feel themselves as perishing and without hope. Weak, decadent, and sick people, whose will to power has declined, will give themselves a God who is purely good, according to Nietzsche. They will then attribute evil and deviltry to their masters' God. Metaphysicians have eliminated the attributes of virile (männliche) virtues, such as strength, bravery, and pride, from the concept of God. As a result, it deteriorated into an insubstantial ideal, pure spirit, Absolute, or thing in itself. Nietzsche opposes the Christian concept of God because:God degenerated into the contradiction of life. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the "here and now," and for every lie about the "beyond"! Recalling Schopenhauer's description of the denial of the will to live and the subsequent empty nothingness, Nietzsche proclaims of the Christian God that "[i]n him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!..." Nietzsche criticizes the "strong races of northern Europe" for accepting the Christian God and not creating a new god of their own: "Two thousand years have come and gone—and not a single new god!" He maintains that the traditional "pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism" supports "all the instincts of décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!" Buddhism vs Christianity Although he considers both Christianity and Buddhism to be nihilistic, decadent religions, Nietzsche considers the latter to be more realistic as it poses objective problems and does not use the concept of God. Nietzsche believes that, in all of religious history, Buddhism is the only positivistic religion as it struggles against actual suffering, which is experienced as fact or illusion (i.e., the concept of maya) in various Buddhist traditions. Christianity, by contrast, struggles against sin, while suggesting that suffering can have a redemptive quality. Nietzsche claims that Buddhism is "beyond good and evil" because it has developed past the "self-deception that lies in moral concepts." Buddha created the religion to assist individuals in ridding themselves of the suffering of life: "Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, and they are attained." Buddhism has its roots in higher and also learned classes of people, whereas Christianity was the religion of the lowest classes, Nietzsche writes. He also believes that Christianity had conquered Barbarians by making