God

[Jerrybaldy]

God is dead -Nietzsche.
Nietzche is dead- God.
The bravery of the faithless
marches unhealed regardless,
united in masses,
escapees
from the fodder
of Our Father's.

[Delta40]

Is it okay if I slap the back of your head and make you scream?

[deryk]

Goddamn!

The final lines nearly converted me. :wink5:

Well phrased.

[MorpheusSandman]

Being an atheist, I'm sure you'll understand that I object to the content. Your first problem is that the first two lines are cliches by now. Nietzsche's famous quote is terribly misunderstood because it's always taken out of context. The quote refers to the moral dilemma atheists face, and, considered in one light, could almost seem to be a promotion of Christian morality. As Nietzsche explained: "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands." Nietzsche was staring into the nihilistic abyss in the rejection of God as an objective basis for cosmic rules and morality, and challenging atheists to recognize the dilemma this presented: how do you maintain morality in a world where you admit there's no objective basis for that morality? Yet the vast majority of religious people I've seen mention this line takes it at face value, completely misunderstanding what one of the greatest philosophical minds of all time meant by it. Likewise, the "Nietzsche is dead" retort can only be taken at face value because it's been delivered by people who didn't grasp the philosophical gravity that Nietzsche was wrestling with.

Likewise, it seems your piece falls into that kind of superficial glossing of the quote: a literal response to something that wasn't literal. There's no tackling of the monumental issue (or issues, if you consider the debate of God's existence) at hand. The "escapees" closing seems little more than a cheap shot at non-believers, and the slant rhyme of "fodder/Father's" seems incredibly inappropriate. Another problem is that I don't think there is much "bravery in the faithless", nor do I think of them as "united in masses". Atheists are much, much, much less organized than religion. Consider that the number of people in the US who don't profess a religion--including atheists, agnostics, and general unaffiliated--outnumber blacks and gays as minorities, yet there isn't much of an "atheist/non-believer" agenda, so to speak. The number of atheists is actually nearly double that of gays. So "united" isn't an adjective I'd use to describe them, and they certainly aren't "united in masses". To me, there's just an "us against them" mentality on one side of the issue to where there IS none on the other. Most non-believers simply ignore the issue all together. There's only a few atheists who really push against religion and, as in most cases with all issues, they seem to have the loudest voices.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but I couldn't help but reject this poem both because of how flippantly it dismisses a major philosophical issue and because of its inaccurate depiction.

[Jerrybaldy]

Blimey MS :)

I am an atheist too and was making that case, so I don't understand your objection to the content.

The opening quote I first read in a book of graffiti along with another favourite of mine ' The atheist dyslexic - doesn't believe their is a Dog'

I used it as I enjoyed the wit of the retort. I know little of Nietzsche, other than the basics and the extra you have added. I can't say I agreed with it completely. Why would we need a God to maintain morality?? I am aware much religion was brought about to subdue the masses through the fear of God, but I cannot see that the alternative now is 'to stare into the abyss'.

I think we should question religion and religious followers at every opportunity, to just accept them is to allow God channels and Faith healers to exist and to extort ( it was a programme on faith healers that led me to grab the laptop and write this).

I wrote that atheists are united in masses purely as a pun against the flipside of being united at a Mass.

The fodder of 'Our Father's' was also a pun on the handed down fear of God and his favourite prayer.

My poem is of course fodder too and as you pointed out a tad flippant, but I didnt realise it would portray the opposite of my intention. That was quite a task :D

cheers
Jerry

[tailor STATELY]

A good germ of an idea here and there to express your beliefs.


God is dead -Nietzsche.
Nietzche is dead- God.
The bravery of the faithless
marches unhealed regardless,
united in masses,
escapees
from the fodder
of Our Father's.

Perhaps your poem is a bit too tight.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[MorpheusSandman]

Blimey MS :)

I am an atheist too and was making that case, so I don't understand your objection to the content.The irony about this is that after I initially read it I thought to myself: "maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, and knowing Jerry there has to be something I'm missing". So I read it again while imagining the speaker WAS an atheist, but I just couldn't figure out how to take the lines "The bravery of the faithless / marches unhealed regardless," and "escapees / from the fodder / of Our Father's." as anything remotely positive about the faithless. But I guess this is the part where I apologize for my reaction due to a misreading.

I guess my general problem with seeing the Nietzsche quote is just the pervasive ignorance amongst people who quote it and take it literally without grasping what Nietzsche was saying. So starting with that rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. For Nietzsche, it wasn't that God was needed to maintain morality, but that he foresaw the potential nihilism that could result from people losing faith in God and an objective basis for morality. The argument goes something like: "There is no God, there is no objective basis for morality, all morality is subjective, there is no objective good and evil, so I can do whatever I want". If you can't say that, eg, murder is bad/evil on any objective scale, then what's the argument that we should still consider it bad/evil? It's purely subjective, right? I think what Nietzsche overlooked was the naturalistic social component of morality, and that, in the absence of a belief in God the natural social order would maintain morality in order to maintain the order anyway.

That said, this is a general phenomenon that's worth considering with regard to the self-aware mind. I remember reading this article (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nq/feel_the_meaning/) that illustrated how the human mind seems to automatically connect words as objectively being apart of their referents. I think it works similarly for morality. When we speak on morality it feels as if these concepts are actually connected to the external world, so it's not just that "I and many others feel/think that murder is wrong" it's "murder is wrong". The former delves into the shaky realm of subjectivity where he have to confront the notion that our beliefs aren't really connected to reality, but merely how we think about reality, while the latter allows us to continue as if such morality was as much a fact as saying "the sun rises in the East". So this is what Nietzsche intuited: a world where people realized that their morals had no objective basis, and that, potentially, this would throw society into anarchy. Of course, I do believe he overlooked just how potent a force social order was, as atheists are far from being pervasively immoral.

Anyway, I guess I take these issues a bit too seriously in general to respond positively and appropriately to something that was meant to be more satirical. I certainly agree that we should question religion, and especially its leaders. Anyway, again I apologize... my bad. :crazy: