Is God Dead?

Painting: 'Pieta' by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

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Remember the last time when we talked about a walking stick? The stick that helps God to walk. In the absence of which God would have felt helpless. The stick is nothing but 'Luck'. You may also call it 'Fate' or 'Destiny'. It is something that cannot be defined. Wait! Actually the reverse is true. Something that cannot be defined or explained using our rational thoughts is termed as 'Luck' or 'Fate' or 'Destiny’.

Earlier we discussed about how we human beings are obsessed with explaining things. However, this multiverse is far more complex than what our tiny brains can even imagine. It seems like a Herculean task for us to understand this multiverse in its entirety, to find a pattern and to explain it using our rational thoughts. And whatever we cannot explain doesn’t let us sleep. It haunts us in our dreams and thoughts. It leads us into a situation of uncertainty which is against our very own fundamental principle that we believe in – that we have complete control on our own life. Just think about an imaginary situation in which you have been diagnosed with a life threatening disease that has no known cure. What will you feel? Is it not true that within a few moments your life will be pushed into a situation of uncertainty which you can neither understand nor explain? This uncertainty will give rise to fear and to escape from this fear where will you go? If you are a theist you have only one refuge. That is God. And if you are not then you will blame the walking stick. That is Destiny.

So who is God actually? God is the one who is born out of our fear, out of our ignorance, out of our incapacity to understand and explain things. German Philosopher Philipp Mainländer wrote in his famous treatise 'Die Philosophie der Erlösung' that 'God has died and his death was the life of the world'. Nietzsche used the phrase 'God is Dead' in his phenomenal work 'The Gay Science' to sum up the consequences that the Age of Enlightenment had on our civilization. What both of them believed is that relinquishing the belief in God will open up the way for human creative abilities to fully develop. That it will be a triumph of scientific rationality over sacred revelation.

But what I believe is that both of them were absolutely wrong. God is not dead. He is alive. He still lives in our ignorance, nourishes in our fear and thrives in our incapacity to understand and explain things. God is not our support system to which we can cling to. Rather he is the one who has crippled us. He is the one who is not letting us to walk freely and without fear. I believe that man can only stand upright if he is standing above the burial ground of God. And I plead that it is now high time. The time to Kill God!

Until Next Time,

Ashutosh