Bird Of Prey Nietzsche On Religion Analysis

Once what it means to be a religiously moral person has been established, it is possible to explore what this means according to Nietzsche’s view of religion. He thinks that religion is dangerous to morality, and to those who practice it without considering very carefully what they are genuinely doing. Nietzsche goes so far as to say, “…it is clear from the whole nature of an essentially priestly aristocracy why antithetical valuations could in precisely this instance soon become dangerously deepened, sharpened, and internalized; and indeed they finally tore chasms between man…” (Nietzsche 119). The chasms referred to here are between man and a different version of man which is freer. Essentially, it is because these priests are jealous of

Nietzsche discusses what happens when religion and morals are conflated, and he is clearly displeased with the outcome of such an eventuality. One of the first metaphors Nietzsche uses to explain this is with the bird of prey and the lamb. The bird of prey is seen to be transgressing morality because the lamb is innocent and has done nothing to deserve death. However, the bird of prey must eat to survive- it eats the lamb because it likes eating lamb and because it is necessary (Nietzsche 133). But by religious standards, the bird of prey must be condemned for ruining such innocence and not fighting the necessity. The bird of prey, it can be said, is guilty of gluttony and murder. This is a very one-sided view of things, but it is the way in which religion prefers to view most moral situations. Religion has a tendency to view all questions of morality from a simple black and white perspective- either wrong or right. Here is the core problem with the conflation of religion with morals. The bird of prey was acting out of necessity, not out of immorality. Take religious perspective out of the equation and the bird is not to be condemned. Nothing in this situation is to be