In his THE WILL TO POWER, Nietzsche argued that there was a drive or ‘will to power’ which is the basic expression of man's vital energies. This ‘will to power’ was more than simply the will to survive--and instead encompassed the desire to achieve one's full potential in life. Per Nietzsche,"the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War. A Will to Power, a Will to Overcome."

Historically, there developed two branches of morality-- the MASTER morality and the SLAVE morality. The MASTER morality arose from ‘noble’ virtues such as strength, independence, and self-glorification. The noble individual did not look for others for approval of this actions, but searched only from within his innermost, noble drive. In contrast, the SLAVE morality emerged from the lowest level of society--the weak and the oppressed.

Per Nietzsche, Jewish and Christian ethics inverted the natural system--so that the weak were given justification for denouncing the psychic superiority of those who deserve to rule. That is, the ‘herd mentality‘ of Judaic-Christian ethics succeeded in overcoming the master morality of the noble men by defining all strong qualities as vices, and all weak qualitiesas virtues. Per Nietzsche, it was important to consider breeding ‘superior specimens’ of the human race, so as to attain the ‘cultivation of a stronger race’. These strong, superior men would in turn place a ‘yoke on all the less intelligent forces’ in society. In his THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA (1883), Nietzsche seemed to anticipate that many would view ‘themselves’ as members of this ‘superior’ race. Therefore Nietzsche reminded his readers that the supermen would emerge in the FUTURE. He asked everyone to bury themselves in their work, and self-sacrifice themselves if necessary, in anticipation of the day when the supermen were destined to arrive:

"I love those who do not seek beyond the stars for a reason to perish and be sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves to earth, in order that earth may some day become superman's..."

Nietzsche opposed liberalism and socialism "because it dreams ingenuously of ‘goodness, truth, beauty, and equal rights’ (anarchy pursues the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion.)" Nietzsche was also "opposed to parliamentary government and the power of the press because they are means by which the herds become masters." (Excerpts taken from Frederich Nietzsche's THE WILL TO POWER (Notes, 1883-1888) and THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA(1883))

Chamberlain believed that because Germans had inherited the best qualities from both the ancient Greeks and the Indo-Aryans--this meant Germans had the right to became the master race of the world. According to Chamberlain, "God builds today upon the Germans alone." and "This is the knowledge, the certain truth, that has filled my soul for years."

Although, Hitler wanted his German subjects to be religious, privately he spoke of his desire to replace Christianity with an Aryan pagan religion:

"The peasant will be told what the Church has destroyed for him: thewhole of the secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the shapeless, the demonic...We shall wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religionpeculiar to our race. And this is where we must begin. Not in the greatcities...There we shall only lose ourselves in the stupid godlesspropaganda of the Marxists: free sex in nature and that sort of bad taste.The urban masses are empty. Where all is extinguished, nothing can be aroused. But our peasantry still lives in heathen beliefs and values."(Sklar p 147)

Again, in public, the Nazis denied charges of being hostile to the Church--although their speeches show how they were trying to shift from Christianity into a nationalistic, patriotic religion. For example, Hitler's hand picked Minister for Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl had this to say about the party'sattitude toward Christianity in 1937:

"The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and PositiveChristianity is National Socialism...National Socialism is the doing of God's will...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr. Zoellnerand Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh...No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed...True Christianity "is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."

Article source formerly at: http://www.mac-2001.com/philo/crit/NAZIS.TXT

Can Christianity Be Harmonized with Evolution?

The conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution - as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.

If we bring in a world wide Universalism, we destroy Nature's scheme of evolution; a fatally new order of things is introduced. Mr. Wells has recognized this difficulty and has expressed it in the following passage:

"The Universalist idea . . . runs counter to the normal instincts of mankind. Nationalism is in our bones - in our tradition, in our habits, in our blood."

All my inquiries had led me to the conclusion that the ethic of Christianity is in fierce opposition to that sponsored by human nature - the human nature which has been fashioned in the course of evolution for evolutionary purposes. (p. 64)

Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case - nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

And if I am right in regarding nations as units which the law of evolution has brought into being to fulfill an evolutionary purpose, then we may also assert that so far evolution has triumphed over Christianity.

The failure of Christianity may be due not to any defect in the code of human behavior taught by Jesus of Nazareth, but to corruptions of his original text introduced at later times by his followers. We shall go to the Gospels according to St. Matthew and to St. Luke for the original code of Christian morals. We must also look rather closely at the Palestine into which Jesus was born, and especially must we note his nation, one of the most tenaciously exclusive the world has ever seen. Some sixty-five years before Jesus was born, the Roman Empire threw its eastern arm round Syria and Palestine, and thus the doors of ordered Europe were opened to Jew and Gentile and to Eastern religions and beliefs. For six centuries before Jesus appeared on the scene his nation had been broken and dispersed; they had been under the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek harrow in turn, and were in Christ's time under the protection of Rome. Under six centuries of such treatment most nations would have disappeared in the general mass of local population. How did the Jews manage to survive that ordeal and come down, still nationally minded, to this day? It is because their religion, their law, and their mentality are conformable to the law of evolution; isolation and inbreeding are the chief factors in the production of special peoples or races. The Jews were God's chosen people; they were commanded to keep themselves apart from all other peoples and to replenish the earth; they were forbidden to contract marriage outside their own ranks. It was into this bigoted race, fanned and winnowed for centuries by the winds of evolutionary adversity, that the Savior of the world was born.

We shall never understand the ethical system taught by Jesus unless we realize that he was a Jew, not only by birth, but that he lived and taught as a Jew; the Sermon on the Mount was addressed to his distracted fellow nationals. He upheld the law of Moses: "On these two commandments [to love God, to love your neighbor] hang all the law and the prophets." "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill." He was the Messiah, but not the Liberator so earnestly longed for by his people - a Messiah who would restore for them the material Kingdom of David. The kingdom he offered them was one of the spirit. "The kingdom of Heaven is within you," they were told. The Jews were intensely national; the new doctrine never became deeply rooted in the land of its birth; within a century of its birth Christian Judaism was dead in Palestine.

Before making a brief review of the items included in the code of ethics taught by Christ it is necessary that we look more closely at the nature of his promised ‘kingdom.’ It is a kingdom based on Jewish family life. The Jewish family is now, and always has been, distinguished by the strength, warmth, and intensity of the bonds of affection and of love which unite all of its members into a co-operative whole. The kingdom pictured for us by Christ is a limitless expansion of such a family ? one in which love abounds and from which hate is excluded. In this family or kingdom, God takes his place as the loving Father; Jesus is the Son, the mediator, the redeemer; all who believe do automatically join the Christian family circle. Such a conception is clearly capable of a Universalist application. The Christian ideal, then, is to knit mankind, from pole to pole, into a single family by the bonds of love. The Roman Empire provided Christianity with a flying start. (p. 65-66)

General Smuts has proclaimed the universal rule of law as the major aim of the Allies, and the Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Stafford Cripps) has brought forward Christianity as a scaffolding on which a peaceful international settlement might be built, but admitted "that the application of Christian ethic to our daily living conditions was not easy," an admission which bears on the proposal made by Drs. Waddington and Needham. One thing is certain: a system of ethics which is to serve an evolutionary purpose must be in harmony with the deepest desires feelings, and instinctive reactions of human nature.

The Sermon opens by commending, and also offering comfort to, certain moods and dispositions - the downtrodden (poor in spirit), the mourners, the diffident or meek; the men who hunger and thirst after righteousness; the merciful, the honest-minded (pure in heart), the peacemakers. Self-reliance, independence of judgment, happiness of disposition receive no commendation. Anger ‘without a cause’ is condemned. Adultery is condemned, and so is the mere thought of it. The old tribal law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is replaced by Christ. (p. 67-68)

Christ's teaching is at variance with our human predispositions, and is in direct opposition to the law of evolution. On the other hand, it is in harmony with our conception of civilization. Christ's way, as always, is a way of appeasement and of peace. In this amendment of the tribal law Christ annihilates the law of evolution; he throws a bomb right into the very heart of the machinery by which and through which Nature has sought to build up races or breeds of mankind. (p. 69)

Every tribe has a core and a crust; the core, which holds a tribe together, is compounded of love and co-operation; the crust, which safeguards the separation and independence of the tribes, is a compound of antagonisms, of rivalries, of ill feelings which reach their climax in hate. If under the sunshine of Christ's teaching the crust of tribal hate were to dissolve, then tribe would fuse with tribe, nation would merge with nation, and in course of time the population of the world would become one flock and the earth one fold. After nineteen centuries of Christianity the tribal crust of hate is as strong as ever. Is not this failure due to the fact that Christian ethics are out of harmony with human nature and are secretly antagonistic to Nature's scheme of evolution? (p. 70)

Tribal or national opinion, in so far as it regulates the behavior and actions of tribes and nations, is a powerful factor in evolution. Here again we find Christian ethics seeking, not to favor evolution, but to bring it to an end.

(The opposition between evolution and Christian ethics has been neatly and truthfully epigrammatized by Sir Charles Sherrington thus:

"Nature represents in the case of man a revulsion of the product against the process."

Chritianity Versus Evolution

THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY IN EUROPE AND ITS spread westward from city to city of the Roman Empire present matters of interest to the student of evolution as well as to the historian. Christianity sprang from the loins of Judaism; both the Jews and the Gospel which they rejected gradually filtered out from Palestine, both passing westward along trade routes; their fates were very different. The Jews, a chosen people, were safeguarded from outside contamination by their religion, by their law, by their system of marriage, and by their spiritual and national exclusiveness. From the European turmoil of nineteen centuries they have emerged still a separate people and greatly multiplied in numbers.

One of the chief effects of Christianity is to dissolve the crust of tribalism and to permit tribal peoples to fuse in a fellowship of mutual love. The Gospel was offered by St. Paul to the Gentiles; it was he who proclaimed (Col. 3:11):

"There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision - Barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free" but Christ is all and in all."

The new creed was thus thrown open to all mankind. Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim? (p. 72)

Good men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses. Even the late Lord Bryce, a statesman and historian of sober judgment, let this escape from him:

"In the meeting of White and Black, Christian brotherhood does not work." (p. 73)

With the breakup of the Roman Empire, all the local forces of evolution, which had been suppressed in the greater part of Europe for a period of four centuries or more, broke loose, and in the course of time brought into existence the national states we now see in Europe.

Each and all profess to be followers of Christ, but each and all have modified the practice of his doctrine to suit their national needs. The group of experts who issued A Report on Nationalism (1939) came to this conclusion: "No political action can be fully Christian" (p. 301). The late Sir Martin Conway, a statesman and scholar, came to the conclusion that nationality and Christianity are incompatible. The churchman who edifies the readers of The Times every Saturday confessed that "the Christian Church is faced with two powerful and insidious foes: Nationalism and Secularism." In 1934 Lord Lang, then Archbishop of Canterbury, got very near to the cause which makes nationalism antagonistic to Christianity when he said:

"Nationalism feeds on the most primary and still untamed instincts of the human race."

Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution. The Church has failed to bend human nature so as to make it subservient to Christianity; nationalism, on the other hand, finds it easy of exploitation. (p. 75-76)

The Old Testament is the checkered history of a chosen people, set apart from all others, and encompassed by a special system of divine laws, all of them so framed as to ensure the Children of Israel a successful and isolated evolutionary journey in the millennia which loomed ahead of them. In the Old Testament we are in an evolutionary atmosphere; life is regulated by the dual code. Even the nature ascribed to Jehovah is of the dual order. He is a God of Hate as well as of Love; he can be moved to anger and to vengeance. He is a God of War. Toward his chosen people his behavior is ethical; toward all neighboring nations it is cosmical.

Into this people ? rigid observers of the dual law, factious, contentious, holding themselves aloof from all who were not of their faith and blood ? Jesus was born. In the New Testament, which is a history of his life, teaching, and works, we breathe another atmosphere, one suffused through and through by a code of conduct which is single, rigid, and ethical. Jehovah is now a God of Love: affection, forgiveness, and humility have been made the basis of a system of ethics never before practiced in Palestine. (p. 136-137)

Now, every state which exists at the present time, or has existed in the past, has practiced the dual code and defended itself by armed force. Thus it came about that some three centuries after the death of Christ his followers had to find a way of reconciling their creed with the dual code and the bearing of arms. Out of the chaos which followed the collapse of the Western Empire arose the nations of Europe, every one of them professing to be Christian, every one of them practicing the art of war. Here, then, is a strange thing: the ethical creed of a peaceful sect now serves the needs of the warrior nations of Europe. "A good religion", says Bagehot, "makes a winner among nations." (p. 137)

My opinion is that Tolstoy gave the right interpretation of Christ's doctrine of ethics, and his courageous but vain attempt to put it into practice is a proof that human society on a unicodal system of ethics is an impossibility. Our brain, our mentality, is organized to subserve a bicodal system of ethics. (p. 138)

A nation is an isolated group; it is an evolutionary unit. (p. 145)

The nations of Europe claim to be under the law of Christ: in reality they are under the law of evolution. The nations of Europe are evolutionary-minded; they are emulative, envious, jealous, selfish, and, above all, competitive. It has to be remembered, too, that the nations of the northern half of Europe are the progeny of tribes noted for their fierce warlike qualities. Nowhere else in the world of humanity has the battle of evolution been waged so hotly as in Europe; war is being used to force the pace of evolution. No wonder, then, the evangel of peace has made so poor progress in Europe.

National behavior is bicodal: internally, a nation moves on co-operative, ethical lines; externally, on cosmical, antagonistic lines. If, then, nations were to become unicodal, if the ethical code were to become dominant, cosmical antagonism would disappear and nations would become friendly and cooperative. Alas, this plan has been tried and has failed; for twelve centuries and more Europeans have had preached to them the single code of Christ, and yet wars have gone on. An international authority has declared: "Christianity has had no influence in the present war." In times of war, clergymen preach and practice the bicodalism of the Old Testament. (p. 222)

Source: Evolution and Ethics by Sir Arthur Keith

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche proposed that before it was too late, humanity should reject Christianity, as the "greatest of all imaginable corruptions," and admit freely and fully, that the law of natural selection was universal and that the only way to make real progress was to conform to it.

It may be asked here how Nietzsche accounted for the fact that humanity had survived so long - for the fact that the majority of men were still physically healthy and that the race, as a whole, was still fairly vigorous. He answered this in two ways. First, he denied that the race was maintaining to the full its old vigor.

"The European of the present," he said, "is far below the European of the Renaissance."

It would be absurd, he pointed out, to allege that the average German of 1880 was as strong and as healthy - i.e. as well fitted to his environment - as the ‘blond beast‘ who roamed the Saxon lowlands in the days of the mammoth. It would be equally absurd to maintain that the highest product of modern civilization - the town-dweller - was as vigorous and as capable of becoming the father of healthy children as the intelligent farmer, whose life was spent in approximate accordance with all the more obvious laws of health.

Nietzsche's second answer was that humanity had escaped utter degeneration and destruction because, despite its dominance as a theory of action, few men actually practiced Christianity. It was next to impossible, he said, to find a single man who, literally and absolutely, obeyed the teachings of Christ. (This observation is as old as Montaigne, who said: "After all, the stoics were actually stoical, but where in all Christendom will you find a Christian?") There were plenty of men who thought they were doing so, but all of them were yielding in only a partial manner. Absolute Christianity meant absolute disregard of self. It was obvious that a man who reached this state of mind would be unable to follow any gainful occupation, and so would find it impossible to preserve his own life or the lives of his children. In brief, said Nietzsche, an actual and utter Christian would perish today just as Christ perished, and so, in his own fate, would provide a conclusive argument against Christianity.

Nietzsche pointed out further that everything which makes for the preservation of the human race is diametrically opposed to the Christian ideal. Thus Christianity becomes the foe of science. The one argues that man should sit still and let God reign; the other that man should battle against the tortures which fate inflicts upon him, and try to overcome them and grow strong. Thus all science is unchristian because, in the last analysis, the whole purpose and effort of science is to arm man against loss of energy and death, and thus make him self-reliant and unmindful of any duty of propitiating the deity. That this antagonism between Christianity and the search for truth really exists has been shown in a practical way time and again. Since the beginning of the Christian era the church has been the bitter and tireless enemy of all science, and this enmity has been due to the fact that every member of the priest class has realized that the more a man learned the more he came to depend upon his own efforts, and the less he was given to asking help from above. In the ages of faith men prayed to the saints when they were ill. Today they send for a doctor. In the ages of faith battles were begun with supplications, and it was often possible to witness the ridiculous spectacle of both sides praying to the same God. Today every sane person knows that the victory goes to the wisest generals and largest battalions.

Nietzsche thus showed, first, that Christianity (and all other ethical systems having self-sacrifice as their basis) tended to oppose the law of natural selection and so made the race weaker; and secondly, that the majority of men, consciously or unconsciously, were aware of this, and so made no effort to be absolute Christians. If Christianity were to become universal, he said, and every man in the world were to follow Christ's precepts to the letter in all the relations of daily life, the race would die out in a generation. This being true - and it may be observed in passing that no one has ever successfully controverted it - there follows the converse: that the human race had best abandon the idea of self-sacrifice altogether and submit itself to the law of natural selection. If this is done, says Nietzsche, the result will be a race of supermen - of proud, strong dionysians - of men who will say ‘yes’ to the world and will be ideally capable of meeting the conditions under which life must exist on earth.

In his efforts to account for the origin of Christianity, Nietzsche was less happy. The faith of modern Europe, he said, was the result of a gigantic effort on the part of the ancient Jews to revenge themselves upon their masters. The Jews were helpless and inefficient and thus evolved a slave-morality. Naturally, as slaves, they hated their masters, while realizing, all the while, the unmanliness of the ideals they themselves had to hold to in order to survive.

Source: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche by Henry Louis Mencken Published 1908