Nietzsche? It feels like it's Nietzsche, or at least a similar school of thought. I've pondered such before, but cannot conclude the means by which we would even do such a deed. More aptly, though still arrogant, I would say we've banished God. Though some call for him to return, would he do so? I don't know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. At least, it seems, it hasn't happened yet.
EDIT: Though he's purported to still keep up correspondence with some, and I believe he has set signs in place, hidden in nature as plain things, that point to some evidence or notion of himself. Perhaps to point the way for those who wish to find him, perhaps as warning signs, perhaps just as a signature on a work... that is arguably in progress, but may well be completed.
It was a poetic metaphor entirely, Nietzsche loved his snappy one-liners.
The entire point was that the traditionally understood God as the source of Morality and the thought of the point of living being was to go to Heaven after you die was, as an idea, inadequate. At the time of his writing, the intellectual world at large had a massive crisis of values; Nietzsche's point was that there isn't a point to life, indeed - but so what? There isn't a rule you cannot make one for yourself.
Ehhh... The only one I can remember is "Without music, life is a mistake."
* shrugs * I think that there already is an inherent point of life? ( Watch Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" for one of the best ways to get the basic stuff. For the more complex... there's still all kinds of people who'll argue that until every last human is dead, and maybe even after. ) Moreover, I would argue that moral relativism or subjective morality isn't a feasible concept, which while not really what you said is still tied into that. If there is an objective morality, it is as much an aspect of the universe as any physical law, if morality doesn't exist as an abstract, which is the opposite and seemingly only other feasible option, it does exist as a means of the survival and prosper of the human species. ( Though I wouldn't say it's necessarily evolutionary, based on history and present times. ) That God is the source of morality isn't really an inadequate concept ( in either of the above notions this can be both true and sufficient )* as much as the notion that the church is the ultimate interpreter of it. As per the entire point of this life being to get to Heaven, that is most definitely inadequate.
*If the universe was created, then everything in it was created. If the universe is created and everything in it created, the universe and everything in it must have a
creator, by nature of be a creation. If morality is a thing that exists in the universe as either an abstract or a human survival technique, it still exists in the universe and therefore it, like everything else in the universe if the universe was created, would have to be a creation of a creator. If God is the creator, which depends really on who you're calling "God", which is a title, but that title is usually intended to refer to the creator, then God is the source of the universe. If God is the source of the universe then he is the source of everything in the universe. Therefore, morality, existing in the universe in one way or the other, is also sourced from God. That's really all there is to it. As per whether or not the universe was created, that's a much longer and much more complex argument that can be simplified down to less of an answer than a question, though it's sort of both. The question is, "Where did the first thing come from?" First thing, being whatever you argue the primordial "stuff" of the universe is. If you analyze, as we must because we really have no better way, everything in terms of cause and effect... The existence of the first shaping of the universe is an effect, that needs must have a cause. Everything in the universe, given our current understanding, is said to have causality, so the universe in some way must. There
is a paradox which cannot be very satisfyingly answered in that: "Ok, but where did God come from?" The two answers I have I don't understand very well and inherently doubt the validity of, but here they are for the sake of completeness of discourse: Possibility 1: "God exists outside of the universe and is exempt from the laws of causality." or "The universe exists inside God's consciousness", which are similar enough to be grouped under the same possibility heading and for the sake of human understanding are really only semantically different, getting into such mind-bending notions as "infinite","eternal", and "void", which no mind I know of has a grasp on. Even my own mind, simply simplifies void to blackness/darkness which is probably all kinds of wrong, but I don't think we can understand an undefined space. Possibility 2: "God is an infinite causation/recursion" or put another way "God creates himself". As in, it's an ongoing process that's still happening by means that I, for one, don't understand. Those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive either or the only possibilities, but they are the two that I can best comprehend and explain.
There, why is it insufficient to Nietzsche, what I relayed in only 5-ish paragraphs?
( I'm joking, of course, there's way more to it than that... and even if Nietzsche veiled the point and may not have understood it himself... I think Nietzche was sort-of kind-of right? I mean, as beings that are ostensibly given either true free will or the illusion of it, we should exercise our right to decision to make our own way in this world. There are morals though, that it is far better to abide by than shirk, but most people follow at least one of these so how much this conversation means anything may well be moot. In that case, it's not really life that has no point, it's intellectualism. :p )
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Topic: Pithy Quotes Thread (Read 13022 times)