Nietzsche: The Many Uses of the Gods

How the Ancient Greeks used their gods to stave off guilt

We are used to the association between the religious and the guilt-ridden. Those who court the divine usually carry faces weighty with self-righteousness.

But, in the second essay of his Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche challenges this long-standing prejudice against religions. As he put it:

"there are nobler uses for the invention of gods than for the self…