This was interesting, thanks! I think you are right that 'God' had to die before we could be free, although we have not gone on to achieve that freedom, at least not in the Nietzschean sense. In The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche reveals what he meant by the death of God. He was referring to the death of the 'true world' of metaphysics; that is, the eternal, unchanging and invisible world of which our apparent world is merely a cheap copy, as Plato would have it, has died (in the hands of science). There's a problem with the death of the 'true world', or the death of God, however you want to put it: what happens to the apparent world if the true world is dead? Nietzsche writes: “We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!” So in the end we are left with nothing (hence nihilism is our problem). Nietzsche sets us the task of creating new "worlds", I suppose, or "new sacred games" as he called them, in order to have meaning again. What has happened is that we did indeed kill God and substituted ‘it’ with science, but this has failed to create meaning. Science cannot answer the question of the meaning of life; why life instead of death in the first place? In this respect, Nietzsche is still way ahead of us moderns.
You raise an excellent question: "So, does it truly matter if God is alive or dead?"
Currently, my own thought is to say no, it does not particularly matter, primarily because of the dialectic implicitly described in your essay. The dialectic I've observed here mirrors Kierkegaard's dialectic of faith.
On one end, there is Nietzsche, whose claim that, "God is dead," amounts to resigning to the fact that an absolute proof, be it abstract or empirical, of God's existence is not possible. At the other end, there is Kierkegaard, exhorting one to make the leap of faith, "on the strength of the absurd", and believe in God anyways. And although Sartre was an atheist, he was well versed in Kierkegaard, and I argue that "existence preceding essence" is a direct consequence of Kierkegaard's leap of faith. Thus, Sartre is very close to defining an existentialist theology while simultaneously rejecting God. I try to show how existence preceding essence works theologically in a three-part essay series on my substack if you'd be interested in reading more.
Now, why this dialectic makes it so that God's factual existence does not matter much, is because each move in the dialectic is up to the individual. It comes down to the subjective question that Kierkegaard himself asks. Ever since Plato, there has been a tendency to pose universal questions such as, "What does a good person do?" A traditional theist says, "Believe in God," while a traditional atheist says, "Reject belief in God." However, Kierkegaard changes the question to a subjective one by asking, "What does a good I do?" And when I ask myself, "What does a good I do?", I find that a good "I" makes Kierkegaard's leap of faith and so I, personally, believe in God. Since I've made this choice, of course I think it's the right decision. But when interacting with others, I think the discussion should be more like Kierkegaard's illustration of walking along with Abraham to Moria, asking him every step of the way if he truly wants to do what he's about to do. I think the question to ask those around one is, "What does a good *you* do?"
I would also like to hear your thoughts on salvation! What do you mean by "salvation" and "figuring it out"?
Ready and waiting for the salvation follow-up!
Great read. Thanks!
This was interesting, thanks! I think you are right that 'God' had to die before we could be free, although we have not gone on to achieve that freedom, at least not in the Nietzschean sense. In The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche reveals what he meant by the death of God. He was referring to the death of the 'true world' of metaphysics; that is, the eternal, unchanging and invisible world of which our apparent world is merely a cheap copy, as Plato would have it, has died (in the hands of science). There's a problem with the death of the 'true world', or the death of God, however you want to put it: what happens to the apparent world if the true world is dead? Nietzsche writes: “We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!” So in the end we are left with nothing (hence nihilism is our problem). Nietzsche sets us the task of creating new "worlds", I suppose, or "new sacred games" as he called them, in order to have meaning again. What has happened is that we did indeed kill God and substituted ‘it’ with science, but this has failed to create meaning. Science cannot answer the question of the meaning of life; why life instead of death in the first place? In this respect, Nietzsche is still way ahead of us moderns.
You raise an excellent question: "So, does it truly matter if God is alive or dead?"
Currently, my own thought is to say no, it does not particularly matter, primarily because of the dialectic implicitly described in your essay. The dialectic I've observed here mirrors Kierkegaard's dialectic of faith.
On one end, there is Nietzsche, whose claim that, "God is dead," amounts to resigning to the fact that an absolute proof, be it abstract or empirical, of God's existence is not possible. At the other end, there is Kierkegaard, exhorting one to make the leap of faith, "on the strength of the absurd", and believe in God anyways. And although Sartre was an atheist, he was well versed in Kierkegaard, and I argue that "existence preceding essence" is a direct consequence of Kierkegaard's leap of faith. Thus, Sartre is very close to defining an existentialist theology while simultaneously rejecting God. I try to show how existence preceding essence works theologically in a three-part essay series on my substack if you'd be interested in reading more.
Now, why this dialectic makes it so that God's factual existence does not matter much, is because each move in the dialectic is up to the individual. It comes down to the subjective question that Kierkegaard himself asks. Ever since Plato, there has been a tendency to pose universal questions such as, "What does a good person do?" A traditional theist says, "Believe in God," while a traditional atheist says, "Reject belief in God." However, Kierkegaard changes the question to a subjective one by asking, "What does a good I do?" And when I ask myself, "What does a good I do?", I find that a good "I" makes Kierkegaard's leap of faith and so I, personally, believe in God. Since I've made this choice, of course I think it's the right decision. But when interacting with others, I think the discussion should be more like Kierkegaard's illustration of walking along with Abraham to Moria, asking him every step of the way if he truly wants to do what he's about to do. I think the question to ask those around one is, "What does a good *you* do?"
I would also like to hear your thoughts on salvation! What do you mean by "salvation" and "figuring it out"?