Is God dead?

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marco
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Is God dead?

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Post by marco »

Nietzsche famously said "God is dead." Various meanings have been attached to this saying. Perhaps it means the old gods have gone; or the Christian God is no longer with us; or belief in some absolute that gives us our moral values is no longer accepted.


In what sense might we conclude today that God is dead?

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Re: Is God dead?

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Post by marco »

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

One possibility is that we have become so advanced that miracles we once attributed to God can be done by ourselves (or our clever inventors.) Things that once fascinated no longer do; the heavens are no longer a mystery now that we have photographed outer space and gone there. We cannot explain all things but we have advanced a lot since Augustus Caesar was made a god and Jesus followed him into the pantheon.


God maybe lives as a cherished idea with millions of believers, but his visits to Earth are no more. Is this wisdom or folly?

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Re: Is God dead?

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Post by Divine Insight »

marco wrote: In what sense might we conclude today that God is dead?
I think what Nietzsche was referring to was the view of God as an anthropomorphic entity who actively interacts and intervenes in human affairs. Like Thor being the cause of lightening and thunder, or Poseidon being the cause of storms at sea, etc.

And of course the Biblical tales of Yahweh and Allah aren't any different where the God is said to have cursed people, sent disease plagues, cast out demons, etc. Those kinds of God's can't exist anymore simply because we now know that all the events that had been attributed to them are actually just natural occurrences. So there is no longer any need to imagine these things being done by angry jealous Gods.

I'm guessing that Nietzsche probably wasn't thinking in terms of any animistic or mystical sense of a non-intervening "God". Because after all, those types of God concepts do not intervene, at least not in mythological ways that assign their intervention to known natural processes.

I certainly agree that "God is dead" in terms of any anthropomorphic "Fatherly figure" that is monitoring every move and thought of every human and passing judgement on them, or keeping a record of their behavior in a book.

As far the non-anthropomorphic type of "God" of Eastern Mysticism and other esoteric philosophies, that's a bit more difficult to rule out. None the less, natural processes seem to serve the same purpose without any need to make any additional assumptions that are not based on anything more than wishful thinking.

One thing that I always think about, and this has more to do with our possible "true nature" rather than anything we should necessarily label as a "God", is that since if it is possible for us to exist in what we call "now", there's really no reason to believe that something similar couldn't occur, again, repeating indefinitely in some fashion.

Like the Dalai Lama once said, "If the universe banged once it can surely bang again".

In other words, the mere fact that we are experience existence at all certainly tells us that such an event is indeed possible even if we can't explain how it happens. And since it is happening, we really have no reason to assume that it can't or won't happen again.

Also, something interesting to note is that if there are "periods" between the times we are having an experience and when we don't have an experience. The times when we aren't having an experience would not "pass" for us in an experiential way.

In other words, let's say that we are existing today, and then we die. During the time we are "dead", there is nothing to experience. So we could be "dead" for billions of years before we have another experience. However, since we don't experience the time we do not exist, we have no experience of time during that period. Thus from our perspective our experience is continuous from one life to the next. Although are memory of the previous life may be wiped out.

This idea does not require a "God" per say, it's really just a guess of what might be the true nature of our existence. The Eastern Mystics then take further stabs at guessing that there might also be some sort of "karma" that follows us through this process, thus connecting the eternal experience as a connected whole.

I really don't think there is anything in our current knowledge that can rule out this type of reality. Of course, this doesn't then make it true either. But if we were to call this eternal experience "God", then that idea may be true. In other words, there is nothing in this idea that requires intervening anthropomorphic Gods that throw lightening bolts, cause storms at sea, or cast demons out of human, etc.

But many people reject the idea of calling this kind of reality "God". This is most likely because they simply don't think of a "God" as being anything other than some personified entity like Zeus, Thor, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah, etc.

In other words, if "God" is just another word for conscious experience, then many people simply see no reason to call that "God". For them, if there is no anthropomorphic individual who is totally separate from humans, then there is no "God", even if life itself is an eternal flow of a never-ending stream of consciousness. This still wouldn't be something they would want to call a "God".
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Spiritual Growth - A person's continual assessment
of how well they believe they are doing
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Re: Is God dead?

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Post by marco »

Divine Insight wrote:

I think what Nietzsche was referring to was the view of God as an anthropomorphic entity who actively interacts and intervenes in human affairs. Like Thor being the cause of lightening and thunder, or Poseidon being the cause of storms at sea, etc.

He was possibly thinking that we'd reached the end of philosophical discussion on the nature of God and so we'd entered an age where people could do without the deity. God in the past served a purpose; we hear that he's the provider of good, the great listener, the balm of hurt minds and so on. Sophistication has perhaps pushed all that aside.


Another point is his loss of power. He was able to have witches drowned and heretics burned and until recent times gay men could be hanged, courtesy of biblical advice. In some advanced nations he still has girls stoned to death for sexual improprieties. When man started to think for himself and stopped attributing the seasons to the ceaseless industry of a deity then God lost a bit of his punch, and ultimately, starved of adoration and attention, he just died.


Perhaps it is his corpse that is still honoured today, though in some areas of the world he continues to make corpses of those who don't believe in him.

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Post by The Tanager »

Nietzsche's story of the madman claiming God was dead had at least two parts to it. It was about the claim, that society had done away with belief in God, and that those who did it were not aware of the consequences. He was also claiming that objective meaning and objective morality was dead.

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Re: Is God dead?

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Post by Dimmesdale »

marco wrote: Nietzsche famously said "God is dead." Various meanings have been attached to this saying. Perhaps it means the old gods have gone; or the Christian God is no longer with us; or belief in some absolute that gives us our moral values is no longer accepted.


In what sense might we conclude today that God is dead?

I remember watching a YT video where some Nietzsche experts were basically saying that N was not necessarily saying that rational arguments for God couldn't be, potentially at least, mounted and defended, but that humans have in general simply lost the "taste" for God.

In other words, it isn't so much that reason is now entirely bereft of resources for defending a deity, but that the whole social and philosophical atmosphere, the whole idea of God now, just seems to have overstayed its welcome and become a relic. It's like "who cares?" & who REALLY believes in God these days? Not a whole lot of people. Theoretically it may make sense there could be a God, but practically and existentially, he is, for all intents and purposes, really dead indeed.

I also recall reading an excerpt of Nietzsche where he said, to the effect, that even if the Christian God would show himself, he would be even less inclined to believe in him. That's probably a poor paraphrase but it gives you a sense of how (how shall I put it?) the "notion" of God is so irrelevant to the hour at hand (not even taking into account the 20th century!).

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Re: Is God dead?

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Post by marco »

Dimmesdale wrote:
marco wrote: Nietzsche famously said "God is dead." Various meanings have been attached to this saying. Perhaps it means the old gods have gone; or the Christian God is no longer with us; or belief in some absolute that gives us our moral values is no longer accepted.


In what sense might we conclude today that God is dead?

I remember watching a YT video where some Nietzsche experts were basically saying that N was not necessarily saying that rational arguments for God couldn't be, potentially at least, mounted and defended, but that humans have in general simply lost the "taste" for God.

In other words, it isn't so much that reason is now entirely bereft of resources for defending a deity, but that the whole social and philosophical atmosphere, the whole idea of God now, just seems to have overstayed its welcome and become a relic. It's like "who cares?" & who REALLY believes in God these days? Not a whole lot of people. Theoretically it may make sense there could be a God, but practically and existentially, he is, for all intents and purposes, really dead indeed.

I also recall reading an excerpt of Nietzsche where he said, to the effect, that even if the Christian God would show himself, he would be even less inclined to believe in him. That's probably a poor paraphrase but it gives you a sense of how (how shall I put it?) the "notion" of God is so irrelevant to the hour at hand (not even taking into account the 20th century!).

This is a splendid observation. I think one would be insane to have an actual vision of God and be "less inclined to believe." Poor Nietzsche.

The truth is possibly that as we advance and perform the miraculous ourselves, there is no need to give any credit to God. That itself, of ccourse, could be a dangeous attitude. Hubris always is.

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All philosophical attempts to justify belief in the existence of God run into unresolvable problems with the unfalsifiability of metaphysical claims. In this sense, the search for a way to objectively validate the existence of God has reached a philosophical dead end.

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Post #9

Post by William »

bluegreenearth: All philosophical attempts to justify belief in the existence of God run into unresolvable problems with the unfalsifiability of metaphysical claims. In this sense, the search for a way to objectively validate the existence of God has reached a philosophical dead end.

William: When have ideas of the Metaphysical Universe ever not been unfalsifiable? "Never" is the answer, yet philosophy regarding the subject continues and cannot reach a dead end re the idea of the existence of a creator/creators of the Physical Universe.
The physical can never resolve metaphysical problems because the physical sciences are able to falsify - and the Physical cannot falsify the Metaphysical. It is therefore a dead end in terms of scientific examination, not philosophical thinking. Indeed, it is the very nature of that process which justifies the idea of the existence of a creator/creators of the Physical Universe.

Beliefs which stem from those ideas may appear to be justified, but through careful use of philosophy one is able to shift through those ideas and arrange them in the most orderly fashion, and even change that order if some idea proves more likely than the present one.

My own understanding is that belief in any particular idea of GOD should be able to be examined in the same way and I find the best position to hold in relation to that process is not to believe at all. There should be no reason why belief in any particular idea of GOD is justifiable, far as I can tell.

The only thing physical science can do to actually make theological philosophy a dead end would be if it could find a way to make an individual human life continue indefinitely. Then one could reasonably conclude that there is no requirement for metaphysical philosophy, for such individuals, as the end of death makes a dead end of it. Such would not care about questions of Creators and Afterlife Realms and find philosophical waxing on them superfluous.

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Post by bluegreenearth »

William wrote: bluegreenearth: All philosophical attempts to justify belief in the existence of God run into unresolvable problems with the unfalsifiability of metaphysical claims. In this sense, the search for a way to objectively validate the existence of God has reached a philosophical dead end.

William: When have ideas of the Metaphysical Universe ever not been unfalsifiable? "Never" is the answer, yet philosophy regarding the subject continues and cannot reach a dead end re the idea of the existence of a creator/creators of the Physical Universe.
The physical can never resolve metaphysical problems because the physical sciences are able to falsify - and the Physical cannot falsify the Metaphysical. It is therefore a dead end in terms of scientific examination, not philosophical thinking. Indeed, it is the very nature of that process which justifies the idea of the existence of a creator/creators of the Physical Universe.

Beliefs which stem from those ideas may appear to be justified, but through careful use of philosophy one is able to shift through those ideas and arrange them in the most orderly fashion, and even change that order if some idea proves more likely than the present one.

My own understanding is that belief in any particular idea of GOD should be able to be examined in the same way and I find the best position to hold in relation to that process is not to believe at all. There should be no reason why belief in any particular idea of GOD is justifiable, far as I can tell.

The only thing physical science can do to actually make theological philosophy a dead end would be if it could find a way to make an individual human life continue indefinitely. Then one could reasonably conclude that there is no requirement for metaphysical philosophy, for such individuals, as the end of death makes a dead end of it. Such would not care about questions of Creators and Afterlife Realms and find philosophical waxing on them superfluous.
That was a well articulated response. I agree that the physical sciences are not likely to resolve metaphysical problems, but that wasn't my contention. My response also doesn't deny that philosophical debates over the existence of god do indeed continue. Philosophy can be a useful tool for investigating and ranking conceptual and metaphysical claims. However, philosophical arguments alone can never demonstrate the existence of anything in the reality we all perceive, let alone a metaphysical reality. For that reason, philosophy is a dead end with regards to serving as a mechanism for proving the existence of God even it is still being used to defend belief or disbelief in God.

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