The latest Christian argument for the existence of God:
Mel Gibson has made a gory film about the suffering and death of
Jesus.
Therefore, God exists.
"It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a
cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything
to do with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings
what he fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so
low a grade of intellectual honesty and such insensibility to the
problem of 'truth', that it is never necessary to refute him. Truth is
not something that one man has and another man has not: at best, only
peasants, or peasant apostles like Luther, can think of truth in any
such way. One may rest assured that the greater the degree of a man's
intellectual conscience the greater will be his modesty, his
discretion, on this point. To know in five cases, and to refuse, with
delicacy, to know anything further . . . 'Truth', as the word is
understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker,
every Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that
not even a beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and
self-control that are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest
truth.--The deaths of the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have
been misfortunes of history: they have misled . . . The conclusion
that all idiots, women and plebeians come to, that there must be
something in a cause for which any one goes to his death (or which, as
under primitive Christianity, sets off epidemics of
death-seeking)--this conclusion has been an unspeakable drag upon the
testing of facts, upon the whole spirit of inquiry and investigation.
The martyrs have damaged the truth. . . . Even to this day the crude
fact of persecution is enough to give an honourable name to the most
empty sort of sectarianism.--But why? Is the worth of a cause altered
by the fact that some one had laid down his life for it?--An error
that becomes honourable is simply an error that has acquired one
seductive charm the more: do you suppose, Messrs. Theologians, that we
shall give you the chance to be martyred for your lies?--One best
disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it on ice--that is also
the best way to dispose of theologians. . . . This was precisely the
world-historical stupidity of all the persecutors: that they gave the
appearance of honour to the cause they opposed--that they made it a
present of the fascination of martyrdom. . . .Women are still on their
knees before an error because they have been told that some one died
on the cross for it.
IS THE CROSS, THEN, AN ARGUMENT?--But about all these things there is
one, and one only, who has said what has been needed for thousands of
years--Zarathustra.
They made signs in blood along the way that they went, and their folly
taught them that the truth is proved by blood.
But blood is the worst of all testimonies to the truth; blood
poisoneth even the purest teaching and turneth it into madness and
hatred in the heart.
And when one goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that
prove? Verily, it is more when one's teaching cometh out of one's own
burning!"
[Nietzsche: "The Antichrist" (53)]
"I S T H E C R O S S, T H E N, A N A R G U M E N T!?!"
PH
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