Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion§242 No one is sufficiently aware of the barbarity of the notions among which we Europeans still live. To think that men have been able to believe that the “Salvation of the soul” depended upon a book! And I am told that this is still believed even today. What is the good of all scientific education, all criticism and all hermeneutics, if such nonsense as the Church’s interpretation of the Bible has not yet turned the colours of our bodies permanently into the red of shame?
Again, for those who are joining us late: The materials found in the Will to Power were selected posthumously from Nietzsche’s notebooks by his literary executor. It is not a finished book, and much of the material found in WTP never made in into a book overseen and produced under Nietzsche’s direction.
This is a passage that I can’t recall encountering anywhere else in his published writings, and among those that most resonate with me, because I am honestly baffled by educated adults who repeat the Bible’s nonsense as though it actually makes sense. Is there a religious part of their mind that is partitioned away from the rest of reality? Are they simply too cowardly to speak frankly about this particular subject, because the clergy have improbably succeeded in cultivating the idea that it is improper to subject their magical claims to inspection?
No matter. Unreasoning belief, faith, is the engine of Niagaras of human bloodshed and misery; it is no less deserving of scrutiny than the other forces at work in our lives — economics, say. No deference, then — ever.