Nietzsche's objection to Christianity is that it caused acceptance of what he calls "slave morality."
It is curious to observe the contrast between his arguments and those of the French philosophes
who preceded the Revolution. They argued that Christian dogmas are untrue; that Christianity
teaches submission to what is deemed to be the will of God, whereas self-respecting human
beings should not bow before any higher Power; and that the Christian Churches have become the
allies of tyrants, and are helping the enemies of democracy to deny liberty and continue to grind
the faces of the poor. Nietzsche is not interested in the metaphysical truth of either Christianity or
any other religion; being convinced that no religion is really true, he judges all religions entirely
by their social effects. He agrees with the philosophes in objecting to submission to the supposed
will of God, but he would substitute for it the will of earthly "artist-tyrants." Submission is right,
except for these supermen, but not submission to the Christian God. As for the Christian
Churches' being allies of tyrants and enemies of democracy, that, he says, is the very reverse of the
truth. The French Revolution and Socialism are, according to him, essentially identical in spirit
with Christianity; to all alike he is opposed, and for the same reason: that he will not treat all men
as equal in any respect whatever.
Buddhism and Christianity, he says, are both "nihilistic" religions, in the sense that they deny any
ultimate difference of value between one man and another, but Buddhism is much the less
objectionable of the two. Christianity is degenerative, full of decaying and excremental elements;
its driving force is the revolt of the bungled and botched. This revolt was begun by the Jews, and
brought into Christianity by "holy epileptics" like Saint Paul, who had no honesty. "The New
Testament is the gospel of a completely ignoble species of man." Christianity is the most fatal and
seductive lie that ever existed. No man of note has ever resembled the Christian ideal; consider for
instance the heroes of Plutarch's Lives. Christianity is to be condemned for denying the value of
"pride, pathos of distance, great responsibility, exuberant spirits, splendid animalism, the instincts
of war and of conquest, the deification of passion, revenge, anger, voluptuousness, adventure,
knowledge." All these things are good, and all are said by Christianity to be bad--so Nietzsche
contends.
Christianity, he argues, aims at taming the heart in man, but this is a mistake. A wild beast has a
certain splendour, which it loses when