Atheism and the First World War

Upstairs Wit ^ | 22.5.10 | Chris Hampton

[CondoleezzaProtege]

“God is dead,” proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. While this is not meant to be taken in a literal sense, it is certainly a provocative observation to come from the reclusive philosopher. Nietzsche’s generation, one that would embrace ideas like Darwinism, Marxism, and Positivism, had revolutionized the intellectual landscape to a point that could not be reversed.

It is often thought that Europe became a continent of atheists and agnostics after World War I, and that the spiritual fabric of Europeans resembled the French farmland that had been destroyed by four years of conflict.

While this may not be a completely false statement for some, it certainly lacks the ring of absolute truth. Just as the problems of the First World War were not spontaneous but the result of long building tensions between the nations of continental Europe, so was the spread of unbelief in Europe. It was only coinciding with this period of warfare that the birth of open resistance to traditional religion and spirituality occurred, but not because of it.

The two most popular books among Germans serving in the trenches were Faust by Goethe and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. The German government printed 150,000 copies of Zarathustra, along with the Bible, to be read as inspirational and patriotic literature...

In England, the reigning monarch was not only the leader of the country but also head of the Church. Germany and France were as devout in their faith as they were in their hatred for one another. Russians hailed from a long tradition of Russian Orthodoxy...

Were those who caused the war Christians? Did the Christian position incline world leaders to make war, or was war just as likely if those leaders were more secular?

[aspasia]

“God is dead,” proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882.

Which one?

[aspasia]

The great wars have always worked hard to diminish the political standing of Christianity. And let's not be myopic. There was 1789 and 1806.

[dfwgator]

I think The Holocaust was a huge factor in the increase of Atheism, as many thought, “How could God allow this to happen?”

[PGR88]

The two most popular books among Germans serving in the trenches were Faust by Goethe and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.

So German farm boys and urban poor, when they weren't destroying Western Civilization, were sitting in the trenches reading 600 page Faust and analyzing Nietzsche's philosophy.

I would doubt that even 5% of American College Philosophy professors have read both books cover to cover.

Also, with soldiers like that, how did Germany ever lose the war?

[CondoleezzaProtege]

I would doubt that even 5% of American College Philosophy professors have read both books cover to cover.

During the 19th Century, the United States boasted of the most Biblically literate population the Western world has ever known. Hence so many young men being given some rather intense Bible names like "Abraham" (Lincoln) and "Thaddeus" Stevens, etc...

As Lincoln stated in his second inaugural:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes...

But something about Nietzsche's writings in particular were...violent and self-destructive in nature.

[faithhopecharity]

Nietzsche was never ever even close to my favourite philosopher. He suffered from some terrible bigotry, for starters.
However, he was brilliant....
he could just look around himself in 1882 or thereabouts and SEE that philosophy and “modern” religion was moving straight towards a fully-atheistic bent....
so that proclaiming “G.. is dead...” was, to a considerable degree, ACCURATE (at least, when interpreted as...G.. is dead insofar as society (or its intellectual and theological leadership) acknowledging and obeying G.....)

in that sense of meaning, Nietzsche was quite accurate.

——in response, of course, Dostoyevsky noted that IF society considered G to be “dead”... then..”all is permitted.” That being Dost’s way of critiquing the atheistic movement....pointing out that it has inevitably horrible consequences

as we see TODAY... with some (Satanic) state legislatures permitting abortions and even outright infanticide (as Obama advocated)....and other very evil laws and patently unconstitutional restrictions or infringements on our individual free will choice

SUMMARY...to quote a third outstandingly-wellknown philosopher of the highest intellectual caliber... we are in Deep DooDoo!

[Tell It Right]

"But something about Nietzsche's writings in particular were...violent and self-destructive in nature."

Bingo! And one could argue that Darwin pushed belief in natural selection not so much to "prove" God doesn't exist or change the nature in which we think of or origin, but to try to slow down the growing abolitionist movement that the church was pushing. The thinking was that if you undermine the Christian belief that God exists, you undermine their push to love God and love your fellow man by freeing God's creation from slavery.

[JusPasenThru]

I’m half-way through Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s an interesting read.

If you have access to the book, pull up the chapter on tarantulas. It predicts the rise of cultural Marxism. It’s visionary and chilling.

Nietzsche was not anti Semitic. He respected the intellect of the Jews and had no complaint with them.

Christians (largely) respect him because he was the rare brutally honest atheist who knew and dreaded the implications of a culture without God.

[aspasia]

Did the Christian position incline world leaders to make war

I didn't know that atheism was a prerequisite for pacificism. In fact, a majority of Catholic and Evangelical Christians are very much devoted to pacifism. And there's the flip side: Colonialist Putin and Euromonger Merkel embrace Christianity as signatory for their expansionist governments.

So what's the question again? In science, you have focus and isolate.

[aspasia]

The great wars were finished before people began to understand Holocaust atrocities.

[Lurking Libertarian]

And one could argue that Darwin pushed belief in natural selection not so much to "prove" God doesn't exist or change the nature in which we think of or origin, but to try to slow down the growing abolitionist movement that the church was pushing. The thinking was that if you undermine the Christian belief that God exists, you undermine their push to love God and love your fellow man by freeing God's creation from slavery.

Darwin was a Whig and supported the abolition of slavery.

[YogicCowboy]

Serial/Atonal music, a la Schoenberg, was also a direct result of these phi!osophies: the deliberate destruction of the natural and the beautiful.

The result was that the Normals turned back to pre-Stravinsky masters who produced natural, beautiful music.

(The seven-tone major scale is apparently hard-wired into the human brain. Ancient Babylon apparently used it.)

[Tell It Right]

Maybe I'm wrong. I was under the impression that, yes, he grew up in an abolitionist family, had a slave friend who taught him so taxidermy, and wrote about the barbarity of seeing slaves horribly mistreated (I want to say in the Americas but don't quote me on that).

And yet, in Origin of Species he wrote "Such are the facts...in the wonderful instincts of making slaves." (p. 223)

And more from Origin of Species: “the habit of collecting pupae for food might by natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves. When the instinct was once acquired … I can see no difficulty in natural selection increasing and modifying the instinct—always supposing each modification to be of use to the species—until an ant was formed as abjectly dependent on its slaves as is the Formica rufescens.” (p. 224). “ … it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as … ants making slaves … not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die” (pp. 243–244).

If Origin of Species is Darwin's crowning achievement, then his "crowning achievement" made a repeated case for enslaving others as a normal property of a species advancing.