Man Is... A Maker Of Gods

Many of the most striking words ever written flowed from the pen of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche expounds his intricate and once ubiquitously misunderstood world view. The section often translated as 'The Backworldsmen' contains this passage:

Thus, I too once cast my delusion beyond the human, like all believers in a world behind. Beyond the human in truth? Ah, brothers, this God that I created was humans’- work and – madness, just like all Gods! Human he was, and just a meagre piece of human and ‘I’. From my own ashes and blaze it came to me, this spectre, and verily! It did not come from beyond!

In 'The Backworldsmen' Nietzsche suggest that if God existed, his own suffering would be so great, he would be compelled to create the world just so he could look somewhere other than himself - a tormented world for a tormented God. But Zarathustra, as the Übermensch, strikes the truth; that it is he who created this ‘phantom’ and through this forceful realisation, ‘the phantom withdrew’.

Nietzsche’s basic idea, that it was not God who created man but vice-versa, is not new. Nonetheless, it is difficult for the non-theist to understand or appreciate. The overwhelming conceit of religion is summarized no better than by religious belief itself. Gen 1:27 ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’. If you believe this, you have license to do almost whatever you want. But really, all this can be put down to a simple failure of the imagination. ‘We make things that could not otherwise come about’, a theist might say, ‘but who made us?’ and the answer given is ‘it must be something like us’. This kind of arrogance might have been excusable at one point in history - but no longer.

The history of the west tells the story of the slow and inevitable humbling of religion. If the Catholic Church had its way, I don’t think it unreasonable to say we would still believe, not just that the Sun rotates around the Earth, but that the Earth itself is the centre of Universe. Ponder that thought for a moment – Earth as the centre of the Universe. In conversation with Elizabeth Anscombe, Ludwig Wittgenstein asked “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the Sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth turned on its axis?” Anscombe replied “I suppose, because it looked as if the Sun went round the Earth.” “Well” said Wittgenstein “what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the Earth turned on its axis?”

Scientific discovery can be viewed as one batch of humble pie after another. First we were the central, stationary planet, then we were just another planet orbiting a star, then there were many stars like ours, then many galaxies like ours and now we are beginning to find solar systems with planets like our own, perhaps capable of supporting life (Gliese 581c is a well known example). Perhaps one day, if some of the more extravagant physical theories are true, we will find Universes like our own.

But even if religion can just about stomach the idea that God could have made us in an obscure and unimportant part of the vast cosmos, imagine if one particularly ‘dangerous’ idea were found to be quite probable – the idea that God didn’t even make us at all. This is just the idea Darwin advanced. The distasteful ad hominem sketches and caricatures of the man himself made at the time show the ridicule and sheer incredulity his idea met. ‘Descended from apes!’ they cried (which is of course a crucial yet common misunderstanding of the theory). It was usually greeted with one of two reactions – flat refusal to accept it or vilification. In 1859, Darwin’s theory did not have strong evidential support and a respectable case could have been made against the theory, but the point is that the common response was not one of a rational or scientific criticism, but an emotional criticism – and at the root of these attacks was the idea that God made humans above all else. This is the real ‘dangerous’ idea. Evolution is still repugnant to so many, that we are lamentably, in the 21st century, having to convince people of its plain and simple truth.

It takes a brave intellectual leap for some, to come to apprehend we simply aren’t as important as we like to think we are. Brave because many find it a frightening step to embrace a godless, ultimately meaningless Universe. But is it really as frightening as many would have you believe?

Carl Sagan:

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.