This cartoon by David Hayward (@nakedpastor) neatly illustrates Nietzsche’s characterization of the superiority of Christianity’s slave morality (see these Atheism for Lent posts on Nietzsche: here and here).

On the back of my Greenbelt presentation this year, “Giving Up God for Lent: A New Kind of Christian is A New Kind of Atheist”, I’ve been contacted by Third Way Magazine to write a short piece about Atheism for Lent for their Jan/Feb 2013 issue. I’m very excited about this, and more than a little nervous, since I’m more used to academic than journalistic writing styles and I’m not particularly familiar with the magazine’s audience. Still, I’ve had some useful suggestions from the Features editor at Third Way and hopefully the finished piece will inspire readers. 

Also, my husband (Simeon Wallis) and I are hoping to pitch an anthology for Atheism for Lent to some popular Christian publishers in the next little while. It’ll include excerpts from philosophers, theologians and researchers of religion from modern atheists (like Freud, Marx and Nietzsche), new atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc), secular philosophical interpretations of Christianity (from figures like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek) to what I call the a/theism of people like Jack Caputo. Fingers crossed that we can get the finished manuscript out in time for Lent 2014. 

Another thing that I did for the Forsaken by God service that we held at the end of the Atheism for Lent Course that I ran at Journey last year, was modify some dialogue from Angels in America, adding a sprinkling of Nietzsche’s madman, to make a reading entitled, “Sue the Bastard”:

The prophet, yes. That is what they call me. I am like a madman in a market place.

God abandoned us. He isn’t coming back. And if he ever did come back, if he ever dared to show his face in the garden again, if he ever returned to see how much suffering his abandonment had created, and if all he had to offer was death, we should sue the bastard. That’s my only contribution to all this theology, all this a/theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare he?! He walked out on us, He ought to pay.

We suffer. But we don’t want death, we want life. I want more life. So bless me anyway. I want more life, I can’t help myself, I do, I want more life. I’ve lived through such terrible times and there are people who’ve lived through much, much worse. But we see them living anyway, when they’re more spirit than body, when they’re more sores than skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die, but I recognise the habit, the addiction of being alive. We don’t want death, we don’t want After Life, we want life, here and now. And if we can find hope anywhere, anyhow, that’s it, that’s the best we can do. So bless us anyway, we want more life.

Thus spake the prophet!

While the (more traditional) strands of negative theology in Pete Rollins’ first publication, How (Not) to Speak of God, form a type of ‘believing in God while remaining dubious about what one believes about God’ (p.26), more radical implications can be drawn, since there can be not just doubt about ‘who or what God is’ but, further, ‘doubt about if God is’ (interview with Pete for my PhD thesis).

Rollins’ second book, The Fidelity of Betrayal, follows the deconstructive theology of Derridean philosopher John D. Caputo (see here, here and here) to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the name and being of God and, on the other, the event of God (see Caputo’s The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event). This distinction is made in order suggest a betrayal of religious beliefs and practices that emphasise the existence of God in fidelity to those that encourage the transformative event of God.

Examining their theories of religion in the “Atheism for Lent” Course, we have seen that for Freud religion is primarily ‘ontological weakness seeking consolation;’ for Marx it is primarily ‘sociological power seeking legitimation;’ and for Nietzsche it is primarily ‘sociological weakness seeking revenge’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.229).

But perhaps it is also possible for a hermeneutic of suspicion to interpret these critics’ sceptical atheism similarly? Perhaps atheism is also wish-fulfilment? Does atheism also function as an oppressive ideology? Does it also operate within slave morality?

The claim that atheism – the “new atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, etc. in particular – is also a form of religious (i.e. dogmatic) belief system is often made in Christian rebuttals of atheist critiques of religion. But perhaps atheism and religion are alike in more radical ways than this.

The supposition at the heart of Ricky Gervais’ (2009) The Invention of Lying is that religion is so closely linked to story-telling and historical embellishment that it is understood as lying.

From Scepticism to Suspicion

In this film, the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche in their critiques of religion (see here, here and here for “Atheism for Lent” Course material) between appearance and reality, or manifest and latent meanings, becomes that between lies and the truth. But in the world within The Invention of Lying there are no such terms; there are simply “things that are” (the truth) and “things that aren’t” (lies), just “the way things are” and Mark’s new-found ability to say “something that wasn’t”. This language of being or existence denotes Gervais’ scepticism: ‘God doesn’t exist… Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true’ (Gervais, “Why I’m an Atheist”).

But Gervais’ suspicion is also apparent in the ways that Mark’s theological inventions function as

psychological wish-fulfilments (Freud’s critique of religion),

oppressive ideologies (Marx’s critique of religion), and

vengeful morality (Nietzsche’s critique of religion).

Can Gervais’ film help us to understand the critiques of religion by these three great atheists?

Once framed in the sceptical language of falsehood and lies, is it now possible to more clearly identify the functions that critics suspect religion plays?

If religion existed in a world where we (like Mark) knew it to be deceitful, which of our religious beliefs and practices could we more readily identify as harmful?

In other words, if religion is a lie…

…what happens to my faith?

Atheism for Lent: Religion as Revenge (Nietzsche 1)

Atheism for Lent: Religion as Revenge (Nietzsche 2)

Atheism for Lent: Religion as Revenge (Nietzsche 3)

Atheism for Lent: Religion as Revenge (Nietzsche 4)

Atheism for Lent: Religion as Revenge (Nietzsche 5)

The Lion King as Master Morality (Nietzsche 5 ½)

“A Poison Tree” as Slave Morality (Nietzsche 6)

Tomorrow, posts on Derren Brown’s critique of religion as trickery start.

Previously (here), I wrote that, 

because slave morality is that of the weak, weary, and oppressed, it ‘gives no ground for reproaching’ the evil enemy (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S13). This means that whilst revenge is a virtue, as it is for master morality – remembering Nietzsche’s will to power thesis, revenge will be all-pervasive in morality – within slave morality the will to power has no means of exacting this revenge. … In slave morality, resentment cannot be acted upon, is an impotent resentment, and is compensated with what Nietzsche calls an imaginary or ‘spiritual revenge’, in which resentment festers and grows (S7). 

Having given The Lion King’s “Circle of Life” as an example of master morality (here), an example of slave morality comes from a poem by William Blake called, “A Poison Tree”.

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veil’d the pole:

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

usI mentioned (here) that when I ran this Atheism for Lent course with a group last year, Nietzsche’s critique of religion as revenge, and the implications of the death of God for the possibility of absolute morality, was the hardest atheist critique for the group to use for self-reflection. I found that a few examples of master and slave morality helped a little here and listening to this audio file from a recent talk by Slavoj Zizek provided another.

By further examining some specific moral virtues, it becomes clearer why Nietzsche’s hermeneutic of suspicion interprets Christian morality as slave morality (on slave and master morality, see this post here) and therefore why he disdains it as a ‘great curse’ and an ‘immortal blemish’ of humanity (The Gay Science, Book 5, S343).

Love, Justice and Fascism

For Nietzsche, justice and love (including, compassion, charity or pity) are ‘parallel expressions of the revenge of the resentful’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.252). Within slave morality, whilst distributive justice (equality) expresses the latent envy of those who have the least share, retributive justice (punishment) expresses an operative desire to be executioners. This is why Nietzsche has Zarathustra say, ‘[m]istrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful… the hangman and bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, Chapter 7). In their mouths, the word “justice” is ‘like poisonous spittle’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S4).

Nietzsche’s comments on the dangers of eager moral judges raise the question of moral fanaticism, even of terrorism and fascism.

It is not hard to see that Nietzsche’s critique of biblical religion (both Judaism and Christianity) will be that it operates within slave morality (see yesterday’s post here).

When he writes that Judaism ‘mark[s] the beginning of the slave rebellion in morals’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S195) and that ‘[o]ne knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation’ of morality (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 1 S7), Nietzsche is emphasising both the “Jewishness” of Christianity and the “Jewishness” of Christian anti-Semites – perhaps scorning rather than securing later Nazi attempts to appropriate his philosophical legacy for the purpose of fascism.

The Ascetic Ideal

For him, biblical religion is a religion of priestly power, by which he means an impotent power. Whilst priests are a caste that can acquire great political power, even supremacy, and enjoy a strong social function, the origin of their power is weak, or, as Nietzsche increasingly refers to it, “sick”, since it is grounded not in master morality but in the slave morality that first labels its enemies as evil and then labels itself as good. Priests emerge from a slave ‘ressentiment without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and power-will that want to become master’ (Essay 3 S11), but ‘[i]t is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred’ (Essay 1 SS6-7).

But priests must also be powerful:

Dominion over the suffering is his kingdom, that is where his instinct directs him, here he possesses his distinctive art, his mastery, his kind of happiness… He must be sick himself… but he must also be strong, master of himself even more than of others, with his will to power intact, so as to be both trusted and feared by the sick, so as to be their support, resistance, prop, compulsion, taskmaster, tyrant, and god.

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S15.

Moving back from his “death of God” thesis (see here) to his genealogy of moral pluralism, Nietzsche identifies ‘two basic types’ of morality – “master morality” and “slave morality” – within ‘the many subtler and coarser moralities’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S260). The difference between these two moralities illustrates how Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity centres on the charge that it is a religion born ‘out of the spirit of ressentiment’ or resentment (Ecco Homo, p.312).

These two moralities differ in origin, with master morality found among the strong and powerful, and slave morality among ‘the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S260).

But they also differ in content, as Nietzsche’s account of master morality highlights:

The concept good and evil has a two-fold prehistory: firstly in the soul of the ruling tribes and castes. He who has the power to requite, good with good, evil with evil, and also actually practices requital – is, that is to say, grateful and revengeful – is called good; he who is powerless and cannot requite counts as bad. As a good man one belongs to the “good,” a community which has a sense of belonging together… As a bad man one belongs to the “bad,” to a swarm of subject, powerless people… Good and bad is for a long time the same thing as noble and base, master and slave. On the other hand, one does not regard the enemy as evil: he can requite. In Homer the Trojan and the Greek are both good.

Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, S45.

Master Morality

As ‘the soul of the ruling tribes and castes’, the master morality consists of ‘the evaluative traditions and customs’ of a particular community of the strong and the powerful (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.233). As such, revenge, which is the power to requite evil with evil in the service of the community, is a virtue, a natural expression of that community’s will to power.

God is Dead

That there is no one morality (see yesterday’s post here), no one perspective from which to judge or to guarantee what is right and wrong, is part of what Nietzsche is referring to when he writes that ‘God is dead’.

Briefly examining his “death of God” thesis will enable us to begin to recognize the relationship between his genealogy of morals and his critique of religion. The parable that most clearly expresses this thesis is found in Section 125, “The Madman”, of The Gay Science,

Haven’t you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!”

Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? – Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Where is God?” he cried; “I’ll tell you! We have killed him – you and I! We are all his murderers.

The next set of posts in this Atheism for Lent series focus on Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of religion as revenge. In many ways, this great atheist critique of religion was one of the hardest to come to terms with for the group with whom I ran this course last year, primarily because Nietzsche’s critique (and especially the death of God) have far-reaching consequences not only for religion, but for morality. What he refers to as ‘the whole of our European morality’ illustrates that we are, he says, still living in the shadow of the death of God.

The greatest recent event – that “God is dead,” that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable – is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, in whose eyes – the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle – some sun seems to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt; to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more mistrustful, stranger, “older.”

But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of having arrived as yet. Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means – and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown in it; for example, the whole of our European morality.

This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending – who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth?

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, from Lee Spinks, Friedrich Neitzsche, p.118.