Did Nietzsche Get This One Right?

Nietzsche at thirty — A thirty-ish Friedrich Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, around 1875
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

The year 2020 has been a long slog, and few of us will be terribly sad to see it go. So I’m hoping that some will benefit from this:

“President Russell M. Nelson Shares a Message of Hope and Healing”

“Global faith leader Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, shares a simple way you can find hope and healing—no matter your circumstances. Next Friday, tune in at 11 a.m. MST to hear a special message for the world.”

He’s been reaching out, even under pandemic limitations:

“President Nelson reached out to fire victims in the Western United States. Here’s what he promised them”

And here’s a YouTube video featuring a young Latter-day Saint woman’s voice out of India:

“God Has a Plan For You”

“When her mother became ill, Renu Singh needed answers and began seeking truth and understanding from various churches in India. She was introduced to the Church and met missionaries who helped her learn about God’s plan of salvation. The hope and knowledge that came with her baptism helped prepare Renu for her mother’s death.”

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Nietzsche was in Engadin — Friedrich Nietzsche summered in Sils im Engadin, in southeastern Switzerland, in 1881 and between 1883 and 1888 (which is to say during the period in which he was writing “Der Antichrist”), and the house in which he lived – the “Nietzsche-Haus” – is now a small museum. Although I disagree with Nietzsche on most major issues, I’ve always enjoyed reading his work, and I’ve paid my respects to him at his Swiss summer home.

I've been there! — A landscape in Sils im Engadin, Switzerland

I’ve been re-reading a translation of a work by one of the most famous and outspoken atheists of modern times, and this is among the passages in it that caught my attention this time through:

When the centre of gravity of life is laid, not in life, but in a beyond — in nonentity, — life is utterly robbed of its balance. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in the instincts, everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point. . . . Why show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one’s origin and one’s forebears? Why collaborate with one’s fellows, and be confident? Why be concerned about the general weal or strive after it? (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist: A Criticism of Christianity [1888], translated by Anthony M. Ludovici [New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006], 47 [italics and punctuation in the original)

With that strong statement in mind, let’s see what’s new in our continuing and ever-bulging Christopher Hitchens “How Religion Poisons Everything” File:

“Latter-day Saints Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites, November 12, 2020 : Latter-day Saints serve their communities in Germany, French Polynesia, Bolivia, the United States and Tahiti.

Did Nietzsche get this one right?