Is God Dead?

Do you remember the Death of God Movement? Ted Fiske’s 1965 article in the New York Times was celebrated in the Elton John song "Levon" who was "born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas Day when the New York Times said God was dead."  We also have the April 8, 1966 Time magazine article posing the question "Is God dead?" on the cover - was one of the first times it was published without a photograph.  John T. Elson's article in Time begged the question - did God ever really exist?  Elson described what was actually being taught in liberal seminaries, so it could be said that his conclusions were largely based on the "experts" who sat around thinking about God alot. Radical theology was really behind the movement, but not entirely.

Where did all of this come from? Nietzsche is largely responsible. What was his motive? I am sure there are people in philosophy that are way more knowledgeable than I am on Nietzsche and we all know you are smarter than the rest of us "deists" anyway. After all, anyone who believes in God can't actually be a person of reason.

Actually, if you believe in God you may not be able to read and follow big words very well. In fact, I probably shouldn't tell you that there is an academic label for what we are talking about - "theothanatology."  The Greek word "theos" means God and "thanatos" means death.

Some say this had nothing to at all with the death of God as much as it had to with the death of commonly accepted standards of morality (Timothy Keller).

Who murdered God anyway? Nietzsche claimed we did. By now we are supposed to smell God decomposing, but the sweet fragrance of "reason and science" shall perfume the odor. Nietzsche claimed that the blood of God is all over our hands, all over our clothing, and all over our minds.

I couldn't agree with him more. Where our paths differ is on why. Nietzsche claimed that reason and science put God in the cemetery. God's obituary was supposed to be written long before 1965. The French philosopher Voltaire, boasted that within 100 years of his death, the Bible would disappear. What year was that? 1778. According to David Hume, a contemporary of Voltaire and also a skeptic and atheist, there cannot possibly be such a good and powerful God because evil exists. Thus intellect and empirical reasoning were the only ways to destroy evil. Hume basically was saying, of course God is dead because evil lives. Mr. Hume, therefore, has a claim on truth, the truth exclusively based on logic, logic exclusively based on atheism.

Nietzsche, also had a "truth-claim." Interesting because Jesus also said "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).  Nietzsche's claim not only from those in the philosophical world, but also in the science world. After all, if you deify "science" and if you say that all "other" truth-claims about religion and God are just psychological projections to deal with your guilt and insecurity, you gain a following! It is pleasant to hear, isn't it? After all, if we have science and we have reason, we don't have any insecurities. We now "know" and we are self-sufficient as human beings. We don't need God anymore.

When something dies, you can smell it. I remember when time when a mouse was caught in a trap I set in the kitchen. It took a few days and we could smell the odor, but for the life of me I couldn't find the trap. It was frustrating, the longer it say undiscovered the worse it smelled.

In this case, it isn't a deity who is in a state of putrefaction. It is man. Michael Foucault claims that Christianity and other religions are the cultural straitjacket of science and reason. So, it begs the question. Does a belief in Jesus Christ render a person intellectually bankrupt? Do the philosophers of our time deify their ideas over God's?

I don't know. I guess each of us have to sort it out for ourselves. Did God die?

As Nietzsche said, I do have blood on my hands. Really what our modern day philosophers are saying is that when Christ proclaimed "It is finished" as documented in John 19:3 that God actually died. If the bible is to believe, the soldiers present at the crucifixion and trial actually tried to kill God.

The gospels claimed they stabbed Christ to verify that he was dead as they were going around to break the bones of the two other criminals. Why? So that they could die faster. They wanted him dead.

So they took Christ down from the cross, lifeless. No real funeral for this "dead" God. No memorial service.  It was the sabbath (a religious holiday) and they needed to bury him quickly as it was against the law to work on the sabbath.

They bought perfume 3 days later to cover the "death smell" that Nietzsche talked about.

Gosh, the science versus deity debate really was 2000 years ago that Sunday morning when these women brought ointments to cover the death smell. Any normal person knows that after 3 days any "body" will stink. We have embalming fluid today, but it really just postpones what eventually happens to all of us. Decomposition of proteins, especially by anaerobic microorganisms, and bacteria liquefy what we see in the mirror.

Anyway, back to the original question - is God dead? Certainly the followers of Christ thought so. Most of them ran away as they were frightened the authorities were going to arrest them now that their leader was dead. His executioner thought he was dead. Pilate gave this wealthy guy, Joseph of Arimathea. Politicians thought he was dead.  The Jerusalem Post post in 33 AD could have written the exact same article as Ted Fiske - God is Dead.

So now, it is a matter of faith - isn't it? Did God die? Is this a dead carpenter from Galilee? Is this a mental patient who was really under court order to be admitted to a "facility" as when his mother and brothers attempted on several occasions?

You see, the question really isn't "is he a good teacher?" or is he "a prophet of God" as Islam and other religious leader claim. The question really is - IS GOD DEAD? Since anyone who believes in him today is illogical, stupid, and largely deceived by lies and errors in the transcription of the ancient texts, we must conclude that  Nietzsche was right and Jesus Christ was wrong?

My own belief is that the tomb was found empty that morning - not "because of" a stolen body or a wounded man who revived himself and moved a large boulder with a Roman seal and guard posted outside.  But, because of a risen Christ. A living God, not a dead one. It isn't a claim that I can back up with physical evidence or science. But, it is a one that can be backed up with logic and reason. Is science able to explain everything? I guess you have to answer that for yourself. At least consider what is written here, the arguments have been laid out squarely and without "spin" on them.