Thank you for writing. I have come to understand that “The kind of religious certainty available to pre-moderns is unavailable to us; we have been permanently alienated from it” is what Nietzsche was referring to with his death of God statement, rather than some atheistic call to arms. Is that correct?
I think so. I definitely think Nietzsche was an athiest in the sense he did not believe in some personal creator of the universe, but I think his statement was more about how that entire locus of meaning wasn't really accessible to us anymore. The biggest proponents of religion today are the biggest athiests; most people who offer religion offer it *as a solution*; it has become a cope, a tool, the kind of naive experience of the divine available to the Homeric Greek or the medieval German or whatever just isn't a realistic option for most of us today. At the very least it isn't that easy anymore.
Thank you for writing. I have come to understand that “The kind of religious certainty available to pre-moderns is unavailable to us; we have been permanently alienated from it” is what Nietzsche was referring to with his death of God statement, rather than some atheistic call to arms. Is that correct?
I think so. I definitely think Nietzsche was an athiest in the sense he did not believe in some personal creator of the universe, but I think his statement was more about how that entire locus of meaning wasn't really accessible to us anymore. The biggest proponents of religion today are the biggest athiests; most people who offer religion offer it *as a solution*; it has become a cope, a tool, the kind of naive experience of the divine available to the Homeric Greek or the medieval German or whatever just isn't a realistic option for most of us today. At the very least it isn't that easy anymore.