344: “The man who is truthful in that daring and extreme fashion, which is the presupposition of the faith in science, asserts thereby a different world from that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he asserts the existence of that different world, come, must he not similarly repudiate its counterpart, this world, our world? The belief on which our faith in science is based has remained to this day a metaphysical belief⁠—even we knowers of today, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too take our fire from that conflagration which was kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, from that Christian belief, which was also Plato’s belief, the belief that God is truth, that truth is divine .⁠ ⁠… But what if this belief becomes more and more incredible, what if nothing proves itself to be divine, unless it be error, blindness, lies⁠—what if God, Himself proved Himself to be our oldest lie ?”⁠—It is necessary to stop at this point and to consider the situation carefully. Science itself now