Tuesday, November 9, 2021

On Atheism there is No Right or Wrong

 The oft-quoted atheist, Nietzsche, had this to say of those who complain about bad people in the world and and those who desire justice and recompense for evil things done to them


 There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever of the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?', there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, 'We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.


In other words, with consistent-atheism, whence cometh this desire for justice when as soulless animals we are no different than birds of prey (predators) or lambs (prey). In Nietzsche's view, this complaining about bad people and unfair events and the desire for truth and justice is caused by Christianity. Since Nietzsche is an anti-Christian he explains that soulless mankind needs to evolve out of its Christian nature (as man's psyche is polluted by the Christian ethic) and evolve into a new kind of species (what he calls the Supermen). As he writes in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra:


But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self- complacency?


Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.


Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged. …


… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.


I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.


Source: https://www.nku.edu/~weirk/panda/prologue.html


The future Superhumans, are what Nietzsche fantasized about as a potential amoral species that will emerge once enough humans become "down-goers," that is live amorally and "die" (go down to the grave) and their anti-Christian lifestyle makes them "over-goers," that is their DNA or memory goes over the evolutionary bridge: as their DNA‐memory provides the transition over the transitional-bridge toward evolutionarily producing the superhuman species. Nietzche puts it this way in the same section


What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. …


… I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.


I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.


Nietzsche uses the word spirit and soul in naturalistic terms. He's talking about one's DNA or one's naturalistic life-essence being transferred evolutionarily as a kind of transitional form or fossil toward a new post-human species that has overcome Christian morality. 


In Nietzsche's point of view, Good and Evil don't exist and man has been polluted by belief in God, Goodness, the Divine Filter, and belief in a soul and human rights. So what he loves in his disciples is those who are willing to die as martyrs for the Superman ideal by living evilly/amorally (beyond moral concepts of Good and Evil); so that their atheistic spirit can produce a new species, a post-Christian species. 


So while there are many Life-affirming and pro-masculine, go "take action," passages in Nietzsche's work that are inspiring for men, his philosophy is often problematic and has infiltrated universities and spawned new philosophies piggybacking off his initial amoral philosophy: which has become what is called postmodernism. This is the view that there is no meaning in life, no higher purpose, no soul, no Truth, no right or wrong. All there is is interpretations which are subjective and so all that matters is the ability to use power effectively. 

The Art of Awareness and Letting Go to Let "God"

 * The following is a brief summary of the secular practice of Mindfulness, and Eastern wisdom as I understand it being combined with Christ...