A madman runs out onto the street screeching “I seek God! I seek God!” and then continues to yell ““God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers…There was never a greater event – and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history before this!”. This is the Nietzsche most notable and controversial statement in his famous book The Gay Science,
Nietzsche was not stating that he believed in the existence of God, but he was using the metaphor to state that the view of God as described in pre-renaissance history has been rendered irrelevant and Is not needed given the enlightenment from scientific and rational thought.
The death of God does however imply the existence God and the existence does imply some form of presence of God.
I am not going to debate or engage in a discussion of the existence of God – this has been, and continues to be, debated for thousands of years and will continue to be despite the futility.
I am also not going to discuss, if one believes in some form of God, whether it is some physical being, some energy form, a white bearded old man up there somewhere or something else.
Just about all versions of God describe it as including most of or all the properties of being omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent etc. – this description befitting a superhero.
Imagine if you were a superhero with these powers, thus even more powerful and super than even Superman. Then just like Superman, you would be able to see some crime or transgression happening somewhere and use your superpowers to intervene – to save the mortal beings that revere you.
So where was this superhero with such all-powerful capabilities when a gunman walked into a school in Uvalde, TX? Where was this superhero when Lanza killed 20 children in Sandy Hook? Where was this superhero when millions of innocents Jews were gassed to death?
Of course, we all know that it was absent, completely missing in action.
Does this mean that our almighty superhero God, does not exist, or is not a powerful as we make it to be, or it is not a caring God or is insensitive to our well-being?
God has it good. When good things happen to us, we say it was God’s grace. When bad things happen, it is either fate or human evil. Religion neatly gave God a pass on evil by using the argument that God gave us free will so if we use this for evil, so be it.
Yet we continue to pray to such a God, asking for things, asking to be saved, asking for protection, asking for health, wealth and success. There is no large God Microphone that is listening to these prayers and there is no response to these prayers, which are essentially transactional and there is nothing on the other side of the transaction. Religion tells us to revere and worship God and obey its commands, they tell us to worship and praise the lord and please him, religion tells us to sacrifice and bestow upon the gods in order to receive their grace, religion tells us we need to keep praying and chanting gods praises otherwise there are consequences. It goes on and on. People are told If they sacrifice an animal, or do acts of repentance or perform all sorts of rituals, they will get the favors of the gods. Is this the image of a an all loving, all caring, empathetic god or one that is petty, egotistical and transactional? Religion has made all this up to create a fear of god in order to gain control of our lives.
Back to the madman – he is right. God is dead. Not because it existed and then died somehow, but simply that there is no presence, direct involvement or saving us by God. No matter what form of God you believe in or not, the reality is that God does not directly intervene or get involved in our daily lives, whether it be at an individual personal level or even a catastrophic level like a disease or war. I don’t necessarily say don’t pray or chant or whatever makes you feel good, but recognize that this is a way to invoke our internal strength as human beings – do not think it is a call to a superior being to save you or grant you something.
As Kevin O’Leary says on Shark Tank when a pitch is not relevant to him,”…you are dead to me..” similarly, God is essentially dead to us.