Englischen Flachköpfen

[Hastrman]

From Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols:

In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

Why do so many atheists seem to be these English flatheads (englischen flachköpfen)?

Why do so many atheists insist on existing in a perpetual condition of moral superiority, as though they had any reason for thinking as they do, or for insisting that others think like them? As though their “morals” were not wholly arbitrary, the game they made up to feel better about themselves–because they will not cast them aside and look, even for an instant, into the Void.

I can’t understand why anybody would continue to live by rules that actually require another metaphysical underpinning in order to be coherent–or why they would throw themselves into it so much more than those who still accepted that underpinning. It looks like cosmic Stockholm syndrome to me.

 

[Kaninchen]

Why do so many atheists insist on existing in a perpetual condition of moral superiority, as though they had any reason for thinking as they do, or for insisting that others think like them?

Perhaps it’s more difficult than they think to escape from all Christian cultural norms and behaviors?

As though their “morals” were not wholly arbitrary, the game they made up to feel better about themselves–because they will not cast them aside and look, even for an instant, into the Void.

They’d just argue, I think, that religion is a purely arbitrary matter.

I can’t understand why anybody would continue to live by rules that actually require another metaphysical underpinning in order to be coherent–or why they would throw themselves into it so much more than those who still accepted that underpinning. It looks like cosmic Stockholm syndrome to me.

They, like we, are where they are - living in a complex of law, tradition and habit - change can only be change in existing circumstances - and would argue that what religious people see as metaphysical underpinning is merely religious explanation for hard-wired, evolutionary traits.