The Dawn of Day · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
92.
AT THE DEATH-BED OF CHRISTIANITY.—All truly active men now do without inward Christianity, and the most moderate and thoughtful men of the intellectual middle classes possess only a kind of modified Christianity; that is, a peculiarly simplified Christianity. A God who, in his love, ordains everything so that it may be best for us, a God who gives us our virtue and our happiness and then takes them away from us, so that everything at length goes on smoothly and there is no reason left why we should take life ill or grumble about it: in short, resignation and modesty raised to the rank of divinities—that is the best and most lifelike remnant of Christianity now left to us. It must be remembered, however, that in this way Christianity has developed into a soft _moralism_: instead of “God, freedom, and immortality,” we have now a kind of benevolence and honest sentiments, and the belief that, in the entire universe, benevolence and honest sentiments will finally prevail: this is the euthanasia of Christianity. WHAT IS TRUTH?—Who will not be pleased with the conclusions which the faithful take such delight in coming to?—“Science cannot be true; for it denies God. Hence it does not come from God; and consequently it cannot be true—for God is truth.” It is not the deduction but the premise which is fallacious. What if God were not exactly truth, and if this were proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?
REMEDY FOR THE DISPLEASED.—Even Paul already believed that some sacrifice was necessary to take away the deep displeasure which God experienced concerning sin: and ever since then Christians have never ceased to vent the ill-humour which they felt with themselves upon some victim or another—whether it was “the world,” or “history,” or “reason,” or joy, or the tranquillity of other men—something good, no matter what, had to die for _their_ sins (even if only _in effigie_)! THE HISTORICAL REFUTATION AS THE DECISIVE ONE.—Formerly it was sought to prove that there was no God—now it is shown how the belief that a God existed could have _originated_, and by what means this belief gained authority and importance: in this way the counterproof that there is no God becomes unnecessary and superfluous.—In former times, when the “evidences of the existence of God” which had been brought forward were refuted, a doubt still remained, viz. whether better proofs could not be found than those which had just been refuted: at that time the atheists did not understand the art of making a _tabula rasa_.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.