Nietzche was a German philosopher,

Nietzche reasoned that Christianity's emphasis on the afterlife makes its believers less able to cope with eartly life. He argued that the ideal human, the "Ubermensch", would be able to channel passions creatively instead of suppressing them.

What do you guys think?

love,

sunmystic

Oh and guys, please keep in mind that I am a Christian and that I do moderate this forum . But at the sametime, I am really open minded about discussing things. Ok?

love,

sunmystic

Oh, that is quite alright, SM, we won't hold your beliefs against you.   :

Yes, I would agree with Niezche on how the promise of the "afterlife" could cause Christians to become dissatisfied with their earthly lives.  I don't think that this is an intrinsic quality of the faith itself, but a managerial strategy the Church had, and still, uses to maintain the size of the flock.  

 Marx's quote "religion is the Opiate of the masses" Relates to this.  ANd the old cliche"Ignorance is bliss"

 Take a hypothetical little pre-christian village.  They know nothing of heaven, the promis of salvation or the christian concept of sin.

 The villagers are happy with thier lives, for they know nothing else. They are happy that thier crops are growing well, they are content with what they have.  

 Then a more 'advanced' culture comes along. They teach the villagers "truth" they say that the villagers can't be happy, because true happiness can only be achieved through "<insert diety.prophet here>" Wouldn't you guys like to be happy?  

 So the villagers start to belive that maybe they aren't happy at all and end up joining <insert religion here>.  

 So we have wiped out blissfull ingnorance and replaced it with a dissatisfied knowing.  <insert religion here> sees this dissatifaction and then says " we have the cure for this, it is called eternal salvation. This will make you happy." They attend the rituals, observe the rites, make the offerings, hand over the tithes.  They are still unhappy. They think that maybe they arent attending , observing, tithing and offering enough.  Still not happy.  

So now the poor villagers are undergoing the Nitzchian earthly dissatisfaction AND they are strung out on Marx's Opiate.  

I belive that it is our artisans, those who take what they do above and beyond just an occupation. These , I think, are the essence of Ubermensch.  Our greatest composers, Bethoven, Motzart, Bach, Freddy Mercury. I think these are absolutely Ubermensch.  Cassinova, the lover, Definatly Ubernesch. The famous motorcycle builder Jesse James.. Ubermesch.

Ya know, after a pause to consider a common thread binding my examples, None of them are what would be considered "religious" by any means.  

Mayhaps by creativly expressing thier passions, they have no need of a heavenly reward, they have created personal heavens on earth?

 Well, I am out of steam and I pass the talking stick

Will MV that was cool what you said and well said. I quoted what I posted about Nietzsche out of my dictionary. I actually don't know anything about him except that he said that , "Might is right."

I am a Christian yogi mystic and it has been alot of years since I took one only philosophy class in college, so moderating a philosophy forum and creating activity in it is becoming an enteresting challenge . I decided to start with Nietzsche because he is considered to be abit of a rogue bugger .  

So Mysticvirgo, start a philosohy topic and we will see if we can get some post credits discussing it .

love you!

sunmystic

you truely know how to motivate a Virgoan, Don'cha?  

 I too only had one smester of Philosophy in college, but I had a very very good teacher. Mr. Savchuck.  His advice to us on peing able to wrap our brains around philisophical concepts was two shots of Vodka.  "Lubricates the Neurons", he would say.  Myself an a dozen classmates tested his advice and made it a daily ritual to take two shots each and it really worked!  

 I hope you will give me a bit of time to come up with a good topic.  Most of the good stuff has been philosophised to death.  Including death.

   Oh, you should try my astrology