Even atheists of today take their fire from a flame lit THOUSANDS of years ago. Philosophy, religion, science, they all arose from that divine spark of conscious awareness or “truth”.

That’s how I read it.

@Matias The first part is good enough for me

@IamNobody You can’t pick and choose phrases and take them out of context. By doing that you can justify many erroneous ideologies.

@Geoffrey51 I can and I've just did. God is dead anyway, you can cut it any way you like.

@IamNobody Yes, you did. And clearly missed the whole context. How can god be dead if it didn’t exist in the first place? Or are you being metaphorical like the philosophers?

@Geoffrey51 Metaphorical indeed

@Geoffrey51 Philosophers generally do better when they're not metaphorical, in my opinion. Being metaphorical in serious discussions or in constructing arguments causes confusion and misunderstanding frequently.

@MST3K I agree totally, but this is Nietzsche! Marvellous ranting and ravings with a few gems hidden inside. An engaging literary romp!!

@Geoffrey51 Which is perfectly fine! Life isn't much fun if we try to be logical and literal all the time

Quite right. TV and radio technology would have been proof of metaphysical and religious truth 500 years ago and also deemed heretical. The context is different but the cosmic law to make it happen was there, just not discovered. We don’t invent the laws we uncover them and adopt technology to that uncovering.

Evidence has to be interpreted with a model of some sort. How do propose to choose among all the alternative interpretations? Science proves nothing.

@Gmak possibly a bit extreme. Maybe science doesn’t prove everything as many of the laws we hold today will be superseded tomorrow but uncovering a bit more of the principle.

@Geoffrey51 Nope. Not extreme. Just the basics of the philosophy of science.

@Gmak I do agree with you as research results, depending upon the discipline, can be interpreted in different ways, depending on sample size, interventions, whether cross-sectional or longitudinal and the context in which meta-analysis is undertaken. Unfortunately there can also be reporting bias which is why peer review is important.

@TheAstroChuck I have never heard any philosopher or scientist claim that scientific theories could be proven! Where in the heck did you get your information????

@TheAstroChuck Evidence is interpreted by scientists, some of whom call their ideas theories and others who call them models. Read the literature much?

@TheAstroChuck

I think Thomas Kuhn would disagree with you about being able to prove a theory. Indeed, I think most science philosophers would! Granted, at times, the evidence is so overwhelming that we can accept that it's true, but that doesn't constitute proof. It's irksome when members of the public cite one piece of scientific literature as proof. There is little understanding among the public of consensus building! And when is consensus among scientists final? Don't we always develop new instruments and methods that can uncover new evidence that overturns the previous consensus? Kuhn would say so! Your ideas don't leave much wiggle room for folks like Einstein! You claim that I'm ignorant. But your remarks suggest to me that I'm not the one who is ignorant!

Which God is that , the one that sparked science, Christianity, philosophy? THAT god is truth. (The truth of existence revealed by conscious awareness)

It’s metaphor, not an argument for the existence of God.

The trouble with Nietzsche was that he was an obscurantist old windbag. And many of his pronouncements can be contradicted by his own words.

@chazwin thank you...so true

@Matias Are you having a laff?

@Matias No I just basically disagree with most of what he says. I think his legacy is highly significant to the history of 20thC philosophy, and I rate him one of the four most significant thinkers of the 19thC. I even included him in a sculpture. But he was a nasty little shit, and his text is endlessly repetitive and full of hot air, and unnecessarily flagrant, polemic and decoratively wordy.
Bandying about words like 'divine' is not the job of an atheist.

@Matias "Clarity" are you sure?? Two people on this thread have come away thinking He thought Plato a Christian. How clear is that exactly??

@chazwin Nietzsche takes the box we live in and punches holes in it to let some daylight in. If someone thinks that he thought Plato was a ‘christian’ then they miss the essence of what is being suggested. His writing challenges our thinking. It is not presenting you with a one stop shop philosophy. That is his gift; not what is said but what it challenges you to consider.

@Geoffrey51 Yes, but ambiguity is a constant factor here. This strategy makes sure that the audience is wider since interpretation is wider. Colourful language and flowery words might be an entertainment, but it can lack courage.

I think you are misreading it. Nietzsche is talking about that common fire that sparked the Christian faith as well as the philosophy of Plato., and it sparked science as well. He calls that fire divine truth.

I think of it as deep conscious awareness.

@WilliamFleming Perhaps I'm more literal.
Perhaps I just know vainglorious bullshit when I hear it.
I have NO use for most philosophy and philosophers.

@KKGator What about all those eminent physicists who have said similar things? Are all of them vainglorious bullshitters?

@WilliamFleming You can try to drag me into a debate about this, but I do not have to participate.
I see philosophy and physics as two different things. That's as far as I intend to take this "discussion". Everything doesn't have to become an argument.

You have misread the quote.
He knew far better than you when Plato lived. His PhD thesis was on Greek Philology.

@chazwin So what? You have missed the point as well. Philosophers aren't "better" or "smarter".

@KKGator Are you seriously trying to claim that Nietzsche thought Plato was a Christian. ROTFLMFHO The evidence at the moment suggests he was smarter than you.
Own it! You misinterpreted the quote! Get over it . Move on.

@KKGator Madam I have no desire to debate with you, my Georgia neighbor.

Have a very nice day.

@Ragamuffin With the scientific method, we trust it because it has been shown to work. In my opinion that's different from faith. An example of faith is believing that prayer works, even though you know it often fails. We believe in cause and effect because it works in a reliable and predictive manner, but if another explanation proves to work better that concept will be abandoned. That is antithetical to the nature of faith.

Yes, I think faith is the wring word. Trust, which is almost synonymous would be a better way to describe it. As Newton said, we need to stand on the shoulders of others to see further. That requires some trust in the findings of others, trust in our instruments, and trust in the methods of reason and discovery.
Trust can be take too far, and Newton was basically wrong about most things. The difference is that were we to have faith in Newton we would still believe the crap he wrote, But since we trust the method we have only remembered all the useful stuff he said, as we can use that.
Newton wrote a million words on theology, another million on alchemy and a similar amount on maths and science.

@Matias
That’s it!