The Progression of Religion and Morality on Humanity: Dawkins and Nietzsche A Zeitgeist is the spirit or mood of a particular historical moment based on the ideas and beliefs of that time. This concept of the moral zeitgeist becomes the overall focus of both Dawkins and Nietzsche's writings as they seek to illustrate the relationship between religion and morality. In God Delusion, Dawkins focuses on the evolving moral zeitgeist noting how humanity's mindset has changed due to the times and that humanity must come up with a new set of 10 commandments because the ways of the past no longer work in the present . Nietzsche, however, focuses exclusively on the origin of the spirit of the age and how it came to challenge humanity to be greater. In this essay I will illustrate the unique perspectives that Dawkins and Nietzsche present on the idea that religion is one of the great sources of morality for human cultures. “In every society there exists a rather mysterious consensus, which changes over the decades, and for which it is not pretentious to use the word borrowed from the German Zeitgeists (spirit of the times)” (Dawkins, the God Delusion, p. 301) . The story Dawkins tells of the modern moral Zeitgeist is very different from that of biblical times, noting that "the point is that almost all of us have moved on, and in a big way, from biblical times" (Dawkins, the God Delusion, p. 300 ) and Dawkins notes that this Zeitgeist is different because as time goes on we develop more and more polite circles. As Dawkins made clear, everything comes from evolution, or happens because of evolution; humans want to have good morals to establish a good reputation as a means of propagating their genes. In God Delusion, Dawkins focuses on the evolution of...... middle of paper......ster. He points out how Christians often blame God by placing the blame for these events on God's wrath when in reality it can be explained by science. He then goes on to illustrate how the commandments are only specific to the person the book is written for, which ultimately makes our morals irrelevant to us, since they were only written for a specific person. This is similar to Nietzsche because he discusses how eagles don't treat sheep well and how Jews treated others because Jesus in the crowd was Jewish. Both authors say that religion is not a help but an excuse, if you are looking for morals you should not go to the Bible or religion because you will not find any good morals. If humanity chooses to return to the Bible for meaning and morality, then a slave morality will be created and humanity will forever be condemned to being passive and boring individuals..