Strong but Wrong?

In this group of pages, Nietzsche continues to assault the Jews and Christians, but also shows them some respect for pulling off this moral hijacking, as well as the difference between “good and bad” and “good and evil”. He has already shown why these people feel this way that they simply hate the strong with unbridled passion but moves on to the technicalities of this system they have created. He tries to demonstrate the extent to which they’ve won and reveals the concept that these weak people with their slave morality have successfully made the strong and powerful feel guilty about being this way, even though they can’t help it. Nietzsche’s argument revolves around the absurdity of such a claim, as how can one feel any shame for being one’s self? He brings up the example of the lambs and the birds of prey, how the lamb hates the birds but the birds feel nothing towards the lambs; it is simply how it is. He also makes a grand argument of how pathetic these Judeo Christian beliefs truly are, that one must invent an imaginary world one will come to in the future that rewards someone for their own deficiencies and refusal to do anything about it (Nietzsche seems to imply that these weak people feel that they should not do anything at all since they are so weak, but that might not need to be the case). However, when reading I felt that I observed a bold undertone presented about the nature of God, which reveals many insights about Nietzsche’s own atheism. It seems suggested, but not blatantly argued, that these weaker people needed to create a being so strong, so much more powerful than their oppressors that he could victimize their oppressors to an extent infinitely beyond what they have been put through themselves on this earth. I feel the greatest implication was found when Nietzsche observed the inscription from Dante’s Hell, saying it should instead be this too was built on eternal hate. This made me think of rather than heaven and hell, what about god in general? Was god created simply out of hatred for one’s oppressors? Would this explain the shockingly strict and vengeful nature of god in the Old Testament and the submission requiring perfection of the New Testament god? Would it also explain the nature of the Greek and Roman gods, their fallibility to man which happens quite often? Since the Greeks and Roman held the true vision of good and bad, man could topple a god, while to the Jews and Christians that would be impossible. I know this kind of ran into a rant, but I had never thought of the origin and nature of god in this way.