THE DEATH OF GOD IN MODERN THOUGHT

Intellectual thought since Nietzsche has found itself one way or another addressing the death of God. Most of this thinking, however, has taken place from an atheistic starting point and has not considered its own presuppositions. It strives to find consistent outworking from these presuppositions and to eradicate the shadow of God carried over from the Enlightenment tradition because of its grounding in a theistic worldview. However, the outcome and implications of thinking after the death of God has been found hideous and many attempts have been made to transcend the absurdity there.

THE DEATH OF GOD

    Nietzsche proclaimed in The Gay Science, "God is dead: but given the way men are, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.-- And we -- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too."[1] The death he witnessed was the tide of atheism that has dominated science and philosophy since his time. This atheism invariably comes from one of two different backgrounds: Enlightenment science and Enlightenment morality.

    One of the major products of the Enlightenment was science. As humans were deprived of their previous significance as children of God in the center of the universe, human knowledge was elevated and empirical science became enthroned as the greatest realization of human knowing. As a result, metaphysical knowledge was pushed aside in favor of strict empiricism. God and Christianity were not so much denied as pushed aside, first into deism, which removed him from the world without clashing too much with Western culture, and then all the way into atheism. For the most part, atheism that comes from this perspective has not been bothered by its own implications, yet it has become very widely accepted because of the continuous secularization of the modern world.

    The second type of atheism is much more rare. It is based on a moral denial of God, and usually carries a much deeper understanding of the implications of his absence. It is stated best by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, through the character Ivan Karamazov who takes issue with God over the suffering of innocent children and declares that since he cannot understand or forgive injustice he will reject God, preferring to stand with the wicked rather than accept the suffering as part of his Lord's perfect plan. Camus seems to advocate this form of atheism too in the section on metaphysical rebellion in The Rebel and also in The Plague, where the protagonist, Dr. Rieux, concludes, "since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence" (117-118). This form of rebellion, the denial of God even if He does exist, is much more logical and coherent than the atheistic assumptions of science, but both rest on Enlightenment presuppositions.

THE PRESUPPOSITIONAL NATURE OF MODERN ATHEISM

    It is easy to see that scientific atheism is assumed as a presupposition rather than established as some sort of conclusion. The empiricism that Enlightenment science stressed so much is incapable of proving or disproving the metaphysical existence of God, but it has displaced Him as irrelevant and assumed atheism as a result. So, the type of atheism which originates in science is the result of a presupposition of empiricism and, since it can not metaphysically disprove God, it ends up with an assumption that God does not exist. This in turn becomes the presupposition of further discourse.

    Moral atheism, on the other hand, claims a rational, moral argument against belief in God. It has been a matter of great concern for me and I do not think I understand the problem fully, but it seems that the arguments of Dr. Rieux and Ivan Karamazov are still grounded in Enlightenment presuppositions about justice and human rights that are at odds with the Biblical view. First of all, the rebel is judging God, a very dubious endeavor indeed. If God is real then whatever he does is inherently good and man can have no basis for judging him to be unjust. Job, who suffered as an innocent, says of God, "But how can a mortal be righteous before God? Though one wished to dispute with him, he could not answer him one time out of a thousand," (Job 9:2-3, NIV) and, "How then can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy" (Job 9:14-15, NIV). In the end, God speaks to Job from the storm and tells him how God is Almighty God and Job is not.

    Though the moral rationale for this type of atheism seems compelling, it is only because it builds from Enlightenment presuppositions about human rights and justice which every good child of the modern world holds. Ivan assumes that innocent human beings have an intrinsic right to not suffer. Rieux also believes that human suffering is either fundamentally unjust or incomprehensibly just. But is the right of the 'pursuit of happiness' really inaliable? Where does it come from?

    If the Christian God does exist and has created human beings, suffering need not be only a punishment for sin. The Bible certainly presents it differently, because innocent people suffer much (i.e. Job, Christ) and it is obvious that men do not receive the just reward for their actions on this earth.[2] Suffering is a part of existence and God has no obligation to keep the innocent from it. In fact, perseverance through suffering has the capacity to make us more wise and beautiful and the value of the change in our being is worth the passing experience of pain.[3]

    Camus, especially, seems to have a strange view of justice based, and seems to get grace and justice mixed up because of his assumptions about human rights. He proposes that suffering is unjust and based on grace, which is arbitrary in its decision about who to save. In addition, healing is based on justice because it serves humanity equally, without favoritism. This conception of grace and justice is the basis of Rieux's denial of God and Camus' system of metaphysical rebellion. From a biblical standpoint, however, no human being implicitly deserves anything from God except judgment and death. Grace, however, is shown in God's love for all, and the command for the Jew and Christian to love others without favoritism toward the righteous. The Christian in Rieux's position can and must fight the plague not because every human deserves to live and not suffer, but because God has commanded us to be like Christ and spread grace and healing whenever we can.

    Lastly, morally based atheism is somewhat of an oxymoron. The one who judges God on the basis of a moral system ends up in Ivan Karamazov's strange position, where he realizes that if God does not exist, everything is permitted (morality is meaningless), yet if God does exist he is to be morally condemned and denied. The moral atheist absolutizes morality in order to judge and deny God, and then finds all grounds for absolute morality swept from under his feet.

    So, a vital key to understanding intellectual thought after the death of God is a clear grasp of where the death of God came from and what presuppositions underlie it. Thinking since Nietzsche has for the most part gone along one of two lines: the eradication of the shadow of God and the struggle to live with the implications of the Godless worldview. Keeping the presuppositions behind the death of God in mind, let us explore these two movements.

VANQUISHING THE SHADOW OF GOD

    The Enlightenment, since it arose from a Christian framework, carried many assumptions about the world that relied upon Christian ideas. The project of eradicating the ghost of Christianity from modern thought had to be extended to eradicating the ghost of the Enlightenment. It is interesting how long many of the presuppositions of Christianity and the Enlightenment have lingered despite all attempts to transcend them.

    Nietzsche developed the implications of atheism more than anyone. He was one of the first to analyze morality, ontology and language from a consistently atheistic standpoint. Though he broke with the Enlightenment tradition more drastically than any, his presupposition of atheism implied an objective knowledge of metaphysics. He seems to have dismissed Christianity completely as a product of another era, and he assumes atheism as the scientists did, out of the unnecessity of God. Consequently, all of his thinking happens beyond the question of God's existence. His arguments about origins of morality and religion are plausible, but can be valid only if God does not exist. Thus, he makes an implicit metaphysical assumption about the universe that is still firmly grounded in Enlightenment dreams of human knowledge.

    The psychology of Sigmund Freud represents another significant step in the eradication of the shadow of God in modern consciousness, specifically in terms of what human beings are and what motivates them. His scientific ambition is blatantly grounded in Enlightenment ideas about empiricism and rationalism, but he did a lot to question and dispel notions about human motivation and morality that were still tainted by the Christian position. He separated morality, which he saw solely as social norms (superego), and instinctual drive, which he saw focused exclusively on selfish, erotic love (id), from the acting self (ego). His system also maintained that human beings were constantly in conflict between their subconscious desires and the demands of reality. This separation replaced Christian ideas about multifaceted desires and absolute morality, and led to a cheapening of human significance. Freud unmasked the hidden machinations of human action and thought, and he explained us as frustrated mechanistic animals who could hope for nothing but a way to cope with our thwarted desires. In doing so he extended the implications of atheism, and dispelled Enlightenment holdovers about the nature of humanity. His atheism, like Nietzsche's, was presupposed, and his analysis of the human psyche, like Nietzsche's genealogy of morality, is plausible but dependent on his presupposition of atheism.

    Nietzsche made great breaks from the Enlightenment and Freud realized more fully some of the implications of atheism on human motivation, but it was Jean-Paul Sartre who most chillingly and accurately painted the implications of a world without God. His Nausea is the diary of Antoine Roquentin, who finds himself confronted and horrified by his sheer existence. At the climax of his crisis, seated at the foot of a chestnut tree, Roquentin realizes the absurdity, freedom, meaninglessness and nakedness of everything ,

    I was no longer in Bouville, I was nowhere, I was floating. I was not surprised, I knew it was the World, the naked World suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at this gross, absurd being. You couldn't even wonder where all that sprang from, or how it was that a world came into existence, rather than nothingness. It didn't make sense, the World was everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before it. Nothing. There had never been a moment in which it could not have existed. That was what worried me: of course there was no reason for this flowing larva to exist. But it was impossible for it is not to exist. It was unthinkable: to imagine nothingness you had to be there already, in the midst of the World, eyes wide open and alive; nothingness was only an idea in my head, an existing idea floating in this immensity: this nothingness had not come before existence, it was an existence like any other and appeared after many others. I shouted `filth! what rotten filth!' and shook myself to get rid of this sticky filth, but it held fast and there was so much, tons and tons of existence, endless: I stifled at the depths of this immense weariness (134).

He sums up his realization on the page before: "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance" (133).

    Roquentin's epiphany represents a final admission of meaningless, contingent, absurd, discursive existence. It is the logical and inevitable conclusion of atheistic naturalism. Sartre has still not completely rid himself of the shadow of the Enlightenment, however, because he asserts the objective and metaphysical truth that there is nothing besides existence. His very presupposition of atheism is grounded in the theistic presupposition that says metaphysical things can be understood and known.

    Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre all realized some of the implications of their thought for language, and their thinking about language has been continued through to the deconstructionists. In accordance with their common presupposition of naturalism, the deconstructionists have been exploring the problem of language without metaphysical correspondence. However, there is still a quite rigorous denial of metaphysical forms. They end up distributing the position of meaning in language so much that it cannot be held down. Like Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre, the deconstructionists contribute to the nothingness and despair of atheism. The result is uncommunicatible, absurd, mechanistic subjective existence.

LIVING WITH THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE DEATH OF GOD

    Sartre and Freud's thought had enormous repercussions on all areas of the modern world as their ideas seeped through all areas of life. The most profound demonstration of their thought, however, was found in the totalitarian governments of Germany and Russia in the years before and during World War II. There were undoubtedly other places where totalitarian ideas had influence, such as America during McCarthyism, but the political machines of Hitler and Stalin are the most dramatic examples. Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism provides an invaluable analysis of the causes and background of totalitarianism.

    Totalitarianism arises from a social environment where there are masses of identity-less individuals. The masses after World War I began to feel the self-alienation that Freud talked about and the profound philosophical despair of Sartre. The government offered escape to the individual because it authored a great lie, creating and maintaining a contentless illusion of reality. This lie became the new absolute for a people who were alienated from themselves and each other by modernization. The government took advantage of this and increased the alienation as it systematically killed off any claim to rights, morality or identity that transcended the state. Every citizen became a murderer with the state and partook of the grand vision of the future which it set up in place of God.

    Totalitarianism demonstrated vividly the realization of atheistic amorality. To Ivan Karamazov's "everything is permitted" was added "everything is possible." Totalitarian movements in both countries sought total domination over humanity by making it plain to everyone that life was as superfluous as Sartre saw that it was. The insane murder these regimes committed was a logical combination of the destruction of morality of Nietzsche, the frustrated hedonism of Freud and the utter despair and meaninglessness of Sartre.

    The implications of atheism had personal consequences as well. The despair that Roquentin realized is impossible to live with. It requires either death or honest existence, with no possible guide to action except, possibly, hedonism. It is impossible for human beings to live without hope, meaning or identity for long, and Sartre himself found himself signing on with the Marxists, embracing Enlightenment ideals of innate human rights (such as the right not to be oppressed) once again. Even the fictional character Roquentin cannot live consistently with his revelation. He has to choose, so he chooses to write books that people can believe in, inventing his own meaning, however hollow he knows it is, to escape the horror of meaninglessness.

    Intellectual thought after the death of God focused mostly on elaborating the implications of atheism. The outcome, though, was horrific, and thinkers began to look for escape from it. To the extent that they held their Enlightenment ideas of metaphysical atheism, however, they failed to be consistent in their escape.

THE STRUGGLE TO ESCAPE THE ABSURD

    Heidegger was one of the first to propose a more positive system, but his apparent submission to and approval of Nazism is confusing, as are his ties with the church and theology. He provided a critique of Sartre, however, in his emphasis on personal subjectivity and rejection of universalism. Sartre still held onto Enlightenment-inspired knowledge about the metaphysical nature of the universe and expected his revelatory truth to apply to everyone. Heidegger, in contrast, emphasized the necessity of possibilities and living authentically and proposed a system of ethics based, implicitly, on aesthetics: each human is to allow everything being to achieve its ownmost possibilities and work in harmony together. However, this sort of morality is inadequate because it is completely subjective and offers no reason for the one with power to be moral-- everything is still permitted and possible, if one is willing to be ugly.

    Albert Camus offers another system for escaping meaninglessness and its incarnation of radical evil in the totalitarian state. His is based on an irrational and involuntary personal rebellion against evil. He presupposes, then, ideas about morality and absolutizes them in place of God, in opposition to the traditional view which absolutized God over morality (as in Abraham's call to sacrifice Isaac). Though he has no grounds for his morality, Camus comes far in escaping the lingering metaphysics of the Enlightenment. He rebels; this much he knows. If he would only resist the temptation to deduce a metaphysical position of atheism from this physical fact! Once he has accepted atheism and absurdity, he destroys all possible objective moorings for morality and is left with an irrational leap of faith as the basis of his life. His analysis of intellectual thought is brilliant, and his profound concern about evil and injustice is obvious. But his morality, since it is based on his personal experience of rebellion, cannot possibly carry an imperative for anyone else unless they share that same experience. So, it is completely relative to the individual; the one in power has no reason to rebel and most often blinds his sense of rebellion because of personal gain from evil.

    Habermas has been the most interesting and convincing thinker, to me, to propose an escape from absurdity. The reason is that he has a clear grasp of the way our metaphysical presuppositions affect the way we can understand things, and because he strenuously denies metaphysical claims and concentrates on empirical facts. He sees that human beings do communicate, and that we understand certain things to be rational and others to be irrational. He thus supplies a pragmatic basis for discussion and argument, with the hope of finding consensus, based on "the intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims" (??). His treatment of objective truth about the world rejects the leap from facts to metaphysical theories and reminds us that humans have only limited understanding of the world they live in, based on their best guesses about all the available evidence. So, Habermas successfully escapes despair and establishes a basis for rational discussion only by throwing atheism (and other metaphysics) out the window and concentrating, very scientifically, on the information that is readily available.

CONCLUSION

    "The main question, which has tormented me consciously or unconsciously throughout my entire life-- the existence of God."     --Dostoevsky in a letter to Maikov, 1870[4]

    Modern intellectual thought has focused incessantly on the problems and implications of the death of God. It has done so, however, by presupposing atheism without proving it by any means. I have to agree with Dostoevsky that the existence of God is the most important question in the world, because our presuppositional position on it affects the entirety of our thought about other things. Thought of this century has dealt with the implications of atheism with genius and honesty, but it has for the most part been unable to completely escape Enlightenment rationalism with its presupposition that metaphysics can be known objectively and exhaustively by human beings. The pragmatic rationalism of Habermas provides an auspicious postmodern beginning for discussing the problem of God again.

[1] page 191 in our book.

[2] see Psalm 13, Ecclesiastes 8:14, Job 21:7-21.

[3] James says, "we consider blessed those who have persevered" (James. 5:11a, NIV).

[4] The Brothers Karamazov, p. xiii.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. New York: Vintage/Random House 1989.

Camus, Albert. The Plague. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1980.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. New York: New Directions 1969.

Habermas, J. Class handout.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Bantam 1981.