10. Why do this? Why can you not respect other people's opinions?
This is a very simple thing to explain - you cannot have a subjective opinion about reality. Reality is either one thing or the other. God can either exist or not exist. The existence of something is a matter of fact. It is not a thing like beauty. People may have any number of opinions on whether, say, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a great book or not. But it is not valid for them to have many opinions on the existence of the book. The book either exists or it does not, and only ONE of these two opinions is valid. In the case of the book the existence or otherwise of the book is arguably trivial (it isn't to me, because I happen to think that 'Alice in Wonderland' is a great book, but this is merely incidental). In the case of the existence of God no-one can refute that it is a very weighty and momentous question indeed.
A further point is that no opinion deserves respect purely on the basis that someone holds it. Many (in fact, from my own experience, most) people hold opinions which they have simply inherited from other sources and have not really examined for themselves. Such an uncriticised opinion is worthless, as is an opinion that does not stand up to scrutiny. Is it necessary to accept Adolf Hitler's opinion of the Jewish community solely on the basis that it is his opinion?
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
previous |
index |
next |
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives - who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worth of it? There has never been a greater deed - and whoever shall be born after us, for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
