How the Philosophers Invented “God”

A second idiosyncrasy of philosophers confuses the last with the first.

The rationalist philosophers begin with the “highest” concepts, when they would be at the end if they could be reached at all. The good. The true. The perfect.

Since being is static for these philosophers, the “highest” concepts could not have emerged from the “lower” ones.

Because they cannot come to be, they must be treated as causes in themselves.

Since these “highest” concepts must conform perfectly with one another, they are all located in a single being, the “most real being,” “God.”

The human race has paid dearly for this web-spinning by the philosophers.

Nietzsche

Curt Stoeving painting of Fiedrich Nietzsche 1894