“I slowly came to the opposite conclusion—even if there were no God, it would be much better for humanity to act as though there were.”
Nietzsche also understood that if God is dead then we have to invent a god, a superman. But as we’ve learned supermen are no replacement for God. If one can’t be a believer, perhaps being agnostic is the next best thing, at least in the back of your mind the possibility of God is still there, and you act accordingly.
“If one can’t be a believer, perhaps being agnostic is the next best thing”
Speaking as a fool who spent decades as an agnostic when he should have known better, I did not find it to be so. It’s far too easy to come down on the side of a question that flatters one and allows one to do what he wants, when one does not feel bound by God’s law.
Historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote, “Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality—that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes, and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”