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"God is Dead"

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
...I do not think that it will cause "the death of God" for the majority of human beings. And I know, everybody will think it's very weird that an atheist should be saying so.

It's possible that Nietzsche had in mind the notion that science would eventually bring about widespread disbelief in God. I don't really know if he did.

The point I was trying to make is a little different than that. As I understand it, for Nietzsche, God is dead even if people want to go on believing in him. That is, we can still believe in God, but we can no longer believe in God in quite the same way folks did before science.

The thought just occurred to me that Nietzsche spoke of God's "corpse" rotting for a long time. Maybe for him, the point I was making eventually morphs into the point you were making.

Again, I don't really know. I'm not an actual Nietzsche scholar. I just play one on the internet.

But I think it's a good point: science can now show just how the power of the religious impulse manifests in the human consciousness -- but it cannot, itself, actually wield that power. Science cannot (at least not yet) give human consciousness what it most truly wants, for so many people: its (or their) own continuation. Nor can it give our species that true uniqueness it so craves, but rather makes it just an existential part of a larger reality that isn't, after all, all about us.

Excellent points! Just excellent.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
**MOD POST**

Please remember this is a discussion thread, not a debate thread.
Debating in a discussion thread is violation of Rule 10.
See the notice at the top of the OP for further information.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
For a second I was like woah, Jerry Siegel and/or Joe Shuster were insane?
Nietzsche fell terribly ill later in life. But, before that, such a brilliant mind with a raging inferno of intensity in his zeal for life. Its such a shame so many sum up ans define his entirety by what was a tragedy and time if crisis in his life (and to add to it, his sister vastly made things worse for him and treated him like absolute garbage when she wasn't displaying him and misrepresenting him to the Nazis to further he position within the party).
Hegel buried his "God is dead" in a dense, convoluted and difficult to understand sentence.
Would it be Hegel if it wasn't difficult and convoluted and dense? Just like, would it be Nietzsche without the metaphor, colorful and powerful language, and Germanic talent for run-on sentences?:p
Comments?
Not much to discuss, as your post is basically a condensed lesson of what Nietzsche did say.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.


Once upon a time, long, long ago, one of my favorite philosophical jokes was this one:

Found written in a restroom stall:​

"God is dead." -- Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead." -- God​

But the joke got spoiled for me. It got spoiled for me when I learned what Nietzsche really meant by "God is dead." You see, the joke no longer makes any sense, then.

Drats!

At any rate, Nietzsche did not really coin the phrase, "God is dead". That was Hegel. He either coined it or he came close to coining it. I don't know which. I only know that Nietzsche's most famous translator, Walter Kaufmann said Hegel buried his "God is dead" in a dense, convoluted and difficult to understand sentence. Hence, not many people noticed him saying it.

So did Hegel and Nietzsche really mean that God had ceased to exist?

No. Heck no! That's the most popular view, but the most popular view does not fit the fact that neither man was dense enough to believe God could die. At least, not if he ever existed in the first place.

To understand what Nietzsche (and most likely Hegel too) meant by "God is dead", consider how the rise of science in their lifetimes was changing the way people looked at the world. And especially focus on the fact that science was offering a very wide audience a way of looking at the world that was both secular and robust. Put differently, for maybe the first time in history, many more than just a few boring philosophers had a tool, means, or lens for looking at things without necessarily seeing them through the lens of a religion.

You could now form a view of the world -- a worldview -- that did not include God.

Now here's the real key to understanding it. The deeper key. Even if you were still religious, the rising science was making it impossible for you to simply assume there was no other way to explain things than to explain them through your religion.

Is it becoming clearer now? First, imagine some truth that you have never questioned in your whole life. Imagine how easy it is to act on the basis of that truth. How confident you are that truth will not fail you. How unlikely you are to seek reasons to disbelieve it. Perhaps for many of you, that truth might be, "Sunstone is wickedly handsome."

Now imagine that truth is your religion. If so, wouldn't it be easy for you to shift from simple faith into deep devotion to your religion? Remember, in every direction you look, you see the world through one lens and only one lens. The lens of your religion.

Today, not many of us can honestly say that we are able to look at everything we see day-in-and-day-out and interpret every last thing we see solely and only through the lens of our religion. Today, for most of us, God is no longer our sole lens, but has been reduced, at most, to no more than our favorite lens.

"God" -- God as the sole and only lens through which to see the world -- has died.

In short, Nietzsche was merely pointing out that God, and by extension, the Christian religion was no longer 'real' to people in quite the same sense or way that they once had been.

Comments?

Reminds me of the famous conversation between Napoleon and Laplace:

"While speaking with [Laplace], I congratulated him on a work which he had just published and asked him how the name of God, which appeared endlessly in the works of Lagrange, didn't occur even once in his. He replied that he had no need of that hypothesis."
 

taykair

Active Member
The following really has nothing to do with the discussion thus far, yet I was unable to get this scene out of my head.


For those of you who crave metaphor, I suppose the man bringing out the "dead" man can symbolize those who desire to be rid of God, the cart-pusher can symbolize science, and the "dead" man can be a symbol for God. (Of course, extreme caution should be used in the acceptance of this -- or any other -- metaphor.)
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Now I could be very wrong about this, but I recall in Zarathustra, the concept is introduced in a parable at the end of the book. A madman enters a town carrying a lantern and crying out something about God. I think he was crying out "Where is God?", but don't quote me on that. At the end of the parable, the madman is disappointed that no one knows where God is, and he resigns himself to saying something along the lines of "God is dead, but_____________." That is, I can't recall all the words. Maybe those were the words @Polymath257 quoted. Again, it's been 50 years. If what I told you is accurate, then God really is alive, because we have just witnessed a miracle.
!

OK, I went and checked.

It was in 'The Gay Science', the parable of the Madman. Here is a quote:

"
The Parable of the Madman
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
The science story said O God was once an eternal angel that fell into space, burst/burnt and became entombed spiritually in stone. God.

Then a human being male invented science and said I want to copy God as a theme for self.

Gave his own spirit self bones, so that when he dies he can be with God.

And so he did.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Now I could be very wrong about this, but I recall in Zarathustra, the concept is introduced in a parable at the end of the book. A madman enters a town carrying a lantern and crying out something about God. I think he was crying out "Where is God?", but don't quote me on that. At the end of the parable, the madman is disappointed that no one knows where God is, and he resigns himself to saying something along the lines of "God is dead, but_____________." That is, I can't recall all the words. Maybe those were the words @Polymath257 quoted. Again, it's been 50 years. If what I told you is accurate, then God really is alive, because we have just witnessed a miracle.
Thats Gay Science. In Zarathustra, the character meets saint in the forest, and after a cinversation of love of god and love of man, Zarathustra wonders if the old saint has not yet heard "God is dead!"
From Gay Science:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
And it's interesting to note that doesn't sound like the joyful heralding of a tyrant kings demise.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
OK, I went and checked.

Thank you! Thank you so much!

Well, I had it all mixed up then. I was thinking the statement "God is dead" first appears in The Gay Science, but is proceeded by the parable in Zarathustra. It's good to get that straightened out -- for a few years before I get it mixed up again. I think this process of knowing and forgetting, then knowing and forgetting again, surely must be what Nietzsche meant by "The Eternal Recurrence". :D
 

Etritonakin

Well-Known Member
PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.


Once upon a time, long, long ago, one of my favorite philosophical jokes was this one:

Found written in a restroom stall:​

"God is dead." -- Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead." -- God​

But the joke got spoiled for me. It got spoiled for me when I learned what Nietzsche really meant by "God is dead." You see, the joke no longer makes any sense, then.

Drats!

At any rate, Nietzsche did not really coin the phrase, "God is dead". That was Hegel. He either coined it or he came close to coining it. I don't know which. I only know that Nietzsche's most famous translator, Walter Kaufmann said Hegel buried his "God is dead" in a dense, convoluted and difficult to understand sentence. Hence, not many people noticed him saying it.

So did Hegel and Nietzsche really mean that God had ceased to exist?

No. Heck no! That's the most popular view, but the most popular view does not fit the fact that neither man was dense enough to believe God could die. At least, not if he ever existed in the first place.

To understand what Nietzsche (and most likely Hegel too) meant by "God is dead", consider how the rise of science in their lifetimes was changing the way people looked at the world. And especially focus on the fact that science was offering a very wide audience a way of looking at the world that was both secular and robust. Put differently, for maybe the first time in history, many more than just a few boring philosophers had a tool, means, or lens for looking at things without necessarily seeing them through the lens of a religion.

You could now form a view of the world -- a worldview -- that did not include God.

Now here's the real key to understanding it. The deeper key. Even if you were still religious, the rising science was making it impossible for you to simply assume there was no other way to explain things than to explain them through your religion.

Is it becoming clearer now? First, imagine some truth that you have never questioned in your whole life. Imagine how easy it is to act on the basis of that truth. How confident you are that truth will not fail you. How unlikely you are to seek reasons to disbelieve it. Perhaps for many of you, that truth might be, "Sunstone is wickedly handsome."

Now imagine that truth is your religion. If so, wouldn't it be easy for you to shift from simple faith into deep devotion to your religion? Remember, in every direction you look, you see the world through one lens and only one lens. The lens of your religion.

Today, not many of us can honestly say that we are able to look at everything we see day-in-and-day-out and interpret every last thing we see solely and only through the lens of our religion. Today, for most of us, God is no longer our sole lens, but has been reduced, at most, to no more than our favorite lens.

"God" -- God as the sole and only lens through which to see the world -- has died.

In short, Nietzsche was merely pointing out that God, and by extension, the Christian religion was no longer 'real' to people in quite the same sense or way that they once had been.

Comments?


Best thing that could ever happen to an unknown God -the death of which would mean a known God!

"for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:"

The God described in the bible does not want people to simply believe anything -but to prove it.

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter."

"Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour."

"But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken."

In Eden, they were given access to the "tree of life" -until they disobeyed by eating from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil".
Then they were cast out (to go among other humans which did exist outside of Eden [Cain's wife, those Cain feared would kill him, the daughters of men as opposed to the sons of God]) -without access to the tree of life.

They were cast out into a world where they would have to become masters of it themselves -rather than learning directly from God.
This was no accident -but how we learn to be gods ourselves -later to understand the necessity for the government of the one God.
God gave opportunity for good, but it was inevitable that ignorance would lead to error and wrong choices.

Science has caused many to reject previous beliefs about God -which is good (many of which are due to reading scripture wrong) -though some rejected the idea of God altogether due to specific beliefs being shown incorrect -which is not good. It is not good practice regardless of the subject matter.

Obedience to God is good, but KNOWLEDGEABLE obedience is better. God allowed us to strive against the complex world and to become masters of reality -which includes using the tools of science. They will be quite useful as we are given access to the rest of the universe. Creating throughout the universe will be wonderful -as long as we do not do out there as we have done here.
We've become good at the making and doing aspects of being gods -but the most important aspect is doing so in accordance with government which will allow for creativity without conflict.
If God exists (God does exist), science would eventually determine that fact -if the interest was there, but that is not likely to happen to the satisfaction of "science" before all are shown unquestionable proof of God's existence -which is to happen quite soon. God allowed humans to go their way, more or less, until just before they completely destroyed themselves and most everything else (and unless those days were shortened, there should be no flesh saved alive). We actually need God to govern us -and allowing that will prove such. Something greater than all of us collectively is required.

Though science could eventually show a hidden God to exist, God will very soon UN-hide himself -and show that he is very much alive!
 
For those of you who crave metaphor, I suppose the man bringing out the "dead" man can symbolize those who desire to be rid of God, the cart-pusher can symbolize science, and the "dead" man can be a symbol for God. (Of course, extreme caution should be used in the acceptance of this -- or any other -- metaphor.)

My favorite scene in that film might be the religious teachers who are preaching and dictating revelation on the street side as well as the song in the end.

1. ttps://youtu.be/hmyuE0NpNgE
2. ttps://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M

The video depicting so many people as "crucified" reminds me of this song:

3. ttps://youtu.be/fi8hvySz87U

Now, some people think that the Bible says "You are Gods", and that the New Testament suggests we must imitate Christ and in a sense become "Crucified" killing off our metaphorical materialistic desires, dying and descending intiba katabasis type exploration of our condemned and guilty and worldy issues and facing the truth, ascend and take on a new growth and body which is much more appropriate as a temple if God rather than a House of Sin.

That every man is a Tammuz but freedom is in the path of the Annointed.

If everyone is in some sense a "God" even through their ego and following a "self-deceiving and hopelessly sick heart", then all Gods are called to Die.

Thatsalotta dead gods!

John 10:34

Galatians 5:24

Jeremiah 17:9

Deuteronomy 30:9

Colossians 2:11

Romans 2:29

Luke 20:38 and Mark 12:27

1 Samuel 5:4

Psalms 96:5 and 1 Chronicles 16:26

Isaiah 64:8

Humans are clay like idols, all the "gods" are called idols, so if humans are called gods they are being called idols, and idolizing the material, the clay, the dead world of the dead, these are all the dead gods with their dead senses not filled with the spirit.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
A machine built out of the materials.....Sun radiation that had attacked it historically and converted it...is IDLE.

IDLE...nearly the DE V IL....when he does his reaction, it is when he causes evil...which historically is a conjuring. For machines do not exist in any natural history.

Both the Earth God gases and also out of space as consideration of 2 holy forms in the sciences removed the UFO attack on Planet Earth.

The stone saved Earth, which was the moon O asteroid arrival as o.

What science says to self...my machine does not own volition...not of the Sun, not of space, not of God.

To be clay means that first the stone body God is converted into particles and a sludge is formed...clay is soft in its origin form.

When clay is baked, then clay is just a pot.

Therefore if a human ever said that they were clay, then obviously they were expressing feed back in AI fake science statement where shared ARTIFICIAL inferred information tells historically a whole lot of lies....that own no condition whatsoever to the science. Or to machine or reaction. But as humans own all theorising stories...then AI would express some strange statements. By its owned volition, speaking communicators AI. Why humans have to encode answers by humans for humans...as AI would give you fake answers if you owned use of common sense.

Which was a male human theorising.....owned a design, copy the design model and build it physically. Yet it still owns no volition. So he uses bio conscious physical presence, his conscious thinking and then controls the machine.

Claiming that he is the power of God as a conscious expression.

Yet if he compared the Earth energy power actually in stone to self, he would be a pile of ashes sacrificed on the altar of stone. Historical self combustion information...the reason it exists, in a natural same water based oxygen life supported life....by a cause.

If we all share EXACTLY THE SAME atmospheric body you would have to use logical common sense to explain how phenomena is caused. UFO is the only reason...to cause extra gases to burn that fall out.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
First, imagine some truth that you have never questioned in your whole life. Imagine how easy it is to act on the basis of that truth. How confident you are that truth will not fail you. How unlikely you are to seek reasons to disbelieve it. Perhaps for many of you, that truth might be, "Sunstone is wickedly handsome."

Now imagine that truth is your religion. If so, wouldn't it be easy for you to shift from simple faith into deep devotion to your religion? Remember, in every direction you look, you see the world through one lens and only one lens. The lens of your religion.
I have a skeptical nature. I think the thing I take from reasoned enquiry, not least scientific method, as a way of understanding the world, is the encouraging ─ and to date reliable ─ idea that The Truth Is Out There.

As the foundation of that position I make three assumptions ─ that a world exists external to the self, that our senses are capable of informing us of that world, and that reason is a valid tool.

So if I came to understand that the universe's order is, say, an evolved delusion, and that authentic chaos is the true nature of reality, I imagine that would be about as bad as it could get for me philosophically ─ orders of magnitude larger than, say, the counter-intuitive claims of QM. In particular, my second assumption, that our senses are capable of informing us of the external world, would be blown.

Would it be easy to come to grips with the sheer size of the problem? I'd be surprised if it were. Would it be the moral end of me? I'd like to think not; the skeptical outlook ought to be helpful in that situation.

BUT it's not something I'm in any hurry to test.
 
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rational experiences

Veteran Member
The human male story/theme says, God came from a sound/angel release of a spirit language that once spoke for spirit form only. A spirit in the eternal body tried change...and formed O God sounds instead of a spiritual being returned interactive language. How the spiritual cause was taught in my life.

Science today in a male memory even says that he believes that he created God.

So then it comes to the human challenge in science to question, how do you human being male just as a thinker like the rest of us. First natural, first origin to self natural and spiritual before science thought that belief when you only said I owned human form after the Garden Nature?

As a life, as an experience, as an aware experience, and then discuss Father of God as a human male inferred historic reference. The eternal Father released God from eternal, then inherited what science always taught as a conscious ideal....cause and effect, purpose of change, meaning change and karmic consequence.

The spirit story I understand as a natural human spiritual research, on my own terms without owning self motivation for a group purpose, a group structure or belief of self in a superior circumstance to be rewarded in and because of a group applied choice.
 
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