Post #1

"The Christian conception of God - God as God of the sick, God as spider, God as spirit - is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth: perhaps it even represents the low water mark in the descending development of the God type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! " (Section 18)

As we have unpacked Nietzsche's despise for Christianity, an outline of his major critique lies in his concept of life as a power or force and Christian tradition as a practice in which no longer allows its proper expression. Christianity instead consists of a conception of consciousness that punishes us, asking of us to internalize outward expression of instinct and aggression and inflicts an overarching affliction of guilt in the process. This form of "bad conscience" nihilism is a result of the degradation of life expression since the Greeks. The Greek or "barbarian", non-rational morality focused on the life expressive way of being. With the introduction of Christianity we have an inversion of the aforementioned "master morality" and thus our instincts are turn upon one another. Nietzsche highlights here points which Freud will later take off on in The Pleasure Principle such as his explanation of anxiety. Freud makes a point to explain that anxiety, as a completely internalized fear of our choices, is the one of the most dangerous emotions as we are in a battle not against the oppression of others, but of ourselves to which we have less defense. Nietzsche's concern with Christianity perpetuated guilt can be seen as creating a fictitious internal battle with anxiety which has been allowed to become tradition of the most dangerous kind. Nietzsche's critique can be seen as an attempt to reinstall an experience of existence that is genuine in the face of nihilism.

Worth noting again is the effect of pity as a vice for this Christian conception of guilt. Pity on others, an emotion whose purpose is to liken your emotions to others who are in pain in order to share in their suffering is another example of "God as sick" to Nietzsche. The tradition within religion here not only pushes the nihilism associated with life to a concept of fulfillment of an afterlife (denial) as well as make one feel guilty for not being able to live of to the highest standards granted in the afterlife on their time on earth, but then twists the knife one more time and breeds on the commiseration and comradeship of being in this situation together. This system may have an illusion of good and progress but these illusions instigate Nietsche's tirade against it.