An old essay by Andrei.
God
Is Dead, and We Have Killed Him
Illustration
Essay
For
Melinda
Simmons
PHI-2010-30145
18
May 2009
ENC
2010-30145
Melinda
Simmons
18 May
2009
God
Is Dead, and We Have Killed Him
A
recurring theme in the works of German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche – born in 1844, and dead in 1900 – is the idea of the
“death of God.” This death is not literal; it does not state that
God physically existed and met a physical death, but metaphorical.
The morals and concepts associated with God are no longer valid,
purged away by a modern bourgeoisie society. Ask most modern day
Christians whether they see even half of the Old Testament, filled
with passages like the following, as an example of a moral and just
God.
Zechariah
14:1 reads:
“Behold
the day of the Lord is coming, when the spoil taken from you will be
divided in the midst of you. For I will gather the nations against
Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses
plundered and the women ravished...”
The
Bible, in fact, seems to be one of the works most prone to
cherry-picking in human history. Many Christians would say that the
New Testament supersedes the Old Testament, in spite of Christ saying
in the New Testament, “Think not that I came to undo the "Law
and the Prophets"! On the contrary, I did not come to undo them
but to put them into full force.” (Mt. 5.17). If God were alive,
the Old Testament would not be practically ignored, sans for both
religious fundamentalists and those seeking to use passages
forbidding conduct that they personally do not find agreeable, such
as homosexuality.
Nietzsche
saw Christian morality to not be self-evident, and though he may be
considered a nihilist, his nihilism was not ‘true’ in the sense
that he sought to replace one form of morality – what he dubbed as
the life-hating slave-morality of Judea – with a ‘life-loving’
form, known as the master-morality of Rome (Nietzsche 123). Actions
were neither inherently bad, nor inherently good, but in fact based
on their consequence was helpful, or harmful, instead of good, or
evil (Nietzsche 62). In that sense, when the character of “the
Madman” addresses atheists in The Gay
Science, he is not seeking to retain the
Christian morality of ages pass, but have a new moral direction,
rather than chaos. The Madman is essentially brushed off and
practically ignored by his audience; seeing this, he states “I have
come too soon.” Nietzsche believed that the death of God would be
too much for some to bear, due to His alleged existence being the
basis for all their held beliefs and ideals. When death was
recognized, a sort of nihilism and panic would ensue, and there would
be Nietzsche to take the role of Zarathustra, guiding the lost.
Here
humanity is in the twenty-first century, and perhaps the time is far
more optimal than it was in the nineteenth century for the Madman.
Waning and inherently Christian morality is routinely attempted to be
inserted into law by primarily Republican lawmakers, such as bans on
gay marriage, bans on stem cell research, and bans on abortion.
Simultaneously, there is a growing worldwide atheist population, and
indeed a population of who simply hold no religious affiliation
whatsoever. “God”, or at least the interpretation of the past, is
in fact dead – there is inner panic, there is angst, but the herd
has found a new God in the form of pop-culture and the media.
Contrary to Nietzsche’s expectations, there is no massive
philosophical awakening; there is simply a world-religion beginning
its death-throes, with the sheep’s leader replaced by a savior
known as MTVs, and their crosses replaced by iPods. Perhaps despite
the death of God, his concept of the mindless “last man” has come
to fruition after all. (Nietzsche, Zarathustra
S5).
Works
Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good
and Evil. London: Penguin Books, 1973.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake
Zarathustra. London: Penguin Books, 1954.
The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1982.
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