“Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who prized Nietzsche as having “more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live,” bemoaned the reduction of the infant mortality rate brought about by technical progress of medicine because it “works against the beneficial effects of natural selection.”[ 15.10] For this reason, Christianity promoted “what Nietzsche called a ‘slave morality’ that legislates dulling norms of rectitude, thereby fostering herd like quiescence and stigmatizing the ‘highest human types.’”[ 15.11] Rather than Christian virtues, such as pity, compassion, and kindness being helpful, they are detrimental to the all-important evolutionary process. Christians believe in the dignity of man because man is made in the image of God. Man is not an animal, thus human life is sacred and in need of protection. This includes infants in the mother’s womb and the elderly who need constant care. In Christianity, the strong should protect the weak. But, according to Nietzsche, these Christian virtues topple the mighty and rebel against nature’s law.[ 15.12] In this evolutionary program, social progress requires the strong to willfully, actively, and forcefully choose to obtain more power, and the only way to do so is to remove the weak and mentally impotent. In the same way a farmer seeks to weed out his feeble cattle by breeding the stronger cattle, society ought to weed out those individuals who are deformed and incompetent.[ 15.13] Nietzsche claimed that marriage was made for this purpose, “Thou shalt not only propagate thyself, but propagate thyself upward!”[ 15.14] He also felt war was a useful means to this end. This might sound contradictory to the enhancement of society, yet Nietzsche claimed that war should be encouraged. “You say that a good cause justifies war? . . . I say unto you: it is a good war that justifies any cause.”[ 15.15] Superiority is established the same way apes show their dominance by fighting their opponents. War is natural. War is good. In the twisted words of this twisted man: What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and power itself in man. What is bad?–All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?–The feeling that power is increasing, that resistance has been overcome. Not, contentment, but more power: not peace, but war, not virtue, but efficiency. The weak and the botched shall perish; first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish.[ 15.16] Of course, this line of thinking was agreeable to Adolf Hitler who said: “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.”[ 15.17] We must fight. If society is ever going to obtain more “power,” it must first “will” it. We must choose power over submission and pity. Nietzsche believed the desire for power was imbedded within all men by nature. Evolution has instilled this appetite in us all. All men are self-seeking; to deny this, is to deny reality. On the other hand, to restrain this natural craving is detrimental to the self and to the collective. Nietzsche asserted, “What is most unforgivable in you is having the power to rule and not wishing to.” To “will to power” is only natural.[ 15.18]”
— The Absurdity of Unbelief: A Worldview Apologetic of the Christian Faith by Jeffrey D. Johnson
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