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God Is Dead: A Misunderstood phrase - Religion - Nairaland

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God Is Dead: A Misunderstood phrase by EZEIGBO1OFIMO: 11:40am On Dec 08, 2018
It is not unusual for Christians to point to the demise of Nietzsche due to his infamous "God is dead" sentence as a cautionary tale to atheist. But this quote as attributed to Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood, and misappropriated sentences today (even leading to a God is Not dead movie).
To fully understand Nietzsche, we need to see the full passage from which the sentence was extracted stated below

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. ...

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? 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."

As is very evident, the passage is a fictional anecdote, which definitely doesn't point to the death of an omnipotent christian being, instead it vividly describes the death of christian values which was sweeping through Europe at the end of the nineteenth century; the unholy marriage of the church and the state; and the bitter mix of nationalism. Europe could no longer claim their christian heritage, for in their actions, they had destroyed their godly values, and inherently killed god, and this left them with a void. Somehow, this also aptly describes Nigeria, and Nigerians, we claim to worship God, but in fact God is also dead here, because we have murdered him with our own hands.

Nietzsche ends the passage with this
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
with 100 thousand seater churches and poverty capital gold medalist of the world alongside corruption champions, the Nigerian God's rests in peace also in our monumental chapels.

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Re: God Is Dead: A Misunderstood phrase by SEGLIZ: 11:51am On Dec 08, 2018
.............
Re: God Is Dead: A Misunderstood phrase by Nobody: 12:57pm On Dec 08, 2018
hmmmmm

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