Nietzche's Proclamation

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a fundamental ingredient in the

reevaluation of values Nietzsche advocated. This proclamation emerged from his conviction

that the morality of mediocrity and affirmations of God's existence, especially as the latter are

understood in Christianity, stand inextricably tied together. Nothing, argued Nietzsche, has

done more than Christianity to entrench the morality of mediocrity in human consciousness. In

Nietzsche's view, for example, the Christian emphasis on love extols qualities of weakness.

Christianity urges that it is our responsibility to cultivate those attributes, not because of an

abstract concept of duty but because it is God's will that we do so. As this conception

developed, Nietzsche argued, it bound people in debilitating guilt. It also led them to an

escapist tendency to seek for fulfillment beyond this world.

Arguably one-sided, Nietzsche's critique was loud and clear: Christianity, with its

conception of a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient, just, and loving God, denies and

negates too much that is valuable in this world. Nietzsche did not deny that the long dominance

of the Christian faith is a real manifestation of the will to power and that certain individuals

have revealed unusual qualities of strength in establishing Christianity's authority. He was

convinced, however, that the result has been to place an inferior breed in control of life.

Nietzsche believed that, by proclaiming that God is dead, he would eliminate the underpinning

of Christian morality, thus making it less difficult to move beyond the conventional

understanding of good and evil.

The issue of God's existence, believed Nietzsche, is more psychological than

metaphysical. That is, Nietzsche thought that belief in God is an additional tool used to distort

the facts of life and to attack and to bring to submission individuals of noble character. His aim

was not so much to prove or disprove the existence of God as to show that belief in God can

create a sickness. He wanted to convince people that the highest achievements in human life

depend on the elimination of this belief.

Contrary to Nietzsche, during our discussion of the existence of God in class, we came to

the conclusion that God does exist, or some extraordinary power out there that is in control of

events in our lives thus leading to the creation of religion. Most religions teach or attribute the

things we are not in control of to this "deity". Religion thereby defines human existence by

being a mechanism for humans to deal with the harsh outside world. Religion has also helped

define the difference between right and wrong through the use of a set of rules and

regulations with which human beings as a whole should live and abide by. These include but are

not limited to the Ten Commandments -which are the basis for Christianity and most laws in

most parts of the world.

The field of study called Psychology of Religion came up with 7 elemental conditions

that characterize human existence. Nietzsche's proclamation that "God is dead" dramatically

changes the foundation of the meaning of human existence because he removes the concept of

the existence of God. There are many different religions in the world today, with different

beliefs on God's existence, however, the pursuit is all the same. For the purposes of this paper, I

will only refer to Christianity. Using the seven elemental conditions that characterize the

collective experience of the human race below, I will therefore attempt to elaborate how the

removal of the concept of God alters how