Christian concept of God--God as God of the sick, God as
cobweb-spinner, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of
God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low
water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to
the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and
its eternal _yea_! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to
the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world,"
for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will
to nothingness declared holy!

* * *

That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves
the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to
speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly
and decrepit product of _decadence_. There lies a curse upon them,
because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated
sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have
_created_ no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new
God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an
_ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the God-shaping force, of the _creator
spiritus_ in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This
hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in
which all _decadence_ instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul
have their sanction!

* * *

Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the
commencement of the Bible--the story of God's mortal terror of
_science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_
begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he
has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great
danger.--

The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection,
promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even
Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is
entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for
the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he
forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of God: man
did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not
even want to be an "animal"--God consequently created woman. And, in
fact, there wa