Posted by Franklin Carroll on October 05, 19101 at 20:05:46:

In Reply to: Chunda's idea of religious morality posted by rob on March 07, 19101 at 14:43:08:

Neitzche claims that religion, in fact, is not life-affirming but life-denying. He is right: The most fundamental aspect of religion---the belief in the afterlife---is also its most life-denying.
"It is a miserable story. Man seeks a principle for which he can despise men. He invents a world so as to be able to slander and bespatter this world. In reality, he reaches every time for nothingness and construes this nothingness as God, as Truth, and---in any case---as judge and condemner of this state of being. The history of philosophy is a secret raging against the preconditions of life, against the value feelings of life. . . . Philosophers have never hesitated to affirm a higher world provided it contradicted this world and furnished them with a pretext for speaking ill of this world. It has been hitherto the grand school of slander." Those who look to a higher world are not looking at this one: Life exists here and now, so how can something that makes us look at the far away and not yet be life-affirming?
By its very nature, religion will seek to deny the present for the sake of some future coexistance with God--- after all, life offers nothing as infinite as "eternal oneness with God." It is impossible to both deny and affirm at once---it is impossible to love life and still seek to "be in Heaven." In fact, I would say religion is right to deny life if there is a God and an afterlife. However, there is no evidence for God, and it is quite difficult to explain why God allows suffering if He does exist. Ask yourself these questions: What happens if God doesn't exist? Have I wrongly abandoned happiness here for the sake of a lie?

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