What is the significance of "God is Dead"?

Question

Nietzsche's phrase was interpreted by Heidegger as meaning "Metaphysics is dead." Nietzsche's writings are too concerned with God for him to really believe God is gone, what was his intention?

Answer 1

Eleventy nailed it. I would add that Nietzsche wanted to emphasize that we think we have "outgrown" God, but there's reason to think he was being ironic -- that he was pointing out our hubris in our modernism more than denying God's existence.

Answer 2

Yes, it is about the "concept of God" that Nietzsche argues against. And not just any concept, but a very specific concept. For Nietzche, "God" means Schopenhauer's God: the all-pervasive Will.

'Schopenhauer did not believe that people had individual wills but were rather simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe: that the feeling of separateness that each of has is but an illusion. So far this sounds much like the Spinozistic view or the Naturalistic School of philosophy. The problem with Schopenhauer, and certainly unlike Spinoza, is that, in his view, "the cosmic will is wicked ... and the source of all endless suffering." '
-http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Schopenhauer.htm

You can understand, if you read Nietzsche, how his main purpose is to assert the primacy of the individual will, that Schopenhauer's God is antithetical to everything Nietzche stands for. Nietzsche doesn't argue against any and every concept of God, but against one which was pervasive in his society at the time. Much like many atheists on R&S argue solely against the Fundamentalist Christian conception of God.

Peace to you.

Answer 3

Nietzsche meant God's accessibility to the modern mind was at an end. Modern thought was no longer dependent on deity, and after the philosophical upheavals of the revolutionary period in Europe, the metaphysical yearnings of the Romantic period, and the Nationalism of the post-1848 period, the applicability of God as he had been in daily life was fast drawing to a close.

Nietzsche more or less prophesied the 1870 fall of the temporal power.

Answer 4

"Gott is tot" means the concept of God is no longer useful when finding meaning in life.

[edit] Jon M's right (not just because he agreed with me)... Nietzsche probably meant God is useless from our perspective.

Answer 5

we breach that
Jesus die for our sin
and rose from the dead
and save us.
1 Co. 15 :3- 22
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.
6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

9For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
The Resurrection of the Dead
12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.
16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.
17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Answer 6

"Nietzsche's dead."

Answer 7

It's a big lie