is how anyone can choose A god. One religion. And if you can’t prove the validity of a specific religion, then proving whether there is ANY god is a pointless exercise, because the mere existence of a god does not involve any specific beliefs or end results. That’s what religion does. So don’t prove that god exists, prove that YOUR god exists, and that your religious texts are true and accurate.
You couldn’t, though you could give evidence by your words and actions. That’s why we constantly question other people’s emotional state. It’s like trying to prove Bob has such-and-such internal feelings, against trying to prove Bob exists.
In the case of God, you are not trying to prove the existence of an emotion, but of an actual being. If you don’t have evidence, I’m no more obligated to consider your opinion than I am a contention that there is an eight-foot red gorilla in my closet- say, where did all these banana peels conme from?
I may have too simple an understanding of the god of the Bible, but as I read it, he created the heavens and earth in a week, and we are the special ones in the universe that he wants to have a relationship with.
Is this close to what any of you were taught?
That god could easily make it crystal clear to everyone that he exists if he wanted.
What is the distance to the moon? 1 light second? It’s 8 minutes to the sun. And what is it across our Milky Way Galaxy… 200,000 years? Let’s say we’ve got 100,000,000,000 galaxies.
Any creator of THIS universe would know what it takes to make us believe in him. If that powerful god wanted us to believe, he wouldn’t have assigned error-prone people to write confusing texts for others to argue over. (IMO of course)
It’s a natural belief, like believing other people besides you have minds, or that the past is real, and you didn’t just come into existence last second and get a fake memory put into you.
Plus there is plenty of scientific evidence God exists: fine tuning of the universe, unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
