Looking for an intelligent counterargument:?

Question

To ordinary men, finally, the great majority, who exist for service and general utility and who may exist only for that purpose, religion gives an invaluable contentment with their nature and station, manifold peace of heart, an ennobling of obedience, one piece of joy and sorrow more to share with their fellows, and some transfiguration of the whole everydayness, the whole lowliness, the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls. Religion and the religious significance of life sheds sunshine over these perpetual drudges and makes their own sight tolerable to them, it has the effect which an Epicurean philosophy usually has on sufferers of a higher rank, refreshing, refining, as it were making the most use of suffering, ultimately even sanctifying and justifying...

(continued) ...Perhaps nothing in Christianity and Buddhism is so venerable as their art of teaching even the lowliest to set themselves through piety in an apparently higher order of things and thus to preserve their contentment with the real order, within which they live hard enough lives—and necessarily have to! –Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

-He is saying that people are drudges

Read the first 3 words of the passage, please

Answer 1

I would say that contenting yourself to a miserable existence here b/c a better existence is waiting for you is illogical. I know the vast majority of the world is illogical, but isn't a garbage man going to still see that there are people who are much better off than he, but are also going to ahve a reward after death? And is it really "good" to believe in a myth just to make life more tolerable? I prefer uncomfortable truth to comfortable lies. Maybe that's just me.

Answer 2

That is the obvious.

What is not obvious though is the reason behind it's perpetuation.
Is it because of the weak man's failure to determine what works and what doesn't. Or does it, by some remote chance, really have a positive effect manifested both in the man and everything affecting his life. Is 2000 years not enough time to determine if one idea is valid or invalid? Does man need more time?

Answer 3

2 big reasons Christianity is NOT good for you:

1. It teaches that people are basically evil, that they need supernatural help to be saved, that life can have no meaning if Christianity is wrong, and that the vast majority of people who ever lived are destined for eternal hellfire. These are awful things to teach - utterly unproven things which can inspire self-hatred, hatred of non-Christians, lots of guilt, much unnecessary fear, and an unfortunate dependency on religious leaders.

2. It teaches that prayer, fasting, taking communion, and other such acts are good and proper responses to our problems and the problems of this world when what's really needed is for us to get off our butts, educate ourselves about the real nature and causes of those problems, and then do things which might actually help solve them.

Answer 4

Yea, well if you believe that you are just a perpetual drudge....go right ahead! I'm not sure which part we're supposed to make the argument against! He is saying that people are drudges and only religion can make them happy. Well for most people that is probably true....you know who you are!!

Answer 5

I am the Way the Truth and the Life. No man cometh to the Father except by Me- Jesus Christ.
Nietzsche has his sayings. Jesus has His. you are free to believe whom you will. Freddie can't save your soul from hell.
Jesus can. God bless.

Answer 6

Yup. That sums it up.
What was your questiion?
Human beings are natural and supernatural beings.
Therefore, because of our dual natures we aspire to be perfect while still being chained to this earthen vessel. Our hope has to be in the ONE who is perfect.I is fruitless to have our hope in our
limited selves.

Answer 7

I think the counter-argument is the rest of what he says about Christianity, about how it inverts morality and makes the strong weak and the weak strong.

Answer 8

Alright, thanks