My whole life I have felt there is a fascinating line between Nietzsche and Hume. Wow, that is profound, Marcus: “Some philosophers disagree.”

There are lots of opportunities to misunderstand this, but I’ll try to nail down one point: Nietzsche took the stupidity of christianity personally. Who wouldn’t? It’s smug, simplistic, badly wrought and argued, disorganized and dumb. For Nietzsche, who was legitimately a genius, it must have been intensely painful – like being a Formula-1 driver at the top of his game – challenged to play Mario Cart. He was emotionally excitably and the whole situation had to have left him gobsmacked, “really? I need to keep arguing these trivialities?”

The poor man was born in his time and it couldn’t be avoided. I think of poor Fred every time some internet atheist clutches their temples and wades into the same old fight, hoping at least the enemy won’t come over the hill in a huge charge waving the banners of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Like I said, Nietzsche was a genius – can you imagine how excruciating it had to be to shoot that old clunker out of the sky again?!

If you know the joke in which the punch line is where one guy says “44” and the dorky kid laughs and everyone stares at him before he sheepishly says, “what? I never heard that one before.” that’s as good as arguing religion in a christianity-dominated world gets. That is the tragedy of Fred: sure, he got to declare god dead but that whole move was made in the context of a civilization that even cared in the slightest about such a stupid question. Honestly? Fred’s home, waiting to embrace him, was political science – he didn’t trade in proof or hard argument. He didn’t make his foes stand up and present their pathetic lack of evidence, then shine a light on their shrivelled privates. Nope. He wasted his time on a strange exercise in which he tried to soothe christians’ loss of faith by a sort of existential dionysian ideal. At the time people had to take it seriously because his passion was truly something to behold, but, alas it was bullshit, and it popped his clutch.

I had heard Nietzsche spoken of as a great genius when I was in high school, and I was also interested in the degree to which his philosophy motivated the Third Reich (It didn’t. His sister released some stuff that was badly edited and knew where the money was) I got stuck into his writing and realized pretty quickly that  he wasn’t really even making an argument. Metaphorically, he had pulled a400cc golf club in the middle of the resort’s lunch cafe and started laying about him like Toshiro Mifune on meth. But the fact is that none of it mattered. “God is dead” was only interesting or carried any sting to a christian who took that gold club right in the face. Epicurus and Plato were over at the bar having a good oily pizza with olives and some house red, and they could not understand what the big deal was. Nietzsche had, bless his heart, mis-formulated the whole thing as “god is dead” instead of the empirical approach philosophy had been using since, oh, 600BC or so.

Nietzsche had been thrashing around and done some significant body-blows to aerial phantoms, when somone – in this case let’s imagine it was the man him himself – began dropping Humean empiricism on him. “Fred,” the big guy said, “I can see you’re upset but that upset your feeling – that’s your own inner state. God didn’t upset you, you did.” Fred’s eyes started to bulge, “No seriously,” said David, “the creation of inner states like ‘anger’ are ourside of my ability. I know you look pissed off but what happened is you’re listening to me, and the things I am saying are causing to you look at your own thoughts and get pissed off. I’m not calling you a sloppy thinker, I’m just saying you’re getting pissed off by someone’s sloppy thinking.” Over at the bar Epicurus topped off Socrates’ glass and they clinked the rims, listening without interrupting themselves.

It’s hard to read Nietsche and not fall into the rythym of his words, and they are – in the end – arranged so finely. “Ride! Ride to Ruin and the World’s Ending!!!” Rawrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!! Didn’t anyone mention to the Rorrhim that the battle was a repeat of Ceasar at Alesia, and an encirclement placing the army of Mordor between the walls of Gondor and a rapid highly skilled cavalry force. Genghis Khan would have ended that battle without a charge – it would have taken 3 more days and then a long period of head-removing. Sun Tzu would have ridden out and suggested discussing surrender.

I think I’ll stop here. Christian culture sees Nietzsche as the great destroyer but in fact Epicurus and Socrates shanked the christian god in the loo. If that wasn’t enough David Hume came over, examined the scene of the crime, and meticulously closed off the paths that did not have strong supporting evidence, and – since I made the mistake of going into metaphors – Hume put god in the trunk of a wrecked Ford, and let the car crusher take care of the rest of the debate.

I’m going to score:
Hume: 12
Nietzsche: 1

and that hurts me, too.