General Discussion
About the Event
Meeting 4
Meeting Minutes for August 14, 1997; #4.
West Michigan Skeptics Rob & Kim Adamczyk, Howard Foster, Don & Vicki Hansen, Charley Moore, Jeff Seaver.
Jeff told about teaching a Sunday School class in a conservative church on the beliefs of Friedrich Nietzsche. Who was Nietzsche? Quoting from A History of Western Philosophy, W. T. Jones, Pomona College, Nietzsche was born in 1844 and brought up by a pious mother and other female relatives. Educated in Leipzig; was rejected from serving in the Franco-Prussian War, to his great disappointment, because of being physically unfit, but he did serve as a hospital orderly. In 1879 he had to resign his professorship because of ill health. In 1889 he suffered a stroke, which was followed by a complete mental breakdown. He died in 1900.
He felt one’s survival can be accomplished by the destruction of others; in which cunning, cruelty, and muscles alone count; in which there is no end, no purpose, no plan, no God. He looked forward to a new generation of supermen’ who would be strong enough to say “Yes” to life and so free themselves from all the petty moral restraints which this weak and effete modern culture has used to fence in the strong. He felt that belief in a truth was unimportant; what is important is whether the belief furthers life (say “Yes” to it) or hinders it. This was the trouble, Nietzsche held, with the whole Christian-Hellenic culture – it was false because in its asceticism, its repudiation of feeling and appetites, and in it attempt to set up eternal rational ideals it said “No” to life.
The interesting thing, historically speaking, about his view is the way in which there did emerge a race of Nietzschean supermen who behaved in much the way he recommended. Emerging from the despair which Nietzsche reflected was Hitler’s SS men who coldbloodedly and efficiently enslaved the inferior populations of Europe, The consistent Nietzschean is not a philosopher. This suggests that, with Nietzscheism, unlike other philosophies, it is not so much a question of whether it is a good or a bad philosophy. That it is a bad philosophy, seems clear. But it is something much more unusual and much more alarming. It is the death of philosophy – the death of that life of the mind which we have asserted philosophy to be.
Well, when the church found out what Jeff was teaching, he narrowly avoided the rack by changing his identity, his address, his appearance, and is now living in semi-seclusion in Allendale!!
Also discussed was a poll conducted by Skeptics magazine which showed that most people believe there is a God; that a place like heaven does exist; that prayers are answered; that the world will eventually come to an end; that Christ will come a second time. It may be possible there will also be the revival of the Detroit Tigers.
Additional discussion centered on evolution. In the early stages of a human embryo there is evidence of a gill and a tail, which points to our origin from the fishes. Jeff told about a chimpanzee who was successfully taught sign language. Only a 3% difference exists between the make-up of a human and that of a chimp. Because of the interest in evolution, the group decided to make that a major topic of discussion at the next meeting, which be on 8-28-97.
Jeff recommend five books: * Full House – Stephen Jay Gould * Cosmos – Carl Sagan * Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea – Daniel Dennett * Seven Mysteries of Life – Guy Murchie
