Can an Ubermensch believe in God?

Question

Actually, can an Ubermensch serve anyone other than himself?
If belief in God constitutes using morals other than the ones you created yourself, does that mean Nietzche condemns Theists as inferior to Atheists?
*note, the only thing I've ever read by Nietzche is a tiny bit of Zarathustra, so if Nietzche has already said explicitly that all religious people are wrong, please don't use that as your sole reason.

Answer 1

Keep in mind that deciding for yourself involves not only freedom from slavery but also freedom from rebellion. A Nietzschian Ubermench does not do things simply because he is told, nor does he do things simply because he is told not to.

Thus he may chose to believe in a god or not. It is HIS decision.

Nietzsche is famous for saying "God is dead" but he also said this:

"Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest."

I think the best summary would be that Nietzsche encouraged people to BECOME gods instead of ENSLAVING themselves to one (this is essentially even what he says right after 'god is dead'). That's my take anyway. Peace.

Answer 2

Only in a God that can dance.

An ubermensche could believe in a God, but perhaps not a God of compulsion, commandments and eternal laws. That would suggest something permanent, that's always good and needs no improvement or change. Nothing could be more anathema to the ubermensche.

I also liked a previous answerer who said that the ubemensch is not enslaved by authority or rebellion.

Answer 3

"Ubermensch"- a superior man-a superior human being.

Can a superior human ever negate the possibility of some greater creature above him ? What parameter does the Ubermensch use to define a virtuous and superior man? Is it not what has been taught to us by religion and human philosophy? Are we afraid that the perfectionist concept of God is something we are unable to live upto so that we each are free to lay the limits of our virtuosity?

We are nowhere close to Ubermensch- we nailed men to crosses because they didnt think like we did-- time has passed but we still choose to crucify-- Christianity does to the rest of the World what Rome did to Europe--well if history is anything to learn from- Western Civilization seems to be approaching the stage of self combustion.

I would like to think of the Ubermensch as an evolving creature open to the challenge laid at his doorstep by creation.

Fly free do not wear the shackles laid at your door step by other seekers. What Neitzsche said holds true for Neitzsche alone! You may only use it to stimulate your own thought -Use it as a whip to stimulate the lazy mule that is the Human Mind but you may not limit your perception and enquiry.

Let us call God the undiscovered country and the Ubermench the eternal captain Kirk- ever sceptical, ever enquiring-but GROWING nonetheless.

Answer 4

I think the Ubermensch would only consider himself God.
But I can't ever really fully understand what Nietzsche was getting at.

Answer 5

You know what is interesting about the phrase "God is dead"? It was not a dig at Christians, it was a dig at Atheists. He criticized Atheists for replacing God with science, because science is A: cold and detached from human values and B: finite. In "The Gay Science", he asks what happens to a science based society when it discovered everything there is to discover about nature? He compares it to staring into the black maw of oblivion, knowing that the God that is science is dead. Such a society would, in his opinion, end in nihilism and suicide.

Nietzsche's most savage criticism of Christianity comes from "The Antichrist". His primary criticism of Christian morality is that it is based on the arbitrary whims of an invisible God. It commands people to follow God's commands, and threatens them with physical punishment if they are not obeyed. Perhaps this is why so many Christians can not imagine morality without God. If God were not in the picture, Christian Ethics would not possess any sort of validity, and over time the people would succumb to nihilism.

Nietzsche's attack on religion was more aimed at Christians themselves than the Christian religion. He calls the Abrahamic religions a slave religion, and credits the subversion of the master morality of the Roman culture by the Judaic slave culture as the reason that the Roman empire collapsed. The importation of Judaic slave values into Rome was Nietzsche's harshest criticism of Jews, but he was not an anti-semitic, to the point of calling off his long time friendship with Richard Wagner because of Wagner's virulent anti-semitism. Nietzsche would have been appalled at the way the Nazis treated the Jews.

Interestingly enough, Nietzsche professed great admiration for Jesus Christ, naming him as one of the few men in history who come close to Nietzsche's description of an Ubermensch. He cites other people, such as Julius Caesar, as persons who are pseudo-Ubermensch. Nietzsche called Man the transitionary animal between the apes and the Ubermensch, and that while no Ubermensch has yet been born (Nietzsche does not even consider himself an Ubermensch), various figures throughout history have come close.

Nietzschean metaphysics holds that reality is an infinitly repeating loop of realities. This is encapsulated by his famous maxim in the Gay Science: "Imagine if, in your darkest, lonliest hour, a demon came to you and said that you would be destined to relieve your reality over and over again throughout infinity?" An Ubermensch is one who does not panic, nor despair, but accepts this, and lives a virtuous life worth living over and over throughout infinity.

Nietzsche divided men into two types of moralities; slave moralists, and master moralists. There are those who prefer to be a slave, and those who prefer to be the Master. It may sound counter-intuitive to say that there are people who actually want to be a slave, but think about it: how many people are completely subservient to their bosses at work? How many manual laborers spend their entire lives doing what their foremen tell them to do? On the opposite end of the political spectrum, socialism makes every person subservient to the state, with state-owned and nationalized property. In Nietzsche's mind, Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism are all societies that cater to slave moralists.

Despite derisively calling Christianity a slave culture, he does not necessarily say that a Master morality is better or that a society of nothing but Master moralists is better. More fit to rule, yes, but certainly not objectively better. Nietzsche says that master moralists, dependent upon their slaves, become enslaved to their slaves. A good quote was in the movie Fight Club "The workers can run away, even drones can leave. The Queen is their slave". It is said that Nietzsche was planning to write a book against the master morality, but fell into insanity before he could emark.

An Ubermensch is someone who is neither a slave, nor a master. This was expounded upon in "Beyond Good and Evil". Master moralists divide the world into two things: Good and Bad. The good is the strong and virtuous, and the Bad is the weak and contemptible. Slave Moralists divide the world into Good and Evil. The good is that which increases utility, and evil is that which detracts from it. Utility can be anything from the whims of the Master, to the "common good" of the people (which was his rebuttal of democracy, that it is a political system which allows and encourages slaves to rule.)

An Ubermensch transcends the Master/Slave morality. He believes in good and bad (strong vs weak) and good and evil (utility vs destruction) at the same time and as being the same thing. The Ubermensch's ethics are predicated on the concept of living virtuously as an end in itself, not on the whims of a God capable of punishing disobedients (in many ways, Nietzsche's Ubermensch has more in common with the Aristotlean man of virtue than Hitler's Aryan Superman). Because an Ubermensch does good without needing the decrees of another (in this case, God) to do good, and because virtue is automatic to him, he does not need to be taught virtue in abstracts such as "good and evil", he is beyond such needs.

Answer 6

No. Their internal physiotransdermal plate makes this impossible. This was shown in a study by Argoemineshspheer and proved beyond a doubt by the sPaulinestuorgs three years later.