... If any one were to _show_ us this
Christian God, we'd be still less inclined to believe in him.--In a
formula: _deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio_.--Such a religion as
Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which
goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights at any point, must
be inevitably the deadly enemy of the "wisdom of this world," which is
to say, of _science_--and it will give the name of good to whatever
means serve to poison, calumniate and _cry down_ all intellectual
discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual
conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. "Faith," as
an imperative, vetoes science--_in praxi_, lying at any price.... Paul
_well knew_ that lying--that "faith"--was necessary; later on the church
borrowed the fact from Paul.--The God that Paul invented for himself, a
God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world" (especially
the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in
truth only an indication of Paul's resolute _determination_ to
accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of
God, _thora_--that is essentially Jewish. Paul _wants_ to dispose of the
"wisdom of this world": his enemies are the _good_ philologians and
physicians of the Alexandrine school--on them he makes his war. As a
matter of fact no man can be a _philologian_ or a physician without
being also _Antichrist_. That is to say, as a philologian a man sees
_behind_ the "holy books," and as a physician he sees _behind_ the
physiological degeneration of the typical Christian. The physician says
"incurable"; the philologian says "fraud."...

48.

--Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the
beginning of the Bible--of God's mortal terror of _science_?... No one,
in fact, has understood it. This priest-book _par excellence_ opens, as
is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: _he_ faces
only one great danger; _ergo_, "God" faces only one great danger.--

The old God, wholly "spirit," wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is
promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against
boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates
man--man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored.
God's pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises
knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God's fir