Thursday, October 20, 2011

Kierkegaard vs. Nietzsche

Question #2: Explain your understanding of the relationship between human values, morality, and God.
Human values origniate from one's own experiences and choices, but at the same time are greatly influenced by what society has established as good values for us to have. All humans share similar values for example, "people should all be treated with respect," "killing is wrong," and "equal rights for everyone." Human values influence our every day actions and determine if they are right or wrong.
Morality is defned as the conformity to the rules of what is considered right or just. Human values reflect a person's sense of right or wrong, in other words if the action is moral or not. Human values and morality are intertwined since morality influences what we consider good values or bad values to have. Now, the question is how does God influence human values and our decisions to act morally?
The values each one of us has at some or another has been influence by our faith in God. We base our values on moral law, which in turn is what God has set as rigth and wrong for us. Even though, some of us do not believe in God we all share values that thousands of years ago were established when God handed Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. We establish these values and make sure they follow moral law, in the belief that in the end God will award us and keep his promise to achieving salvation after we die. We want to make sure that we don everything right and act like good Christians to reach that stage after death. In the end, however, we all have our own distinct values because it is those that we live by and shape the kind of people we are, but those values always follow moral law; and if we act like morally just people God will reward with us with heaven.
Nietzsche states the morality hinders our ability to elevate our status as individual human beings, but if we didn't all follow a moral law how would the world be? It would filled with greedy people and the elite would completely control the masses. We can't ignore the fact that we all live by God's moral law so that in the end we have certainty of achieving heaven. Even if some of don't belive in heaven we follow society's moral law in hopes that where ever we end up after death will be a safe and joyful place.

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