IS GOD DEAD ? 1/ ….

Humanity, might well pause these days when the hot flames of hell, by a peculiar paradox, is fanning a cold war of prejudice and hate. Without knowing it, modern man, has in practice, accepted the theory of Nietzsche: ‘God is dead’. This death of God is not a physical demise, due to being nailed to the cross. It is much less dramatic. It means simply that the idea of God has disappeared among men.

He is only a ‘survival’, a ‘remnant’ ‘a souvenier’ of other days, according to some misbehaviourists. God is dead means He can be ignored, as one ignores the necessity of a horse and buggy for transportation because the automobiles have taken their place. The new vehicle for progress is “humanity’.

Atheism has moved from the intellectual plane, where it was a century ago, to the existential plane; from the level of proving atheism to the living it. From the non-existence of God to the existence of humanity. Atheism has produced a new god, namely ‘Man’. The position of Marx and Engels, the founders of Communism, is that man has transferred to God, qualities and attributes which really had belonged to man, such as knowing all things, possessing power to do all things, unlimited compassion, infinite love and torrential mercy. Man, they argue, has destroyed his nature by this transfer of attributes to God, thus he emptied himself.

The only way he can ever be himself is to take back those attributes, powers, which really belonged to him. Then will be ushered into the world that humanism in which Man is god, and not a mere man. Atheism then becomes not the denial of God but the affermation of Man. Marx wrote at the end of his thesis for the Ph.D.: “I hate all the gods, and I hate them because they do not recognize Man as Supreme Divinity.” /2…..

Adapted from Fulton J.Sheen