Ahhh . . . Nietzsche

Ahhhh . . . . Nietzsche. I really love that guy.

I’ve been really getting down on myself about the way I’ve been teaching my Hum 22 class. I haven’t been saying what I really think, and I’ve devoted to little time to real scholarship, and too much time to responding to uncritical, but loud, assertions. It seems that most of the students, and all of the more vocal students, are strident evangelicals. They seem to think that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is ignorant, or stupid, or evil. They seem to be quite Manichaean.

To be an evangelical Christian means that you believe the Bible is a miraculous book. You think it contains no errors of history or science, and contains no contradictions. To hold this view is to reject two hundred years of historical scholarship. It is to part ways with every major scholar in the world with the exception of those who are not free to pursue the truth because they teach at conservative Christian colleges and universities that require them to never deviate from the party line. To be an evangelical is also to reject the obvious evidence of the text itself—a text that contains a lot of interesting, compelling, and profitable discourse on the nature of our existence—evidence that clearly demonstrates, again and again, that the Bible is the product of human culture. Like literally thousands of other religious texts, it was created by human beings who were asking the same questions, in the same way, we are. It should have no special authority over any thinking person.

But, of course, evangelicals are thinking people. Many of them are quite intelligent. They just can’t face the thought that their safe, confined, well-organized world—a world that is really a system that exists only in their heads, and exists only to make them feel like they know THE truth of the universe—a universe completely devoid of mystery, and, therefore, from my point of view, a world devoid of God (yes, these evangelicals have killed God, I see God’s blood all over them)—and, because they know the truth of the universe they can go to bed every night, not only, in their words, “certain they will go to heaven when they die,” and convinced they are better than the rest of us (though, of course, they deny this is their attitude).

They honestly would rather see me, and you, and billions of other people burn in hell for eternity then find out there is no hell at all.

Just think about that.

What do evangelicals believe?

They believe:
• God created everything in the universe in six days. Most of them think this event occurred less than 10,000 years ago.
• There was literally a Garden of Eden (located between the Tigris and Euphrates River which, miraculously, still existed even after the [global] Flood) and in this Garden there were two trees: one of these trees was actually named “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” and the other was actually named “The Tree of Life.” A talking serpent manages to trick Eve into eating some fruit form the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and this leads to all the pain and suffering we now experience. They do not believe this is symbolic. They believe it is history.
• They believe that virtually every biologist on this planet is an idiot for believing that all of the biodiversity on this planet is the result of long, gradual, inefficient, but biologically explainable processes. Yes, according to evangelicals, those scientists are incredibly stupid to believe such nonsense, but it is perfectly reasonable for evangelicals to believe that the ancestors of every bird, animal, and person on this planet once lived together on a single boat (Noah’s Ark).
• They believe that God actually parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could walk through it. (And that God sent ten plagues on Egypt, including turning the Nile River to blood and covering all of Egypt with frogs . . . literally.)
• They believe that the prophet Elijah did not die; instead, an actual chariot of fire came down from heaven and lifted him up to heaven.
• They believe a man actually lived in the belly of a big fish for three days . . . and then was regurgitated and survived.
• The believe that we are all surrounded by myriads of unseen spiritual beings—angels and demons—who can and do interfere in human affairs.
• They believe that sometime soon Jesus will come back to earth, at least as far as the atmosphere, and then they will be transported ,magically, up to meet Jesus in the air.
• They believe in the soon-coming “Great Tribulation”—a period of seven years when the human population (minus the already-raptured Christians) will suffer terribly. This is inevitable, from their point of view, and that explains why they don’t really worry about stopping devastating ecological or military disasters. If terrorists were to set off a nuclear bomb in New York City, they would see a silver-lining: this would mean that Jesus’ return would come soon.

But, of course, it’s okay that they believe all those things. What I find so soul-crushing is that they not only feel entitled to believe these bizarre things, they feel that those of us who don’t agree with all this nonsense, those of us who want some proof before we believe any of it, are evil, stupid, ignorant, etc.

I know all of this because I use to be one of them.

But it’s so frustrating. I want to engage them. I want to get them to consider things reasonably. But this would be to bang my head against a stone wall. So I swallow my words. I don’t tell them what I really think. (Besides, I can’t waste class time arguing points with people who are unable to believe anything different than what they already believe. They can’t believe otherwise. They really can’t help themselves.)

So, on the train home tonight I was very happy to turn to my faithful friend and guide, F.N., speaking through his most famous voice, that of Zarathustra:

“Do not be jealous, lover of truth, because of these inflexible and oppressive men! Truth has never yet clung to the arm of an inflexible man.

“Return to your security because of these abrupt men: only in the market-place is one assailed with Yes? Or No?

“The experience of all deep wells is slow: they must wait long until they know what has fallen into their depths.

“All great things occur away from glory and the market-place: the inventors of new values have always lived away from glory and the market-place.

“Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee to where the raw, rough breeze blows!

“Flee into your solitude. You have lived too near the small and the pitiable men. Flree from their hidden vengeance! Towards you they are nothing but vengeance.

“No longer lift your arm against them! They are innumerable and it is not your fate to be a fly-swat.”

(Thus Spake Zarathustra, I. “Of the Flies of the Market-Place,” trans. Hollingdale.)