A Secular Defense of Christianity
By JINMIN LEE ‘26
“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote this quote in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche formidably attacks Christianity on two important levels. First, he emphasizes the emergence of science and rejects the existence of an “objective theological Truth.” Then, he rebukes the Church’s dogmatic and incorrect removal of the Christian burden. Finally, in a “post-Christ world,” he suggests how people could still live meaningful lives in the absence of God through a concept he coined Ubermensch. Existentialist philosophers such as Camus, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Heidegger extended this Nietzschean argument by offering non-Ubermensch, post-Christ methods of finding fulfillment.
Nietzsche has three main burdens of proof. First, he must justify why radical skepticism must be applied to schools of thought outside of science. Second, he must justify that the church’s dogmatic claims are invalid. Third (and most importantly), he ought to prove how his counter-plan of Ubermensch and existentialism is better. The reason why the third part wields so much importance is that if the Nietzschean alternative world is inferior to the Christian world, the Christian world should be preferred and not considered “dead.” Following this three-pronged format, I argue that God isn’t dead because radical skepticism does not suffice in the realm of humanities, the church’s “dogmatic misinterpretation of Jesus” doesn’t apply to the Catholic Church, and the alternative world is significantly worse, and filled with nihilism.
For definitions, Catholicism represents Christianity because of its heritage, coherency, and authority. Any other branch of Christianity deviates away from the original narrative of Catholicism and thus doesn’t legitimately represent the pure teachings of Christianity. I also recognize that people often misrepresent Nietzsche’s ideas and will try my best to avoid removing nuance.
I - The Fall of Religion: Don’t Use the Scientific Method in the Humanities
Most people today would agree that Christianity initially had a strong teleological purpose (i.e. social utility): to help understand and lessen the world’s suffering. It offered the ideal solution: the struggles in life will pay off in heaven and eternal paradise. Carl Jung, one of the most influential psychologists and philosophers of all time, studied this phenomenon deeply. But after much contemplation, he argued that people soon realized that perhaps faith alone won’t prevent unhappiness. God wasn’t a vending machine: praying to God doesn’t immediately heal all illnesses, give instantaneous wealth, or give sudden physical strength. People concluded that science did a better job of freeing people from their suffering. A medication was akin to a vending machine; it almost instantly fixed your illnesses—at least much more directly than praying to God. Thus, science’s popularity rose exponentially.
In his book, Psychological Types, Jung explains how the Western world woke from a deep Christian dream as science and rationality became the new metric for evaluating anything’s validity. When they woke, people felt obliged to question everything as all previous beliefs were based on a Christian foundation. Skepticism was not new—Pyrrho, the most adamant and famous skeptic—having existed since 300 B.C. However, people thought that Pyrrho was crazy for his adamant adherence to questioning everything. Nonetheless, the rise of science adopted pre-existing skepticism and legitimized it. The scientific method exists directly through skepticism: there is no “objective” Truth in science, but rather proven hypotheses that haven’t been “disproven” yet. Science operates by never beginning with an objective claim, yet rather demands its scientific community to question other scientists’ claims through experimental practice.
Christianity’s teleological relevance crumbled after science gave birth to a culture of questioning. How can one prove God’s existence with the scientific method? By the very definition of science, which only observes the “testable” reality of the world, God was pushed outside of science’s scope. This is the first reason Nietzsche gives for the death of God. We, with our invention of science, have “killed” God.
God is indeed dead as long as we view it under this scientific, skeptical framework. However, radical skepticism is ultimately counter-productive in the field of philosophy. Instead, the framework in the humanities should evaluate what makes the most logical sense. Logic and reason are the backbone of philosophy, not empiric testing. It is impossible to scientifically “test” history, literature, or any other part of the humanities. I cannot scientifically test what Hemingway truly meant in his poems, cannot scientifically test grand ideologies like socialism, and, in the same way, cannot scientifically prove whether God exists. Instead, the humanities—literature, history, and philosophy—make arguments a priori, using logic. A priori means that we can make logical conclusions without the need for empirical evidence.
Some people argue that it’s a mix of both a priori and empirical evidence. For instance, communism may sound like a good idea a priori but may be quite different in real life. However, empirical testing only serves to verify whether a logical idea, derived a priori, makes sense. In simpler terms, I’m suggesting that as long as there is infallible logic, then there shouldn’t be a necessity to use empiricism to make conclusions about the world, even if empiricism may be a good mechanism to check whether the logic made sense in the first place. Using the communism example again, I would argue that communism failed because it had imperfect logic to begin with. For instance, most communists overlooked the central idea of human nature. This style of argumentation is starkly different from claiming that both a priori and empiricism are both necessary. Empiricism is important because we can validate our ideas more efficiently, but it is not necessary to discuss the nature of philosophy.
This method of using logic a priori is by definition contradictory to scientific skepticism because skepticism doesn’t accept anything a priori; Again, science demands scientists to use empiricism to prove hypotheses through trials and experiments. Skepticism is a broken filter in the humanities because almost nothing is testable. Even almighty God can’t survive this unnecessary filter. Skepticism is the wrong metric to judge the meaning of life and suffering.
I want to be distinctly clear that I am not arguing that all a priori arguments conclude that God exists. That is a conversation for another time. My burden of proof is to simply refute the idea that the scientific method should be used to evaluate God’s existence. If I can successfully reject the framework that God’s existence relies on scientific verification, that should be enough to invalidate the main criticism against God.
Nietzsche didn’t shout that God was dead with pride, arrogance, or triumph. He lamented God’s death because he saw the negative consequences of his downfall. I don’t think Nietzsche would have fully agreed that philosophy should be evaluated with the scientific method. Instead, he and Jung merely noticed society’s culture of questioning and claimed God could not exist in this new world of skepticism. Thus, the teleological use of Christianity might have diminished from the public mind, but it is important to understand that the criticism is invalid. Just because we can’t prove God’s existence with the scientific method doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist.
II - The Church’s Negligence of the Individual Christian Burden
Nietzsche believed the Church did Christ injustice. In his final book, The AntiChrist, he describes how he had nothing against Jesus himself as he believed Jesus was the ideal Christian. However, Nietzsche rejected the church’s representation of Jesus’s sacrifice. Christianity claims that Jesus sacrificed himself to bring forgiveness to everyone. Nietzsche criticized this idea because it removed the Christian burden from everyone’s lives: if everyone is already saved by believing in Jesus’s sacrifice, then why should Christians live an arduously difficult and pious life? Jesus had already forgiven humanity, so everyone was justified to do as they pleased without punishment, as long as they believed in God.
I do concede that many branches of Christianity, mainly Protestantism, preach the idea that there is only one burden for Christians: only believing Jesus died on the cross for our sins. However, this interpretation is a complete misrepresentation of God’s actual teachings. Catholicism, the main and legitimate form of Christianity, asserts the full necessity of individual Catholic burden. God judges humans with love but harshly. Humans can commit several mortal sins that would immediately send them to hell. In proper Catholicism, believing that Jesus has died for our sins is not a ticket to salvation. The only way to go to heaven is by living in God’s teachings and going to confession to confess mortal sins. In fact, by sending Jesus to humans, God has made it exponentially more difficult to find salvation. God has given an archetypal human example to emulate. It is by definition impossible for humans to become the archetypal perfect being. The concept of sin is falling below expectations: it is etymologically and literally “missing the mark” and ideal. Thus, all humans, who cannot be as perfect as Jesus Himself will live a life of sin that they must fight against with all their will. God has given humans a battle that humans are predisposed to lose. In a way, it is paradoxical; Jesus’s existence gives mankind the model to emulate but it is by definition impossible to emulate Him. It is nonetheless a necessary battle to become closer to God’s ideal. Therefore, Jesus’s life and death have significantly increased a Catholic’s burden.
I understand that Nietzsche’s criticism is mainly targeted at Protestant churches (ex. Methodists) that believe that believing in Jesus alone will bring anyone salvation. Indeed, he makes a fair objection. However, this criticism doesn’t apply to Catholicism, the main and only source of Christianity.
III - Illegitimate Solutions to Nihilism: Existentialism Doesn’t Prescribe an Alternative
God’s death creates nihilism, which states that there is no meaning or purpose in life. Since there is no higher power or paradise in the afterlife, people lose purpose. Nietzsche astutely claims that nihilism is existentially and societally dangerous. In his book The Will To Power, he says, “nihilism is… not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys.” This quotation demonstrates how nihilism brings awareness to the bareness and lack of meaning in life; instead, nihilism encourages one’s self-destruction and even the destruction of others. Even Tolstoy, one of the best existential writers, could not reconcile life with nihilism. He writes that people “do not have to live, yet they have lived and they do live, just as I myself had lived, even though I had known for a long time that life is meaningless and evil.” Tolstoy further explains that the bravest people in society would commit suicide because there is no hope in life.
Science unfortunately cannot cure nihilism. Science is not a solution to suffering either. Of course, it is impossible to deny the positive influences of science. Transportation, medication, and security have improved exponentially after the rise of science. However, science only sets a basic layer for a good life. A life free from disease does not solve the overbearing existential void of life. What is the point of living a healthy life if there is no intrinsic meaning to it? Science does not completely solve all bodily pains and suffering either. There is still an abundance of illness, death, and many other kinds of suffering. In a world where the thereafter doesn’t exist, what must people believe in to continue their lives in times of misery?
Nietzsche, understanding this threat to mankind, suggested a solution: ubermensch. Ubermensch literally means overman, or “superman.” Nietzsche believed that if people can create new, subjective, and powerful values in a meaningless world and stick to them, they will become the strongest versions of themselves: their ubermensch. However, Nietzsche critically failed to realize two errors in his prescription. First, people do not possess the ability to have such discipline to stick to their newly founded morals and values. Second, there’s no warrant for most subjective “morality.” In other words, why is the set of values one concocts legitimate? There’s no justification for self-curated ideals. There’s neither a divine punisher nor a divine lover who penalizes or cherishes these personal values. Nietzsche indirectly concedes this point when he admires Christianity’s ability to create discipline. For Catholics, their discipline to follow God and warrant to believe in Him are inextricably tied together; a Catholic finds discipline knowing there are fires of hell if he chooses to err and follows His morals because He bestowed those morals on him.
Other existential philosophers prescribe solutions with similar arguments: Albert Camus stated that believing in religion was Philosophical Suicide, a disingenuous way to create meaning in life. Camus encourages people to “rebel” in the face of meaninglessness and still live life to the fullest; he coins this absurdism. He suggests people find their own meaning in life. So does Kierkegaard, although he cites religion as a powerful way to find meaning in life. Existentialists all propose that a secular, subjective meaning to life must be strictly adhered to. However, the same critique I used on Nietzsche applies to all of these thinkers. Who can find an actual human being—with all his faults and errors—able to live life with absurdism? Can someone find a secular man—out of all existential philosophers—who knows what the meaning of life is?
Even Carl Jung agreed that it is impossible to set morality and values to follow religiously (full pun intended). Again, even on a purely practical level, you can’t force a thought to change into a belief. When you’re reading this, imagine there is a large pile of cash sitting behind you. Try forcing yourself to believe it. You can’t. Because you’ve created that concept in your mind and you know it’s not true. That’s what the existentialists want you to do. Make up some meaning and call it a day. It’s extremely fickle.
One might say: but doesn’t that argument of “making meaning up” apply to Catholicism too? But explaining why Catholicism isn’t man-made fiction is a longer story. The objective of this article is to lay out why Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity doesn’t topple Catholicism. But to briefly answer the question, there has never been a period in history when people have found such meaning in life, which is an indicator of the legitimacy of Catholicism. There is no other religion in history with a recorded, direct lineage back to its founding. There is no other religion in history with accurate and historical accounts of mysteries and miracles. There is no other religion in history that has such a coherent and credible story. But even on a practical level, society cannot function without Christianity, and Nietzsche would certainly agree too.