Secularization and Nietzsche?
926684
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13677a.htm\nhttp://www.jbuff.com/c062801.htm\nhttp://dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophers/N/Nietzsche,_Friedrich/
284438
what i am not liking now is that people are becoming more and more numb to what is happening around us. We are losing our values so long as we go to the "popular" masses.\nwhat were tabooed before are now being accepted as the right thing. \nConsult your bible...nothing has changed!!!
863305
It is becoming less puritanical. They are about to decriminalize homosexuality, which in a country with such strong religious feeling, is a giant step forward.\n\nThey are highly religious, and for almost every religion, the effect is repression of individual liberty. However, as they grow more economically diverse and cosmopolitan, they'll more likely show increases in freedom as well.
972741
From a non-believer:\n \nGood luck with that. Deism has the advantage that it can formulate proposals on the issues of universal reality, while at the same time dispensing with the absurdities of the writings of primitives. In that sense it's like "essential" theology. Neither "scripture" nor dogma can gain much of a toehold against it. That many of the American "founding fathers" subscribed to it should sound a word of caution to those who think it's some lightweight notion.
166697
Friedrich Nietzsche, Gottfried Leibniz, \nBlaise Pascal, René Descartes, K'ung Fu-zi
730636
It is more about the US than Europe, Japan and the more advanced Asian societies are equally secular and atheistic.\n\nIn Europe I guess it took the horrors of two World Wars fought on its soil to finally convince some that the idea of a loving god was a fairly sick joke, I wouldn't recommend that way of going about things.\n\nFirst thing would be to get religion out of politics, make references to god in a politicians speech a sackable offence. Unfortunately Europe's politicians seem to be becoming more like those in the US which is a very worrying development.
867561
Human, All Too Human -Nietzsche
634016
And I know not if you are serious, but assuming you are, and assuming you are an offspring somehow of Ludwig, then you probably know that for him, philosophy was best understood as therapy. He saw it as a crutch to lean on temporarily until clarity of wisdom and knowledge brought healing of the mind and soul that are injured by confused thinking, partly brought on by philosophy, itself.\n\nHe believed that philosphy was best used to get beyond philosophy, a sort of ladder to get to a higher plane of understanding at which point you throw the ladder away.\n\nI think that this is a narrow view of philosophy, suited to Wittgenstein's mystical temper, but in the long run not very useful for us today. Nevertheless, his view contains a profound insight that limits the pretense and arrogance of any philosphy that thinks it can figure it all out and hand over to the masses God, the Universe, and four-leaf clovers neatly bound in a box.\n\nIt might be best to ask not "What is philosophy," as if there is one thing that has always existed without change. We can't even say that about mountains (they rise and decline) why should we think there is such a thing as PHILOSOPHY that is an unchanging subject for all time?\n\nInstead you might ask, "What has philosophy been or done over the last 4000 years?" Then at least you'd be ready for lots of different answers. Most people who care about such things have a favorite thinkers who exemplifies the intellectual struggles and currents of the time and place in which they lived. Some people think of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as the definers of philosophy (although each of those three looked at the subject differently from each other).\n\nFor those people philosophy is a speculative task which seeks to understand the nature of reality starting with certain beliefs that are drawn from mathematics and developed by the use of syllogistic logic and applied to whatever it was that they were talking about at the moment. Syllogistic logic has a form something like this: If this, then that. If A is true and B is true, then C must be true. For example, \n\n"If it is true that quadrapeds have four legs, and if it true that horses have four legs, then it MUST by true that horses are quadrapeds."\n\nDid I write that the fundamental ideas that these famous Greeks worked with came from mathematics? Well, so I did. That makes it seem like philosophy is very cut and dried, very abstract and since based on the ideas of mathematics, philosophical statements must be capable of proof. No more fruitless arguments! The reign of reason triumphs over the darkened minds of the religious, the superstitious, and those who argue from their emotions.\n\nWere it only so! In fact, beneath our great Greek philosophers (their greatness is indisputable--we still read them and draw from them to understand things today) were ideas, beliefs, and commitments that were not subject to the same tests that they would subject the arguments that their colleagues and others made. That is, their powerful tools of reasoning were built out of materials that themselves were not products of that powerful reasoning. For example, all three Greeks believed in the rationality and unity of the universe, a belief that they could not test except by saying (a little bit like Immanuel Kant would do 2000 years later) that the condition of rationality and thought itself was dependent on the universe being fundamentally rational and "unified." There could be no logic, for example, if things weren't "true" everywhere and for all time. For example, if the "laws of nature" varied by country or by period of history we couldn't make statements that say "a falling object will continue to fall in a straight line until it meets an object." If in France, for instance, falling objects suddenly reversed trajectory and went off at a ninety degree angle from the original line of
369258
You can do Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard.  Big difference.
369053
Try Nietzsche’s Superman approach. The goal of the Superman is to reject the Principles of the Society overcome Nihilism and ultimately become one’s own man living according to Will To Power.
611068
Yes. Judging from the responses I've heard from atheists, Gellman needs to try harder. I don't know anyone who was satisfied with his analysis. Some atheists became angry simply because of the article. lol.
762898
lol, the guy above me said both....He practices doublethink! Well, Pagans came first and since the idea was popular then that the Christians "borrowed" it. (Has it been returned yet?)
262936
All beliefs should be open to scrutiny, otherwise they just become dogma. Enforced dogma is totalitarianism and repression. It can happen anywhere where free (respectable) speech is stifled. To maintain that one can't ask a respectable question about another religion is simply engendering fear. To maintain that they MY god is above questioning but YOURS isn't, is essentailly a circular argument that takes us nowhere. To maintain that my question insults your god (and that this involves punishment to me) is simply barbaric. I am happy to discuss all of my views with ANYBODY that doesn't intimidate or threaten me.
34912
I think what this guy is trying to point out is the frustration with so many people being led blindly by dated or 'obsolete' ideologies. I think this question is more akin to people with 'leftist' ideals, that see in the masses a repeating pattern of spoon-fed idiocy. Whenever I think of this question, I think of the millions of people that believe in anything without questioning or analyzing the deepness of the subject. What really comes to mind is RELIGION and PATRIOTISM. So many have been led into believing things that are not even entirely certain, are very subjective and bound to relativity and seemingly created to keep a group of people in power. \nI think this person is frustrated with so many people not questioning beliefs and believing blindly just because 'tradition' demands it.\nWhat frustrates me is that I see so many backwards things and so many people not even questioning them, buying into them and being told how to be and how to act by non-founded dubious sources... this is very saddening, and yes, I think it affects us all. Open-mindedness and an analytical, critical attitude is much needed nowadays, when we're being bombarded by propaganda and lies every day. It's time for society to evolve, go beyond tradition, rid of the old attitudes that have proven wrong, and WAKE UP!
1130377
Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative.
605339
This came from the documentary called Soldiers in the Army of God, about the anti-abortion extremists.  The guy was talking about how he found God while serving time in San Quentin prison for manslaughter and that God told him to circumcise himself with a razor blade, which he did.  The word NUTJOB comes to mind when you hear this garbage.  But what is scary about this is people actually BELIEVE stuff people like they say and back them.  Sorry, my first thought when someone says something like that isn't that it is a true conversion nor that God touched him the words DELUSIONAL DISORDER come to mind.  Followed closely by we are in SERIOUS trouble if people believe these things.
1135261
I wouldn't say "down the toilet," but I would definitely say as a society, we are less moral than we were 50 years ago.  God is the source of morality.  As more people turn away from God, more people have an empty pit in their souls, which they fill with immorality.