Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that God is dead and even suggested that we have killed God. The beginning of this phase in Nietzsche’s thought is at the end of Book IV of The Gay Science but its full development occurs in his poetic work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In this, Nietzsche goes on to say that Zarathustra teaches the “Overman” (Ubermensch). Thus, Nietzsche’s claim is not just that God has died but, in fact, that Western Civilization has matured beyond the possibility of belief in God and that, because of this, man himself will have to be overcome. In other words, human culture (what man is today) is so thoroughly involved in millennia of religious belief that it is now necessary to overcome this “man” by purging religious values. Hence, the supposed destroyer of all values, Nietzsche, is simply trying to free man from religious oppression to achieve his ideal human values in the Overman. “Once the sin against God was the greatest sin, but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing.” (Zarathustra, Prologue 3)
Rather unfortunately, Nietzsche, who wrote down these ideas in the late 19th Century was overly optimistic about the intellectual growth of his society and we find religion alive and well even in the 21st Century. One reason for this, I am absolutely certain, is because religion is a huge industry that makes big money and supports thousands of people. It is probably even more powerful than the gun lobby in America. When that much wealth, property, and income is involved, it is very difficult to put any institution down.
However, just as the gun lobby sustains itself because of a large membership of gun enthusiasts, religious institutions can certainly claim the allegiance of millions of people who give them support, if not full belief. The question is why do people in the modern world, a world in which science and technology have produced enormous change, still hold onto religious beliefs and support these institutions. I can see three possible reasons. First, many religious people have simply not questioned their cultural heritage and prefer to continue behaving as they were taught when youngsters. Second, another group of people who distrust almost everything happening around them in the modern world, from government to science and to technology, believe that Nietzsche’s enlightened world is a “liberal conspiracy” that threatens to take their religion away from them. Third, some group of people fall into the category of what I shall call “archaic thought” and I shall divide this group into two factions —- those who believe that the universe is all too enormous to be understood by human thought and must have been created by a powerful God and those who have never accepted personal death and must believe in some sort of God-managed personal immortality to save themselves. In contrast to the first group, these people have actually questioned their cultural heritage but have rejected the natural world as understood by scientific thought. The second group is simply a waste of time; most of them would prefer to live in the 18th Century, farming cotton with African slaves.
As I see it, the first group can be divided into two factions. The first faction is a largish group of people who simply do not want to question their habitual behaviors. For these people, Nietzsche’s heroic Overman is hard to understand. Why would you want to discard present values and strive to overcome your heritage in order to embrace new values? Aren’t things great just the way they are? For many younger people, college does the trick. But for the people already beyond college age, there is little hope for awakening in this group. The second faction is somewhat smaller, I would say, and it consists of people who no longer believe much of the doctrine taught by the church but who remain in the church because, for them, it is an important social institution that brings people together in helpful ways and often does good things. I am not sure we can still call these people “religious” but they do continue to support religious institutions. They continue to adhere to some Christian moral values but I would think they do not subscribe to those “values” that Nietzsche viewed as hateful toward life. They probably care little for sin and hellfire.
It is really the third group that bothers me. These are people who evidently devote some thought to who they are and what life is. Yet, even in this age of scientific thought they come to conclusions that support the religious industry. Let us take personal immortality first. Not all religions promise personal immortality but this seems to be one of the main and more spectacular promises of Christianity. From its earliest times, Christianity holds the hope of immortality for its practitioners. In fact, you can have it in either of two ways — eternity in hell or eternity in heaven. In effect, you live according to our rules and pay our salaries or you rot in hell fire for eternity — not a pretty picture (A Facebook friend posted a picture of a church sign: “Is touching yourself worth an eternity in hell?”). Do people really believe this stuff?
It is little wonder that religious power has dominated world politics for millennia. The monarchs of England declared their divine right to rule based on Christian heredity. And Hobbes’s monarch held the power of death over any and all Englishmen. Church and State were totally involved with each other in holding power and control over their people. Basically, your lives belonged to God and the King of England was God’s appointed legislator and judge as advised by the clergy. Even today we see similar types of absolute authority being exercised in various religions around the world.
The vague promise of eternal life in heaven, having rejoined one’s beloved friends and relatives in that hereafter, was enough to cause people to conform to everything the clergy desired. What Nietzsche saw in this was a culture built on hatred of natural life and specifically designed to keep people tamed under the authority of clerics, while contributing money to build elegant clerical cathedrals. Meanwhile, the actual image of heavenly immortality goes without much elaboration — e.g., will my body be old and diseased as it’s going to be or will I be young and viral as in the youth I have left behind? Will our pets join us? What about the house I love? How long really is an eternity? I’m not sure eternity would be that enjoyable. On some other earth somewhere maybe in another galaxy? Or in the clouds? Really?
Somewhat in-between these two groups are the folks who view “evil” as a “problem”. That is, if God is as perfect and good as we are told, why do people suffer bad fates. We pray for God’s protection and good works. Baseball players regularly send messages to God in thanks for being allowed a base hit while hundreds of people die in an earthquake in central Italy and a young Chicago mother is shot through the head walking home from taking her daughter to her first day of school. Either God is responsible for all of it or not responsible for any of it. But if the former, doesn’t that create an awful big puzzle about just what God means. Ah, yes, but the faithful want us to wrestle with this puzzle rather than give it up. What it is, of course, is an archaic way of viewing the world that has somehow managed to penetrate the 21st Century. Like native tribes of millennial times, we are still performing extravagant and elaborate dances to make the gods happy and look upon us favorably.
But finally, in the third group, there are people who have seriously thought about the universe, even scientists, and who have been overwhelmed by the seeming enormity and impossibility of it. I will grant that the universe seems well beyond human understanding. If our universe is expanding, what is it expanding into, if space and time are all defined within our universal concepts of motion? What is time, really, other than movement of objects. In many ways, scientists have made the understanding of our universe much more complicated than it used to be. After all, if all you have to account for is the sun, earth, and moon, and the fixed stars, theories can abound. But now we have to deal with galaxies and light years and indefinite expansion and black holes, etc. Perhaps science will never develop a perfectly beautiful account of the universe, but that doesn’t mean that we have to place God in the midst of it all. Unless, of course, by “God” we just mean mystery. But if God is just mystery personified, then we are back to Nietzsche’s need to cleanse man of the values religions have foisted on him.
