The Antichrist · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
15.
Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary _causes_ ("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"--or even "unfree"), and purely imaginary _effects_ ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary _beings_ ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an imaginary _natural history_ (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary _psychology_ (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings--for example, of the states of the _nervus sympathicus_ with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash--, "repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary _teleology_ (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal life").--This purely _fictitious world_, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of "abominable"--the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (--the real!--), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... _This explains everything._ Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a _botched_ reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for _décadence_....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.