Issue 15 - God is Dead
Apologetics
“God is dead.” The phrase is, I think, one of the most widely misunderstood ideas among American Christians (spawning defiant retorts that “God’s not dead” and generating movies about cocky atheist philosophy professors learning this lesson the hard way). But I think that it’s a true statement in its original formulation, and I think embracing this statement is actually a powerful apologetic tool that we should pick up and wield.
Friedrich Neitzsche, who introduced the idea, did not believe that God was a literal entity that could die. The point of his statement that God is dead (which was uttered by a madman in his original telling) is that for centuries, the Western world had been anchored in an explicitly Christian morality. As Enlightenment ideas replaced automatic belief in a transcendent God with atheistic materialism, this eliminated the foundation of that morality. Neitzsche argued that because of this, we are free to create our own morality - something that the people of his era had not yet fully realized (thus, in his parable, the people going about their lives as if God was still alive - as if Christian morality was still on solid ground - perceived as a madman the one person who realized God was dead). [Disclaimer - nothing in this paragraph is my original thought. But this explanation is also sufficiently widespread that I don’t have a specific citation of a single source that taught it to me. I’ll give credit to my own cocky atheist philosophy professor who first introduced me to the idea, as an invited guest of a Christian club on campus.]
The reason I say this idea is true is not because I believe that atheistic materialism is correct, but because I believe the idea provides a correct assessment of our society: we have replaced reflexive belief in God with a fundamentally materialist worldview. I also think Neitzsche accurately diagnoses what the situation would be if there is no God: without God, morality is whatever we say it is. C.S. Lewis made this point nicely in Mere Christianity when he noted that without a transcendent morality, there would be no frame of reference to say the Nazis were the villains in World War 2 - the fight would’ve been over a mere difference of opinion, not a clash of right versus wrong. Here’s Israeli professor and author Yuval Hurari making the same point, that what we view as human rights don’t actually exist (according to his materialist worldview).
This is closely related to the Moral Argument for God’s existence. The basic statement of the Moral Argument is:
Objective moral laws can only exist if God exists.
Objective moral laws do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
But what I am arguing is to flip the argument and make skeptics confront the implications of unbelief.
Objective moral laws can only exist if God exists
You don’t believe God exists
Therefore, all the moral rules you feel so strongly about don’t exist
Think about our society today. People are obsessed with justice and rights - and many don’t believe in God. Think racial justice is important? Without God, you lose all authority to call the KKK the bad guys. Think it’s bad to bully or even kill disabled people? According to who? Many cultures throughout history promoted it. Assert your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Only until a more powerful faction or overwhelming majority decides that those rights maybe aren’t necessary anymore.
And this applies not just to morality, but to other ideals like love and beauty. Something that I enjoy is reading the YouTube comments on songs I find particularly moving or enjoyable. I would encourage you to do it sometime. The language people use to describe the emotions they experience listening to music is, itself, quite moving.
This raises a question. Do our feelings of transcendence in the face of certain songs or sights reflect the actual existence of a transcendent reality, or does it boil down to the same meaningless stimulus-response of a hand jerking away involuntarily from a hot stove?
I have no doubt that other religions are false, but atheism is a worldview that can tempt me into doubt. One of the reasons I am a believer is not just based on my confidence that God exists, but my certainty in the existence of other things that would not exist without God. Or as CS Lewis put it: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”
I am as certain of my love for my family as I am of my own existence. I am certain that some sights and sounds must serve as reflections of a true beauty that exists outside the material world. I am certain that events like the Holocaust were truly evil, and that things like the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade were truly righteous. If my perception of these things is really false, then I can’t trust my thoughts or perceptions about anything.
This line of reasoning does not prove that God exists. But if you are challenged by a skeptic to defend the existence of God, you can counter by asking them to defend the existence of right and wrong, the existence of love, or beauty. If they don’t believe the implications of God’s death - that it’s okay to oppress the poor, the widows, the orphans, if only enough people agree to it; that the love for their spouse or child is just an illusion of evolved chemical processes and not real in any meaningful way; that nothing they ever do in life bears any lasting significance - then they can’t really claim to be materialist atheists. And if you can make someone realize they aren’t an atheist, you may help to open the door for an encounter with the one, true, eternal God - who was, and is, and is to come.