Nietzsche’s Battle with Belief, Science, and the Search for Truth

The will to believe is a basic human need before anyone can fully embrace life, according to Friedrich Nietzsche and his take on God’s nihilism. It is about how much control people have when trying to measure life’s worth. Nietzsche saw the will to believe as the centerpiece of the entire value system, but positivism came along and “killed God” with its focus on technicalities. For him, the historical shadow of God is just a new trap—another belief system in disguise.

Science stepped in as the new authority, a manifesto of its own. However, even with its rise, positivism has not indeed escaped God—it just rebranded Him for the Enlightenment era. Positivists claim they have killed God and abandoned metaphysics, yet humanity’s fears, doubts, and dilemmas still echo loudly. The big question remains: If God is dead, why can’t the chaos in the world be controlled?

If He is silent, which God are we even talking about? Islam’s God? Christianity’s? Buddhism, Hinduism, or something else entirely? Moreover, if God is just a concept, why do some professors and philosophers still act fanatically? Nietzsche believed that if we are going to deal with the “death of God,” it needs to be handled with care. He challenged people to look at their relationship with God differently, reflecting through his philosophy of atheism.

No matter where someone stands religiously, Nietzsche tackled the “smallness” of God (or God’s perceived importance) and pushed nihilism into a central position. He reshaped these ideas and set them on a pedestal.

Understanding Nietzsche is not easy, however. His aphoristic style—short, sharp sentences—makes us stop and think. Breaking down his ideas requires reworking them into a single, more straightforward concept. Eventually, his thoughts laid the groundwork for postmodernism, which unraveled traditional philosophy. Science, while undeniably successful in advancing human life, has also narrowed how we see the world, humanity, and even religion. In doing so, it presents its own radical challenges.

Friedrich Nietzsche remains one of the most influential philosophers, especially for postmodern thinkers like Derrida and Foucault. Born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken, Germany, Nietzsche grew up with a strict Lutheran pastor as a father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, who passed away when Friedrich was only five. His mother, Franziska Oehler, took care of him afterward.

At 14, Nietzsche earned a scholarship to study at the Gymnasium in Pforta. By 20, he began studying theology and philology at the University of Bonn but soon transferred to the University of Leipzig, following his philology professor Friedrich Ritschl. During this time, he discovered Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, which inspired his shift from philology to philosophy.

Nietzsche’s life was full of twists and turns, from illness to a solitary existence. He died in 1900 and was buried in his family’s grave in Röcken, Germany. Besides being a philosopher, Nietzsche expressed his philosophical ideas through literature. It is not surprising that he had a dual life as both a writer and a philosopher. His life was long, but it leaves us with many questions.

Nietzsche was ahead of his time. His style was unique, and thinkers were eager to understand the core of his ideas. His claim that “God is dead” caused a huge stir, challenging dogmas and absolute truths and making him a controversial figure for many thinkers and society at large.

Before philosophy emerged, humans always tried to find certainty within themselves to cope with the pain of reality. Pain, in this sense, is a response to the problems individuals face when dealing with life’s realities. More fundamentally, the weakness of individual will in the face of uncertainty helped shape the concept of the will, drawing from Schopenhauer’s thoughts. In fact, the essence of humanity is so vast that words can hardly capture the complete unity of all the elements that make us who we are.

Humans are made up of organic, psychological, rational, and epistemic elements that form a complete subjectivity. The need for certainty pushes people to seek something they can hold onto when facing reality. It also connects people to traditional metaphysics, like myths, mystical beliefs, superstitions, and religion. Humans cannot escape the search for speculative but naïve answers, driven by the need for certainty rather than a constant pursuit of knowledge.

This search for certainty is a key part of culture and traditional thinking, which were deeply involved in the philosophers’ struggles during the Enlightenment era. Metaphysics became a dogma rooted in human naïveté in the context of building a philosophical system.

The Enlightenment, which emerged around the 18th century, led humans to look for certainty in science to break free from the old constraints. One of the most monumental moments was the Copernican Revolution, which challenged the Catholic Church’s theological authority. Thinkers of that time saw religion and metaphysics as an immature mistake, believing that all forms of belief were irrational and holding back human progress.

Auguste Comte, an Enlightenment thinker, was optimistic about the progress of history and science. He argued that humans had historically sought causes for things outside of themselves, in divine powers. However, according to Comte, the end of times was not caused arbitrarily by humans but was shaped by rational analysis and abstract concepts, which acted as mediators and deterrents. For Comte, science and the laws of positivism revealed the exact mechanisms of the universe.

However, now, humans no longer seek answers outside of themselves. Instead, they believe in what lies within.

Why are humans willing to die to defend a truth they believe in? The name “God” is often used as the most terrifying excuse for war. Every person holds something valuable within themselves, something they are ready to sacrifice for. For the sake of this precious thing, they are willing to lose their lives to defend it. It applies not only to religion but also to ideology, politics, belief, and science, even when there are arguments backing them up.

Desperation always pushes people toward truth. Humans tend to seek out and try to grasp both reality and their own identity. They want truth, mystery, and a veil over themselves. This desperate desire to know is entirely human. However, for Nietzsche, this drive is deadly. According to him, the will to truth is a form of uniformity that aligns with God’s nihilism, as it risks erasing diversity.

Impoverishing reality by looking at it from just one perspective creates chaos, preventing humans from truly understanding reality. Nietzsche argues that truth is constantly in motion and that war is at the core of reality. If truth were to stop at one point, humans would be betraying the objective reality of movement. War, for Nietzsche, is not just about fighting and bleeding; it is about existential clashes. Reality is never silent or stagnant; it is always in motion—between itself and the environment, concepts, or matters.

The need to believe leads to an understanding that arguments about beliefs are often pointless. Nietzsche calls this situation “perspective hypertrophy,” or the swelling of perspective in line with God’s nihilism. From a narrow point of view, there are no new interpretive forces—everything becomes silent or static. In the modern age, the mirror-thinking model marks progress in science and technology, assuming that such progress leads to Enlightenment and a unified understanding of reality.

From this perspective, things are seen as one, absolute, and immovable. Jacques Derrida calls Western culture’s focus on logos “logocentrism,” a trap that opposes binary thinking to dominate the other. Martin Heidegger described this view as the “crisis of science,” while Nietzsche introduced nihilism. This cultural crisis happens when high values begin to lose meaning and purpose. In the face of a formless, chaotic reality, Nietzsche saw chaos and did not expect people to react with anger or resentment.

Humans become decadent when they face reality with grudges. In the face of chaos, the cosmos has every possible style of rising and falling, and this is inversely proportional to how people deal with reality. In short, Nietzsche’s philosophy emphasizes self-domination, self-control, and self-expression in the face of a chaotic reality. The drive will never stop, and we will forget the old ways, creating new masterpieces along the way.

Doctrine keeps offering the same answers, but it only truly knows something because the surface forms are constantly changing.

Nietzsche’s analysis of the need to believe raises an important question: What does the will really want? When we ask such questions, diving deep into ourselves through reflective thinking, it challenges all our wills. It is the starting point for Nietzsche’s concept of genealogy. Religious teachings, philosophical ideas, dogma, and ideology can all be questioned through the will that exists between humans and God.

What does the will want when it seeks to believe in everything, including science? This is one of humanity’s fundamental questions. While trying to understand Friedrich Nietzsche, people can find their true selves by probing these deep questions in the context of God’s nihilism. Nietzsche was not a philosopher looking for simple understanding. His unique style gave birth to powerful aphorisms.

In truth, understanding Nietzsche leads anyone to reflect on life’s suffering. He did not just describe thought as a process of chewing and digesting; he also rejected the idea that understanding is easy. It’s easy to get lost in texts that seem to contradict each other, but Nietzsche wasn’t afraid to criticize religion or atheism. Whatever concept was in play, he would challenge it.

In short, science became an absolute belief, almost like a new religion.

Nietzsche calls us to transcend ourselves and our times, to become the Übermensch, or the human who transcends. The standards and ideals in life are constantly evolving, surpassing what is actual. Nietzsche’s definition of these ideals, though they have a definite tone, is never final. In contrast, Sufi philosophy, which focuses on reaching God, believes that humans have yet to come to God. Nietzsche’s view is not that God will die; instead, he believes that the death of God is a disaster for theology.

However, Nietzsche helped shift the concept of God above human actions, opening the veil of intimacy with God and mysticism in a way humans are often unaware of.

References

• Comte, A. (2009). The Positive Philosophy (G. H. Lewes, Trans.). Cosimo Classics.
• Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). Garland Publishing.
• Nietzsche, F. (1883–1884). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.
• Nietzsche, F. (1886). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. C. G. Naumann.
• Schopenhauer, A. (1818). The World as Will and Representation (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). Dover Publications.