Nietzsche Religion Analysis

What Nietzsche says is that through religion “ideals are manufactured” (Nietzsche 136). And what he means is that the morals of religion are all socially constructed to suit the desires of certain people- in this case, it is religious leaders that manufacture them. Some people benefit and others who are unable to strictly follow these ideals are considered immoral and are punished. The result of using religion in this way- of using these manufactured ideals- is that people “are miserable, no doubt of it, all these mutterers and nook counterfeiters, although they crouch warmly together- but they tell me their misery is a sign of being chosen by God…” (Nietzsche 135). And that cannot possibly be truly good. Misery is sadness, and it is due to …show more content…
A good one is the debate surrounding abortion. Speaking from the standpoint of religion, this is damnable. There is no coming back from a decision like that in the world where religion defines morals. In reality, though, there are many reasons a person would choose to have an abortion, and most of them have nothing to do with religion. In this instance, the conflation of religion with morality results in incredible guilt that eats away at people- is harmful to them. However, take religion out of the equation and what is left is a simple decision whose pros and cons are dictated by what is best for both the mother and her fetus. This is what Nietzsche means. The person who looks past religion when making a decision like this is the person who is clear-minded enough to think rationally about morality. The decision to have an abortion will necessarily include the individual’s own conceptions of what is moral and what is immoral. For example, it may be the case that the individual considers it the taking of an innocent life. What religion does is cloud the way individuals think about these things. Without it, people can more thoroughly understand and interpret their own ideals and the morals that they …show more content…
It results from the basic understanding that the external world is hostile, and it finds wrongness within external things. Nietzsche explains this by saying, “its action is fundamentally reaction” (Nietzsche 124). This is a stance which asserts that there is revenge to be had on this hostile external world. In a very real way, it is toxic to a person. This is the priestly view and when conflated with morality, it forces people to approach the very things they do with resentment for them. Without this, Nietzsche explains, people are relieved from doing actions with dislike or out of dislike. The route free of the boon of religious conflation “acts and grows spontaneously” and only understands its negatives “to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly” (Nietzsche