The Death of God

[Gangleri]

I'm putting this into symbols and allegories, since I think we are speaking of an allegory of sorts, when we speak of the death of God. What do you think we speak of when we speak of the death of God? Are we speaking metaphorically about the inevitable cultural change according to the star signs, where a given culture and civilization goes through a millenial transformation from one form into another? What I mean is that when the culture and Civilization changes and transforms (according to a heavenly and sidereal pattern In think), the God of the former culture dies and there is a major moral-intellectual-spiritual change in the development of human civilization. I just quoted Nietzsche, and it reminded how he mentioned that the True God of metaphysics has not died (and this is funny since NIetzsche didn't value metaphysics), only the "moral God" that has been developed in Christendom during the 1900 years.

[Nefastos]

What do you think we speak of when we speak of the death of God? Are we speaking metaphorically about the inevitable cultural change according to the star signs, where a given culture and civilization goes through a millenial transformation from one form into another? What I mean is that when the culture and Civilization changes and transforms (according to a heavenly and sidereal pattern In think), the God of the former culture dies and there is a major moral-intellectual-spiritual change in the development of human civilization.

This.

I think that this poetic expression – the death of God – has gotten a bit out of hand, like so many other Nietzschean quotes. That God really should be in quotation marks. But psychologically we understand that they are precisely such paradoxes which seem attractive to people, and stick to use. In this, the death of God follows the ancient custom of God-killing as a special form of holiness, witnessed in Christianity as well as in other religions. Such a death of God in hence nothing new, but of course for a Christian listener, it seems horrible – for he never suspects his Christ following this exactly same pattern, following in the footsteps of Osiris, Dionysos, Lemminkäinen.

And thus the resurrection of God will happen as certainly.

The whole problem therefore comes from the monotheism of a personalized godhood, which is a super problematic concept from the beginning. Everyone can see how a "death of god" is understandable, where "death of God" just shows that that God had clearly been a mistaken concept.

[Kavi]

This is used quite frequently myself including and it is nice that people correct the most blatant simplifications and misunderstandings.

I think nothing happened to God but my focus could be in, I must feel, in human beings, anthropocene and animals and plants.
I understand that secular atheistic worldview might be seen as profane but especially because of that I think there could be something "kenotic" that is not really that far away from actual potentiality of resurrection of God. What would fellow people think about that?

Nietzsche is not familiar to me but I must read one day Antichrist and especially Beyond Good and Evil.
I think same goes with Sartre and Camus.
Because I have attitude that I will not gain anything reading them, I feel I must act contrary to my emotional reaction.
I have felt that Dostoevsky and generally contemporary zeitgeist as the most awakening experience.

It was so nice experience once as I paraphrased Dostoevsky's descriptions of Prince Myshkin's epileptic seizures in "Idiot" and the feedback I got from it was so vehement, about silliness in it and so on and I agree it is silly.

I feel similarly that there is form of apophatic thinking in the works that go beyond the rationality and silliness dichotomy. In same way underground-man can be seen as person descending to Hell while carrying the cross of consciousness that weights so much that while atmic direction could be pointing upwards, it is necessity to descend into the soil.
Of course Underground-man fails in the story but there is form of salvation to be found when viewed between the lines.

[Wyrmfang]

The death of God is one of Nietzsche´s key conceptions, and, I would argue, one of the key ideas in modern philosophy in general. It is more radical than usually thought. Nietzsche´s main target is not the Christian God but any unificatory reference point beyond the human life world (later referred to by Lacan as the "big Other" etc.). Nietzsche well recognizes how challenging it is if such a reference point would indeed vanish. It does not entail the "vanishing of all meaning". To the contrary, there would rather be an excess of meanings without a common reference point.

More upfront to the point, Nietzsches´s main target is precisely any conception of "God behind gods", including our present mainstream post-Christian humanist ideas. And obviously also those anti-humanist ideas which assume some extra-human reference point such as "race", "nature" etc.

Nietzsche himself was well aware of the fundamental nature of his argument; perhaps his actual fate (losing his mind when seeing an ignorant master ruthlessly beating his horse) could be seen as not being able to succumb to his own idea.

For me, Nietzshce is one of the great challenges in the history of thought, something harrowing that cannot be honestly "overcome" but to which I want to find ways to oppose.

[Gangleri]

Nietzsche's whole production is a confusion between the sacred and the profane. In other places he longs for the transcendent eternities like a mad believer, at others he exalts the earth and the flesh and the ruthless will to power. He clearly had the same kind of experiences than many religious believers, but his whole being rejected his own intuitions. I think it was Evola who suggested that Nietzsche's meltdown was because something transcendent had activated in his nerves and tissues, but the man Nietzsche couldn't bear it; madness follows if there is something that resists the impulse from above in one's being.