> Science causes a kind of crisis. ("God is dead.") After millenia of extreme devotion to all manner nonsense (think of the religious wars that plagued Europe)

> Science causes a kind of crisis. ("God is dead.") After millenia of extreme devotion to all manner nonsense (think of the religious wars that plagued Europe) science starts asking some very uncomfortable and very pointed questions. But people will not abandon their fantasies, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Instead they will cling to their fantasies that much harder often with full knowledge that what they "believe" are lies. This metastasizes into fascism [1]. When Trump says climate change is a Chinese hoax he knows he's lying, and you know he's lying, and accusing him of lying would be pointless and that's the point. Nietzsche foresaw quite clearly that this would be the crisis of the 20th century and beyong: in the face of science people would become more willing to deceive themselves. I think your comment is not exactly incorrect, but misleading in terms of what Nietzsche meant. Most of Nietzsche's commentary about the death of God is not about what we would call the religious aspect (in fact, Nietzsche praised religious wars as demonstrating that the masses had 'advanced'), but the fact that the death of God undermined the entire Western system of thought, including and particularly that of atheists. The famous "God is dead" passage is targeted at atheists - it is the atheists who do not understand what they've done! And, rather than being opposed to "self-deception", Nietzsche says that it is likely necessary for life. He does not call for a defense against self-deception (and in fact, what he does call for on many occasions, he often points out is for the exception, and not the rule.) > Consequently, “will to truth” does not mean “I will not let myself be deceived” but—there is no choice—“I will not deceive, not even myself”: and with this we are on the ground of morality. For one should ask oneself carefully: “Why don’t you want to deceive?” especially if it should appear—and it certainly does appear—that life depends on appearance; I mean, on error, simulation, deception, self-deception; and when life has, as a matter of fact, always shown itself to be on the side of the most unscrupulous polytropoi .Such an intent, charitably interpreted, could perhaps be quixotism, a little enthusiastic impudence; but it could also be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life. “Will to truth”—that might be concealed will to death. > Thus the question “Why science?” leads back to the moral problem, “For what end any morality at all” if life, nature, and history are “not moral”? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world" - look, must they not by the same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world? - But one will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it always remains a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we devotees of knowledge today, we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire too from the flame which the faith thousands of years old has kindled: that Christian faith, which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth, that truth is divine.