PZ Watch: PZ invokes Nietzsche

An article by Karen Armstrong annoys PZ, so he invokes Nietzsche:

“Nietzsche, of course, wasn't arguing for a literal death of a deity, nor was he claiming that religion had disappeared from the world. He was making a narrower argument, that in his culture (19th century Europe), the concept of god had lost its material and moral authority. There is no central defining source of absolute truth, and we human beings have to rebuild our values around something new, other than this notion of a celestial monarch (he personally thought the new value was a "will to power", individual ambition and aspiration).
That's still true.”

PZ gets that right; Nietzche defined an end to all morality and replaced it with the amoral struggle for complete dominance through power, the only meaningful ethic in a deity-free universe. PZ goes on to describe fundamentalism (ie Christianity) as a reaction to Nietzche’s declaration.

“God is dead; he is no longer a vital element in how human beings interact in a meaningful, productive way with the universe. Modern fundamentalism is basically a series of aftershocks as cultures struggle to deal with the fall of gods.”

PZ fails to mention that the “death of God” was the basis for Nietzsche’s philosophical masterpiece, “Anti-rationalism”. The “Will to Power” that PZ does mention is a subset of that philosophy, and basically refers to amoral anarchy with the strongest willed fighters becoming dominant – an evolutionary tenet taken to its logical conclusion by Nietzsche. PZ continuously fails to grasp this outcome of his/Nietzsche's philosophy:

“We often get labeled "militant atheists". It's a joke. Militant atheists would be the type who argue that we should charge in and deconvert populations at the point of a sword — we don't (well, maybe Hitchens leans that way, a little bit). We need modern societies to evolve away from religion, and that means education, local adoption and integration of secular motives into existing institutions, and gradually shift to a rational foundation in a way that doesn't destroy the existing, essential superstructure.”

Shifting to a “rational superstructure” would certainly be disruptive, because as always PZ fails to define “rational” while he extolls Nietzscheism. This is likely because PZ fails to differentiate between rational and antirational, a fault he displays in this post. Undefined "rational social experiments" have been tried on very large scales, making the 20th century the bloodiest ever. But this argument is lost on the elites who declare themselves the arbiters of rationality – without feeling the necessity of revealing what they really mean by that. In both the Soviet and the German versions of the Nietzsche Will to Power, the revolutions were not instantaneous, they took years for the revolutionaries to acquire enough power to enable them to take the next steps for bloody control. They intitially would have agreed with PZ: "We would never operate at the point of a sword - we love people!)

Next PZ declares,

“Egalitarianism is definitely not a characteristic of these religious traditions. All build on a hierarchy, all are patriarchal, almost all religions rely on a separation of the world into "us", the tribe, the chosen, the people of the one true god, and the "other", the enemy, the servants of the dark ones, and you simply do not build egalitarian communities on that foundation.”

Demonstrably false. The New Testament teaches specifically that ALL people have equal access to God, including the “servants of the dark ones” as PZ put it. There are no human enemies except those who make themselves into such. The real enemy, it is taught, is The Deceiver, another non-human creation of God.

And if by egalitarianism PZ means equal outcomes guaranteed for all people of all attitudes, then he is correct, for the wrong reason. That type of egalitarianism is destructive of individuals, providing disincentives for personal development of any kind – precisely the initial goal of socialist totalitarianism.

PZ:

“I consider religion the enemy of science because it short-circuits critical thought and gives believers an escape hatch to superstition. As long as religion teaches that the answers to real world issues can be found in revelation and authority and the interpretation of holy texts, belief is inimical to scientific thinking.”

PZ is all about enemies; it is his very premise for posting. What PZ is not about is rational thought, which he never defines but of which he claims to be the devout defender. PZ is Nietzschean all right; he is (a)morally free to claim to be one thing while pursuing its antithesis; there is no morality outside what he decides it to be, and all actions are certainly acceptable under certain conditions which he appears to define for himself. Very Nietzschean: read Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, and you will understand not just PZ, but also Alinsky, the Political Left, and every Atheist you have ever met (except for those who co-opt religious moralities).

Belief is not “inimical to scientific thinking”. Belief is completely outside of scientific thinking, even Massimo Pigliucci realizes that, except for those like PZ who wish to demonize God with fallacious claims. PZ seems to need enemies in order to grasp for his personal fame; it likely will not come from either logical breakthroughs or scientific contributions.

I hope that some day PZ will call me personally a “toothless zombie”.