I begin this blog of daily epigrams for atheists and intellectuals with a favorite quote from Nietzsche:
"Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (translated by Walter Kaufmann)
I think I only partially agree with Nietzsche here - whilst I agree that Gods and afterwords is wish fulfilment and hope against all the danger of the world (including ultimately death), I also think the ideas of God arise from the archetypal collective unconscious.
ReplyDeleteSo, Nietzsche is right that it comes from weariness, but weariness is a necessary (rather than a sufficient condition) for the creation of Gods.
Though to be fair to Nietzsche he does say elsewhere that they originate from the collective unconscious of mankind