Nietzsche tended to be as harshly critical of much of what philosophy traditionally had been and had become in his time

as he was persuaded of the great importance of philosophy as he practiced it and would have it be; and he was frequently as severe with most of his generally esteemed philosophical predecessors. Nietzsche has a good deal to say about previous thinkers and their views, but finds there to be little to be said for them, and indeed is strongly and sweepingly critical of them. This is so not only where issues relating to morality and value are concerned but also with respect to the interpretation of the worlds and our own fundamental natures. 11 Nietzsche focuses upon a variety of metaphysical hypotheses at the heart of certain traditionally and currently prevalent world-interpretations, theological, philosophical, and natural-scientific. God-hypothesis is the one which is central to the world-interpretation and which exercises him perhaps more than any other. 118 What Nietzsche wants to do is to see that both the very idea of God and the long shadow cast by this idea over much of our ordinary and traditional philosophical thinking are banished. Thus he begins the third book the Gay science by remarking that the abandonment of belief in God is only the first step requiring to be taken: we still have to vanquish his shadow, too and to carry out the de-deification of nature and proceed to naturalize humanity1 This concept gives a particular importance to his treatment of the question of the existence of God. Nietzsches most famous assertion concerning God is his proclamation that God is dead. For him the death of God is the greatest recent event. The most notable mention of this event is in his The Gay Science, in the well-known section of the work bearing the heading The Madman: Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright marning hurs, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: I seek God! I seek God! whither is God? eh cried; I will tell you. We have killed him you and I. all of us are his
1

Nietzsche, 119

murderers. But how did we do this? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto. What Nietzsche is speaking of here is the death of the belief in the existence of God, as a cultural event of profound significance for people who from time immemorial have been accustomed to thinking in terms of a theocentric interpretation of themselves, their lives, values, and reality. It is sometimes suggested that he was not very much concerned about the existence of the God at all. Because, the very act of not believing in a transcendent deity implies the uselessness of a discussion on the existence of God. And we can trace out from his own words that his main concern while speaking about the non-existence of God was the morality of the society and the value of human life. The question of the mere truth of Christianity whether in regard to the existence of its God or the historicity of the legend of its origin. is a matter of secondary importance as long as the question of the value of Christian morality is not considered (WP 251) And That we find no God either in history or in nature or behind nature is not what differentiates us, but that we experience what has been revered as God, not as godlike, but as miserable, as absurd, as harmful, not merely as an error but as a crime against life. (A 47) So his prime concern was the problem of what is to be made of the kind of morality and scale of values associated with belief in the existence of a God. His atheism is tied up with rejection of the moralized God and its moral good.2 For Nietzsche, one who takes the position with respect to his morality and scale of values would presuppose that he is prepared to answer the question on the existence of God negatively; because their tenability and significance cannot be decided independently of it and they come out very differently for one who thinks that the question is to be answered differently. Early Influences

Desomond, God and the Between, 319.

Like Marx and Feuerbach, Nietzsche was convince of the decline and ultimate disappearance of God aas a necessary casualty of the development of science and culture. He acquired most of his early philosophical orientation from the works of Arthu Schopenhauer. He believed that the proinciple of suffiecietn reason, as used both bytherationalists and by Hegel, was unable toestabish the existence of either God or of Absolute Idea, Because it was applied onlyto sensuous objects and to particular sorts of reason, whereas God was conceived of as non-sensuous being and as an absolute reason for things. Kant denied the capacity of the finite mind of man to penetrate the infinite order of being and also to employ the principle of causality to establish Gods existence. But he had retained his theoryof the moral postulate, with God as a sanction for themoral order. Schopenhauer denied this and maintained that the practical reason had the same limitations as he theoretical intellect with regard to the principle ofsufficient reason. However he left ofpen one path toa higher being: the undirected will-to-live, the result of our irrational intuition. This will-to-live could be suppressed only through acts of charity and contemplation, in other words, through practice of an asceticism as is called by Christianity. For Schopenhauer the essential message of Christianity is the denial of the world, both in its sensuous aspects andin its inner will toward the increase of life. For Nietzsche the consequence of this willto-live was utter nothingness and it is around this concept that much of his philosophy is based. The Truth With Nietzsche we cannot speak the truth but can speak only about humanly founded truths. We cannot call a particular truth as really true. No absolute truth corresponding to some rgion of permanent essence exists, because there is no evidence for it. Hence it is meaningless to proclaim the absolute truth of Gods transcendent reality. Human truths perspectives tken on a particular situation for a particular purpose remain many, open to revision, and confined to human projects. This applies also with equal rgor to moral truths. No unversla moral world order or

absolute good exists only the plural goods of human aims with all their finite sanctions.3 Nietzsches Theory of World History To understand nietzsches antitheistic position we must know his theory ofhhistorical refutation, the result of his views on christinaitys own character and history. There are three elements to examine in nietzsches throyr of world history: (1) his awareness of the crisis of the present era. (2) his argument that christiianit is the cause of he crisis. (3) his view of world history as a whole and the position of Christianity within it. The crisis of present era results from the fact that God is dead. Others before him had proclaimed the death of God, but with Nietzsche it is not a mere statement of seeming fact, an expression of personal disbelief, or even a psychological statement about the rise of unbelief. He was simply observing a fact: we were given a choice, and as a result of our preference God is dead. From the fact of Gods death, Nietzsche inveistigates the reasons for His death. Though there are several reasons, the basic ingredienct seems to be the very fact of christiaity, for Christianity destroyed allthe truth by wich man had been living in preChristian times above all, the tragic truth of life as understood by the Greeks before Socrates. As a substitute, Christianity invented mere fictions: sin, grace, imoortality etc. And once men see through these fictions, only ninthingness can remain, for Niihilism is the logical end product of all great human values and ideals. Sicne the spports for the values offered by Christianity are mere fiction, the moment of htier exposure must plunge men into a nothingness such as was never before experience in all human history.4 Nietzsche Inspires Nietzsches antitheistic program embraced two steps: an experimental revision of our view of heing and knowledge, and a dramatic announcement of Gods death.
3 4

Gleason, The Search for God, 52 Gleason, The Search for God, 53

Following the usual pattern of modern atheism set by Feuerbach and Marx, he supplied also a prophetic image of the man of the future. The new philosopher is to be a blend of skeptic, critic and experimenter. Skeptical of all traditions and absolutes of the past, he will apply a fearless scalpel to all unexamined convictions about God. He will not, however, be paralyzed by the indecisiveness of the complete skeptic but will act as a critical moralist, using a scientific method and standard of values. Engaged in intellectual and moral experiments to support his belief concerning the total fluidity of all things, he will be prepared to take a radically new stand toward the world, himself and God. Conclusion God is dead precisely because the inifinite and eternal spirit is exposed as a deadly creation of a human mind. Consequently w must raise the essential question of whether or not worldlyexistece has any intrinsic menaing. Using the figure of the mandman who tries to spread the news of Gods death, Nietzsche criticizes those who areceive the news passively. The death of God means the deliberate eradication of the idea of God and the downfall of the entire system of standards and conduct which certered on that idea. Men who no longer adhere to it are murderes of God. Nietzsche thought of religion as the result of a kind of psychological projection. In certain intense, exceptional states man becomes aware of a great power that is in him. Taken by surprise, he cannot account for these sensations and, not daring to ascribe them to himself, heattributes them to a transcendent God who is wholly other. He thus divides the two aspects of his own nature between two spheres, the weak and piriable aspect belonging to man, therare, strong and surprisieng aspect belonging to God. By his own absurdity man defrauds himself of all that is best within him.5 Nietzsche assumes that God cannot exist anywhere but as a figment of the human mind, to rid ourselves of Him there is no need ot refute the proofs of His existence butmerely to show how such an idea arose and came to be formed in the human mind. In the phrase, the death of God, Nietzsche is expressing a choice as well as a

Gleason, The Search for God, 55

conviction. It is a preference that decides against Christianity. For Nietzsche the death of God is not merely a terrible fact; it is a liberating human option. Nietzsches positive doctrines of the superman and he eternal recurrence of the same events were his deliberate substitutes for theism. By making a godless existence human and meaninglful through a new appreciation of temporal existence he would divert ourhuman tendency to transcend nature. In his myth about temporal becoming there can be gods or particular manifestations of the will-to-power, but not transcendent God; there can be a cycle of recurring events,but no personal and eternal God; there can be self-legislating superman, who stand above the herd of common mortals, but hther is not opportutinity for all men to share in the eternal life of God. Ther result is a situation in which Nietzsche willed passionately tha the grea cosmos of natural becoming should support all our significance and all our human values.