Good points Karl!

Ok, so those humans who came together in larger groups out competed the smaller groups, and we saw tribes become villages become cities become nations. Religions and morality do seem to be part of this unifying process, though probably not the only factor.

So we see that the Soviet Union, a larger nation, defeated Germany, a smaller nation. But, how did the Soviet Union become a larger nation? Through the application of the law of the jungle. Same thing with America. Same thing with the British Empire. All these larger powers were built through a sustained campaign of ruthless conquest. Today, the world's largest nation China is held together by the application of centralized systematic fear. The United States was held together in the 19th century by a horrific war imposed upon those who wished to leave the union. — Jake

Those are indisputable historical facts, but like I said earlier, we are developing from animal ignorance into human knowledge over time. Social morality as religion was invented, causing the 'transvaluation of values' Nietzsche identified - but misunderstood, and biological evolution trails behind intellectual and social evolution, and furthermore, that ingrained moral sense can be perverted by ideas, to justify both the good, i.e. society, and unimaginable evil with considerable equanimity.

Then, you have to consider the jurisdiction issue, and the fact that our religious morality is not their religious morality. Both are inward looking, self congratulatory, soft constraints, that justify us relative to them. We demonize them, because they are not us - and we're right, such that therefore, they must be wrong and undeserving of moral consideration. It's not wrong to kill them - even while it would be murder to kill one of us.

Maybe it wasn't morality which held the primitive societies together, but rather fear of neighboring societies? Maybe the alpha male problem was solved by killing off competing alpha males, just as has been the pattern in nature for a billion years? — Jake

But human beings are moral creatures. They must have been to raise children. The same in group / out group moral dynamics that applied to nations going to war with eachother, is the same hunter gatherer tribal morality played out on a much larger scale - in relation to ideas like religion, nation, and economic ideology. Inward looking moral systems that make us good, and them bad.

With regard to your other question, it doesn't scan. I don't doubt there was inter-tribal conflict - but the idea that society and civilization was achieved through murdering the men and taking the women of other tribes fails economically. Consider the burden it would create, to guard against enemies from within and without. We watch the borders and trust those at our backs - and that's how it had to occur, and did occur. If it hadn't, then why the 'transvaluation of values' Nietzsche identified - but misunderstood?

Hunter gatherer tribes joined together by adopting in common, God as an objective authority for social morality. That's the transvaluation, and the only way it works economically; that is, with regard to the resources they had, including human resources - to perform the roles necessary to a functioning and developing society. And because we know that all primitive civilizations developed art, architecture, jewelry, pottery, agriculture, clothing - all the same things, all the world over, but in culturally distinct ways, it's safe to assume God as objective authority for social morality is also a universal.

It seems to me the Nazis were pretty realistic about how the human realm and the natural world it arises from actually works. Perhaps they were unrealistic in not grasping the important role the illusion of morality plays? — Jake

I just think they didn't really understand Darwinism. We still use the idea of "survival of the fittest" today, but what Nietzsche and the Nazis thought that meant was brutal, selfish and violent behavior was natural - and therefore moral. That's wrong - and just couldn't have been the case - because hunter gatherers raised children, and because the economics doesn't work. Human beings are moral creatures - like chimpanzees groom eachother and share food within the tribe, and remember who reciprocates and who doesn't. There's a naturally occurring inward looking morality - that was built upon by agreeing a common idea of God, essentially, the alpha male, or Ubermensch in the sky - to whom both tribes agreed to bow, eventually forging a common identity, that as they grew, then came into conflict with other such religious, political and economic identities - and off we go again.

Back to Nietzsche, and the Nazis - essentially they killed the Ubermensch in the sky, and took divine authority unto themselves. But they didn't understand the implication from the Darwinian tree of life, that all organisms are related, that all human beings are members of the same species - and virtually identical in evolutionary terms. It's said that if the whole of evolutionary history were mapped onto your wingspan, human history would be a but shaving from a fingernail. The idea of racial differences is thus in truth, an idea that can only occur within a single frame, at 16 frames a second, from a movie that lasts all week. So to imagine that survival of the fittest implied total warfare and racial eugenics is factually wrong; an erroneous belief that perverted the naturally occurring moral sense to justify unimaginable evil.

Here - you may recall from the other thread, I would cite the significance of recognizing a scientific understanding of reality in common. But that's another argument, and I'm not going to hijack this thread merely to explain again - "how to save the world."

The Nazis wouldn't have been possible if hunter gatherers had not invented religion to overcome the aplha male problem, and join together to form societies and civilizations, Nietzsche and the Nazis did not understand this. Were it not for the "transvaluation of values" inherent to Judeo-Christian morality - we'd still be running around naked in the forest with sharp sticks.
— karl stone

I don't think I agree with this. We were long past running arround naked with sharp sticks when Judeo-christian morality came around. — ChatteringMonkey

Great point CM. It suggests you really understood the argument. Judeo Christian morality occurred quite a long time after hunter gatherers first discovered God as an objective authority, to allow them to overcome the alpha male problem and join together. The first religions were not Judeo Christian morality, but created a template for how civilization works. This template was applied and reapplied, reworked and re-developed over and over again. It's important to note that this says nothing about the existence of God, but it does tell us a great deal about religion's role as the foundation of societies and civilizations.

If hunter gatherers had not discovered God, and appointed him as an objective authority for social morality - such that, tribes could overcome their natural tribal hierarchies without slaughtering eachother, the civilization that gave rise to the Nazis could not have occurred, and we'd still be running around in the forest with sharp sticks. This seems absurd, but human evolutionary history is millions of years, and civilization is but a few thousand years. It could easily have been the case. Thus, the Nazis essentially sawed off the tree branch upon which they were perched.

It's awfully rude - and I mean no disrespect, but can I please direct your attention to my response to Jake above. I would have to reproduce everything I've just written to him, to answer the points you raise, and while it's an imposition upon you, I know - if you revise your questions and beat Jake to the punch, I'll do the same to him next time! Or not - but it does make sense on this occasion. I was fairly definitive in my response to Jake, and I have nothing more to say than I said there.

I'm sorry, I don't have time for a full response at the moment, so just this for now...

I just think they didn't really understand Darwinism. We still use the idea of "survival of the fittest" today, but what Nietzsche and the Nazis thought that meant was brutal, selfish and violent behavior was natural - and therefore moral. That's wrong - and just couldn't have been the case - because hunter gatherers raised children, and because the economics doesn't work. — karl stone

Well, brutal, selfish and violent behavior is normal. That's how nature works. And that's how most of the human world is ruled to this day, Russia and China come to mind.

The economics do work. We stole North America from native peoples with ruthless force, and now we are prospering from the stolen bounty, while native peoples typically live in poverty. If the economics of conquest don't work, why did the British Empire dominate the world for hundreds of years? Why did the Romans dominate for so long in their time?

If hunter gatherers had not discovered God, and appointed him as an objective authority for social morality - such that, tribes could overcome their natural tribal hierarchies without slaughtering eachother — karl stone

Really? Have you read any anthropology, zoology, ecology... basically anything on the subject ever? The natural world is absolutely abundant with cooperative behaviour and intra specific murder remains relatively rare. Are you suggesting that wolves have found God too?

If hunter gatherers had not discovered God, and appointed him as an objective authority for social morality - such that, tribes could overcome their natural tribal hierarchies without slaughtering eachother
— karl stone

Really? Have you read any anthropology, zoology, ecology... basically anything on the subject ever? The natural world is absolutely abundant with cooperative behaviour and intra specific murder remains relatively rare. Are you suggesting that wolves have found God too? — Isaac

Yes, I have read extensively. No, I don't think wolves have found God. Thank you for your post.

I'm sorry, I don't have time for a full response at the moment, so just this for now...

I just think they didn't really understand Darwinism. We still use the idea of "survival of the fittest" today, but what Nietzsche and the Nazis thought that meant was brutal, selfish and violent behavior was natural - and therefore moral. That's wrong - and just couldn't have been the case - because hunter gatherers raised children, and because the economics doesn't work.
— karl stone

Well, brutal, selfish and violent behavior is normal. That's how nature works. And that's how most of the human world is ruled to this day, Russia and China come to mind. The economics do work. We stole North America from native peoples with ruthless force, and now we are prospering from the stolen bounty, while native peoples typically live in poverty. If the economics of conquest don't work, why did the British Empire dominate the world for hundreds of years? Why did the Romans dominate for so long in their time? — Jake

Is it? I go outside, and I don't see that. I see millions of people getting through almost everyday without killing anyone, or even having a fight. If the episodes you describe were grounded in human nature - it's not universally evident. If however, those behaviors are grounded in beliefs, that justify us, while dehumanizing the other, it might explain why the Conquistadors, for example - were entirely civilized on one side of the Atlantic, yet somewhat less so on the other.

You miss the essence of Nietzsche, which was his discovery that truth, rather than being sovereign, is handmaiden of the will , and will is non-self aware, a product of perspective, which itself is arbitrary. Social life co-operation, caring for the young are possible for Nietzsche, not because of either an inherited gene for altruism or a divine inspiration, but out of pragmatic necessity. He was the first radical relativist. He understood Darwinism better than Darwin did.

The question I'm trying to get to is, how far beyond the laws of nature can human beings go?

It's simply indisputable that in nature the big fish eat the little fish. In human affairs as well we can see that the big people typically dominate the little people.

Judeo-Christian ethics attempts to establish another rule book in which the weak are protected by the strong. How far can this new paradigm be taken before it collides with long standing natural law which is beyond our ability to edit?

The Nazis are just an example of one group of people who concluded that Judeo-Christian ethics are an idealistic fantasy in conflict with the laws of nature. The Nazis just did what all the other great powers were doing, without the Christian and Marxist rationalizations layered on top.

We are the predator, and you the prey. No bullshit involved.

You miss the essence of Nietzsche, which was his discovery that truth, rather than being sovereign, is handmaiden of the will , and will is non-self aware, a product of perspective, which itself is arbitrary. Social life co-operation, caring for the young are possible for Nietzsche, not because of either an inherited gene for altruism or a divine inspiration, but out of pragmatic necessity. He was the first radical relativist. He understood Darwinism better than Darwin did. — Joshs

Please explain. What is the pragmatic necessity for an individual described as ubermensch in Nietzsche's philosophy, to spend the vast personal and economic resources to raise the young? Particularly in a state of nature it would seem entirely counter productive. One easily imagines the crying infant attracting predators, and hampering defense - as well as requiring food and many years of patient tutelage. What's the overriding pragmatic necessity?

If hunter gatherers had not discovered God, and appointed him as an objective authority for social morality - — karl stone

I´m not sure that hunter gatherers appointed any supernatural being as authority for morality. It is difficult to guess and impossible to settle what people in prehistory really thought and believed. However, from the Ancient literary sources that were based on long oral traditions, we can deduce that their gods were not moral. They were daemonic creatures: that is, the "spirit" or functional structure that Ancient people recognized in natural and social phenomena, with both positive and negative traits (from human point of view). For example, the daemonic traits of electricity are that it is awesome and more powerful than many other things, but very dangerous and deadly, just like Thor or Jupiter were. When Zeus, the daemonic symbol of lightning manifested himself at the request of misguided Semele, she was carbonized. From her body was rescued Dionisos, who carried the yang energy of his father Zeus but manifested it in more mortal-friendly ways (up to a point).

Zeus or Ra were sacred, but not moral. If you go to West African gods or Mesoamerican gods, you will notice that this amoral condition was even more obvious. There is no point in appeasing and sacrificing to moral and good gods; you make sacrifices to daemonic entities that are hungry and need to be tamed or kept satisfied.

We don´t have evidence of deities with moral atributions prior to the Axial age.

The question I'm trying to get to is, how far beyond the laws of nature can human beings go? — Jake

It depends on what you think the fundamental law of nature is. If you think it's "big fish eat little fish" - then you run into your problem, but it isn't. It doesn't explain very much at all. The fundamental law of nature is truth.

Consider the structure of DNA - a twisted ladder that splits down the middle, to attract matching chemical elements from the environment to replicate.

Now consider the fact that a bird build's a nest before it lays eggs, not because it knows and plans ahead - but because the behaviour is ingrained into the organism by the necessity of being correct to reality, (in this case a temporal dynamic), or be rendered extinct.

Now consider humankind, who reject a scientific understanding of reality in favour of religious, political and economic ideological conventions - in relation to the theoretical possibility, that we could accept science is true, apply technology on the basis of scientific merit, and overcome global scale threats - caused by acting on the basis of ideological conventions, and that currently appear intractable for ideological reasons.

Clearly, the fundamental law of nature is truth - physiological, behavioural and intellectual. The observation that "big fish eat little fish" is necessarily subsequent in the order condescendi, and unnecessary to a valid relation to reality.

It's simply indisputable that in nature the big fish eat the little fish. In human affairs as well we can see that the big people typically dominate the little people. Judeo-Christian ethics attempts to establish another rule book in which the weak are protected by the strong. How far can this new paradigm be taken before it collides with long standing natural law which is beyond our ability to edit? The Nazis are just an example of one group of people who concluded that Judeo-Christian ethics are an idealistic fantasy in conflict with the laws of nature. The Nazis just did what all the other great powers were doing, without the Christian and Marxist rationalizations layered on top. We are the predator, and you the prey. No bullshit involved. — Jake

I´m not sure that hunter gatherers appointed any supernatural being as authority for morality. It is difficult to guess and impossible to settle what people in prehistory really thought and believed. However, from the Ancient literary sources that were based on long oral traditions, we can deduce that their gods were not moral. They were daemonic creatures: that is, the "spirit" or functional structure that Ancient people recognized in natural and social phenomena, with both positive and negative traits (from human point of view). For example, the daemonic traits of electricity are that it is awesome and more powerful than many other things, but very dangerous and deadly, just like Thor or Jupiter were. When Zeus, the daemonic symbol of lightning manifested himself at the request of misguided Semele, she was carbonized. From her body was rescued Dionisos, who carried the yang energy of his father Zeus but manifested it in more mortal-friendly ways (up to a point).

Zeus or Ra were sacred, but not moral. If you go to West African gods or Mesoamerican gods, you will notice that this amoral condition was even more obvious. There is no point in appeasing and sacrificing to moral and good gods; you make sacrifices to daemonic entities that are hungry and need to be tamed or kept satisfied.

We don´t have evidence of deities with moral atributions prior to the Axial age. — DiegoT

Spoken like a true Judeo Christian farmer, but Gods of hunting and war were not demonic. Their "morality" fed and defended primitive societies. What's immoral about that? Let's not do theology here. I'm not trying to analyse the myth by adopting its dogma. Rather, given the fact of evolutionary development, it follows that such ideas occurred in the course of the evolutionary and intellectual development - from animal ignorance into human knowledge over time, and served useful social purposes. Or perhaps frivolous ones. After all - what's life without a little whimsy?

Now consider humankind, who reject a scientific understanding of reality in favour of religious, political and economic ideological conventions — karl stone

Gotta be honest here Karl, I'm growing weary of reading this in every post you share. Everything in all of time and space can not be shoehorned in to this pet theory of yours.

Gotta be honest here Karl, I'm growing weary of reading this in every post you share. Everything in all of time and space can not be shoehorned in to this pet theory of yours. — Jake

Then don't read it, or suffer weariness. My philosophy. Your choice. But my philosophy knocks Nietzsche's into a cocked hat.

Clearly, the fundamental law of nature is truth — karl stone

Thjs resounds with me, because it is in accordance with Greek philosophy and Egyptian philosophy (Maat)

Clearly, the fundamental law of nature is truth
— karl stone
Thjs resounds with me, because it is in accordance with Greek philosophy and Egyptian philosophy (Maat) — DiegoT

I'm delighted to hear that. My philosophy is also consistent with a sustainable future. I discussed it at some length with Jake in my thread 'How to Save the World' on this forum.

Spoken like a true Judeo Christian farmer, but Gods of hunting and war were not demonic. Their "morality" fed and defended primitive societies. What's immoral about that? — karl stone

No, I did not say demonic but daemonic, as in the Greek meaning as used by Greek philosophers. I did not use immoral either, but amoral. These deities were symbolic aprehensions of the laws of Nature, as they are manifested in socio-natural phenomena. The idea of moral and immoral or Good and Evil as "natural laws" with their corresponding deities on the contrary, is known from the late Iron Age onwards, the last centuries of the Age of Aries.

No, I did not say demonic but daemonic, as in the Greek meaning as used by Greek philosophers. I did not use immoral either, but amoral. These deities were symbolic apprehensions of the laws of Nature, as they are manifested in socio-natural phenomena. The idea of moral and immoral as "natural laws" is known from the late Iron Age onwards, the last centuries of the Age of Aries. — DiegoT

I must bow to your superior knowledge of Ancient myths. I assume only they served useful social purposes in the evolutionary development of humankind. It is perhaps for someone learned like yourself, to seek to understand what these purposes were.

My core philosophy addresses one main useful purpose - that of uniting hunter gatherer tribes. I sought to explain the 35,000 year gap between evidence of a truly human intellect, and the earliest civilizations. It was clearly very difficult for hunter gatherer tribes to join together, and adopting common religious symbolism - I argue, is how it eventually happened, and is consistent with the occurrence of religion as a foundation of civilizations, developed in isolation of eachother all the world over. It also explains the 'transvaluation of values' in other terms, and Galileo's arrest and imprisonment for heresy, and our mistaken relation to scientific truth, that prevents us from applying technologies we have available.

Contrasting and comparing with Nietzsche - with whom I have some familiarity, has caused me to go beyond my core arguments, and now you tempt me further beyond my knowledge base. I cannot follow.

Contrasting and comparing with Nietzsche - with whom I have some familiarity, has caused me to go beyond my core arguments, and now you tempt me further beyond my knowledge base. I cannot follow. — karl stone

I think your intuition about tribes needing new religious myths and deities might be right, but it is generally believed that this came as a result of these tribal people having to live and organize themselves within the walls of the first cities. Civilization is the process of developing the kind of culture needed to make cities work, and that implied an evolution of our divine pantheon in the direction of ever more abstract and less tribal deities. This said, the Göbekli Tepe ruins, that predate any other religious building by several millennia and were built way before the first small cities were erected, might change this theory and give your hypothesis a good chance. Who knows!

I think your intuition about tribes needing new religious myths and deities might be right, but it is generally believed that this came as a result of these tribal people having to live and organize themselves within the walls of the first cities. Civilization is the process of developing the kind of culture needed to make cities work, and that implied an evolution of our divine pantheon in the direction of ever more abstract and less tribal deities. This said, the Göbekli Tepe ruins, that predate any other religious building by several millennia and were built way before the first small cities were erected, might change this theory and give your hypothesis a good chance. Who knows! — DiegoT

I'd push that back a lot further - to explain how hunter gatherer tribes joined together. It's not merely an intuition, but an informed guess at an event lost in the mists. It occurs to me that the idea of God must have had a first occurrence. So, really - we are asking when that idea first occurred, and what the consequences were. I'd like to place it right at the dawn of a truly human intellect, but that seems a bit ambitious - even for God. At some point though - it seems likely to me, that some primitive human being - making a stone hand axe, wondered who made him, and who made the world? How long that occurred before hunter gatherer tribes joined together to form societies and civilizations - is open to conjecture, but I cannot imagine cities occurred first, and religion came after.

My informed guess is based on study of chimpanzee social hierarchy and 'morality' - not an explicit moral code, but an ingrained sense, promoted by the reciprocal sharing of food, grooming, and defense of the troop. The troop is naturally ruled by an alpha male and his lieutenants, a dynamic that projected onto human tribal arrangements suggests it would be very difficult for two such tribes to join together. Any dispute over food or mating opportunities leads to the division of the multi-tribal, fledgling society. Only by outsourcing moral authority to God, could the two smaller hierarchical triangles exist within the larger hierarchical triangle of a multi-tribal society - where all were subject to laws attributed to the authority of God. This then might suggest that pyramids are representations of society - and go some way to explaining why both Egyptians and Aztecs (?) built them. Pyramids both represented society, and demonstrated the awesome power of social cooperation.

Because social cooperation was necessary to build in this manner, and given the nature of naturally occurring tribal hierarchy, it seems impossible to me that cities came first and religion afterward, and impossible that multi-tribal society could have occurred without knowledge of God. Then you can relate all this back to Nietzsche and the transvaluation of values, God is dead, the ubermensch, and the Nazis sawing off the tree branch on which they unwittingly perched.

I sought to explain the 35,000 year gap between evidence of a truly human intellect, and the earliest civilizations. It was clearly very difficult for hunter gatherer tribes to join together, and adopting common religious symbolism - I argue, is how it eventually happened — karl stone

How the coming together happened is that the smaller tribes were vulnerable, so they joined bigger tribes to be safer.

How the coming together happened is that the smaller tribes were vulnerable, so they joined bigger tribes to be safer. — Jake

Decent conjecture, but if so, why didn't civilization happen earlier, given that evidence of a truly human intellect - as evidenced in cave art, burial of the dead, improved tools, jewelry - can be found in a 'creative explosion' dated to about 50,000 years ago? (according to Phieffer) But civilization only occurs from 15-20,000 years ago at most. That gap requires explanation - and bunching together for safety doesn't suffice.

The troop is naturally ruled by an alpha male and his lieutenants, a dynamic that projected onto human tribal arrangements suggests it would be very difficult for two such tribes to join together. — karl stone

The small tribes were either absorbed by the larger tribes, or annihilated by the larger tribes.

Please look at the history of North America, a well documented historical event not lost in the mists of time. The larger more powerful tribe of Europeans annihilated the less numerous and less powerful native peoples, and then absorbed the few natives that remained once the invasion was complete. The native Americans did much the same thing among themselves before the Europeans arrived. The big fish ate the little fish.

The question I'm hoping might be addressed is...

Can any human invented philosophy which conflicts too much with the laws of nature survive?

Before Karl argues too much, please note you've made essentially this same point all over the forum.

The small tribes were either absorbed by the larger tribes, or annihilated by the larger tribes.

Please look at the history of North America, a well documented historical event not lost in the mists of time. The larger more powerful tribe of Europeans annihilated the less numerous and less powerful native peoples, and then absorbed the few natives that remained once the invasion was complete. The native Americans did much the same thing among themselves before the Europeans arrived. The big fish ate the little fish.

(see above)
— Jake

The question I'm hoping might be addressed is...

Can any human invented philosophy which conflicts too much with the laws of nature survive?

Before Karl argues too much, please note you've made essentially this same point all over the forum. — Jake

Given that I've argued above that the fundamental law of nature is truth, and that we need to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common as a basis to address global scale threats like climate change, no!

However, at the same time - we are who we are, and have to 'get there' from here. This is where the principle of 'existential necessity' is such a vitally important limit upon, and justification of, science as truth. We need to accept that science is true, but limit the implications to matters of existential necessity.

Why do we identify with and care for children if there is not evolutionariliy adapted brain module or predisposition for it? Nietzsche calls into question the "opposition" between egoism and altruism, the view that a selfish agent cannot act altruistically.
For isntance, caring for something smaller and weaker doesn't threaten us, thereby allowing us to validate our own competence an worth. Isnt this what the unconditional and utterly dependent love of a child for the parent accomplish? The fufllment of selfish needs presupposes and requires social life, not just in terms of pragmatic survival, but for emotional fulfillment. Doubtless, ther are parents with no particular love for their children, in which case those children are either dicarded or kept as financial investments until they are old enough to help maintain a farm or other family business. Larger families were crucial to economic survival in previous eras.

Because social cooperation was necessary to build in this manner, and given the nature of naturally occurring tribal hierarchy, it seems impossible to me that cities came first and religion afterward, and impossible that multi-tribal society could have occurred without knowledge of God. Then you can relate all this back to Nietzsche and the transvaluation of values, God is dead, the ubermensch, and the Nazis sawing off the tree branch on which they unwittingly perched. — karl stone

Bear in mind please that the modern ideas of God are recent, and we can not assume at all that they were equivalent to what people believed tens of thousands years ago. The concepts of divinity have changed over time as human social phenomena changed; it is true as you say that Heaven is in correspondence with social hierarchies, and helps to legitimate these structures. But the God that Nietzsche declared dead was his society´s traditional God; when people become atheist, they are atheist of the god of their parents, and assume that all of the other gods are false or are different images of the god of their parents.

Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, who was a Spanish general born in Colombia, answered in this way when asked if had considered becoming a Protestant: “No creo en la religión católica, que es la verdadera, menos voy a creer en las musarañas de los protestantes” (If I don´t believe in the Catholic religion, that is the true one, how could I believe in the Protestant nonsense?).

Nietzsche was a sort of prophet, and followed the tradition of Zoroaster, Buddha, Majavira or Paul, that is, to become atheist to the God or gods you are brough into; a sort of Freudian "Primordial Murder" necessary to contribute your own personal aprehension of celestial matters. However, this enlightenment is not so original, but a mere product of what some sensitive members of our species do with the zeitgeist of their time. Nietzsche lived in a time where his ideas were in the air, he was just more receptive to them than the common folk.

" But the God that Nietzsche declared dead was his society´s traditional God; when people become atheist, they are atheist of the god of their parents, and assume that all of the other gods are false or are different images of the god of their parents."

Nietzsche slayed a lot of Gods, not just the God of Augustine or even Descarte's pineal-gland mediated trancdendendency. He demolished a whole platoon of atheistic Gods. He also slayed Sartre's atheitistic Cartesian consciousness, and the metaphysical logic of cause-effect that the natural sciences depend on. He slayed the teleological undeprinings of Marxist atheistic dialectical materialism, and the bliss of nothingness in zen mindfullness . He dismantled the scientistic worship of scientific method among prominent media atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Dan Dennett.

Why do we identify with and care for children if there is not evolutionariliy adapted brain module or predisposition for it? Nietzsche calls into question the "opposition" between egoism and altruism, the view that a selfish agent cannot act altruistically. For instance, caring for something smaller and weaker doesn't threaten us, thereby allowing us to validate our own competence an worth. Isnt this what the unconditional and utterly dependent love of a child for the parent accomplish? — Joshs

Social life co-operation, caring for the young are possible for Nietzsche, not because of either an inherited gene for altruism or a divine inspiration, but out of pragmatic necessity. — Joshs

The goalposts keep moving look. Before it was pragmatic necessity, now it's selfish agents can act altruistically. Neitzsche's arguments are very difficult to read - it's quite possible he said both, in which case I would urge you to take the matter up with him, only "Nietzsche is dead" (God.)

Pragmatic necessity, in the sense it is used by American pragmatist philosophers like Dewey and James, is a contingent necessity rather than a metaphysical necessity grounded in the notion of truth that you understand, based on my reading of your previous posts. You seem to embrace a correspondence theory of truth, depicting a subject constructing conceptual representations from perceptual contact with an independently existing world(Truth as Mirror of Nature). Thus, you see dna as fitting its environment. What you miss is the recent turn in evolutionary biology toward an enactive, self-organizing model of the relationship between organism and environment, in which adaptations of organism to world modify that world, and thus there is a circle of mutual transformation between organism and world such that it becomes incoherent to talk about a one-way corresponding between subject and 'what is out there'.
Nietzsche, like Dewy and James see aims and goals as relative to contingent worlds that we bring into being and which change via our interactions with it. Altruistic agents act altruisticlly becasue that altruism is motivated by a selfish need that simultaneously benefits the self and the other, but in different ways. This is also the basis of cooperation.

Bear in mind please that the modern ideas of God are recent, and we can not assume at all that they were equivalent to what people believed tens of thousands years ago. The concepts of divinity have changed over time as human social phenomena changed; it is true as you say that Heaven is in correspondence with social hierarchies, and helps to legitimate these structures. But the God that Nietzsche declared dead was his society´s God; when people become atheist, they are atheist of the god of their parents, and assume that all of the other gods are false or are different images of the god of his parents. — DiegoT

Imagine if, instead of arrest and trial for heresy - the Church of Rome had welcomed Galileo as discovering the means to decode the word of God as made manifest in Creation, and thereafter - scientific knowledge were pursued as a sacred trust and integrated into religion, politics and economics - such that our politics bridged the divide between Hume's ought and is. The role of politicians would simply be to know what's true, and do what's right in terms of what's true. Had that occurred, Nietzsche's philosophical campaign against Judeo-Christian morality would not have occurred.

To my mind, science has nothing to say on the existence of God. It remains a mystery even while the earth most certainly does orbit the sun in contradiction of religious orthodoxy. This is consistent with the development of knowledge over time, from less to more, and worse to better - and would not imply, religious political and economic ideologies unable to recognize climate change as a fact, nor apply technologies we have available to combat it.

Clearly, therefore Nietzsche was as wrong as is Richard Dawkins to conflate religion and God. They are not the same thing. I don't know if God exists or not, but I do know the Bible says the earth is fixed in the heavens and it isn't. It's actually spiralling through space.