Nietzsche's passionate atheism was the making of me [View all]

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Nietzsche's pious lack of faith led to my own conversion to Christianity

Giles Fraser
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 February 2012 15.10 EST



Bust of philosopher and atheist Friedrich Nietzsche. Photograph: Jens Meyer/Associated Press

The Big Ideas series has for several months now explored the meaning of a number of familiar intellectual phrases, among them Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message", Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" and Adam Smith's "invisible hand". But none of these feels quite as big an idea as Friedrich Nietzsche's "God is dead". After centuries of Christianity, a new dawn is being announced. And the language Nietzsche uses in his famous passage from The Gay Science reflects the enormity of his discovery: "How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?" Nothing again will ever be the same.

But what is his discovery? It isn't a eureka moment in which Nietzsche comes to understand that God does not exist. Indeed, he is not all that interested in the question of God's existence. The Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson recently told me that he would be an atheist even if God walked into the restaurant. Similarly for Nietzsche, it's not a question of evidence or the lack of it.

He is in a completely different place to the new atheist brigade of Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. If God walked into the room, Nietzsche would stab him – for his "God is dead" revelation is that humanity can only become free if it rejects the idea of the divine. Christianity is not a mistake. It is wickedness dressed up as virtue.

Nietzsche himself was raised in an overly pious religious household. And on the death of his father, who was the local pastor, Nietzsche was brought up to fill his father's shoes. In his first year away from home he wrote some nauseatingly sentimental Christian poetry and won the university preaching prize.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/05/passionate-atheism-me-christianity-nietzsche

Dr Giles Fraser is the former canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral. He resigned in October 2011 in protest at plans to forcibly remove Occupy protesters from its steps. He lectures on ethics and leadership for the army at the Defence Academy at Shrivenham