Why did heidegger believe that gods existence was irrelevant...?

Question

to mans existence and their meaning and value of life?

it doesnt make sense.

Answer 1

I think 'irrelevant' is a bit of a strong word overall. It would probably be better to say that it was not first.

Heidegger seemed to think that most of what we know in the world is experiential in nature. We see and touch things and relate to them by how they appear specifically to us. A birthday cake isn't just a collection of chemicals - it's also how it makes us feel.

What he thought was missing in that picture was an essential understanding of our being... what it was at the core that all these things were relating TO. Until we understood the true nature of ourselves, he argued, we could never understand the things around us in a meaningful way. And that includes and diety that might be out there.

So it's not necessarily that the divine is completely irrelevant... just that there is no point exploring such topics until you have to good grounding to explore from. Heidegger himself overly protested that his philosophy was either atheistic or theistic; he seemed to think he was talking about other topics altogether. Link below for explicit discussion of this angle.

Answer 2

He usually doesn't make sense because his writings are way out on a limb or out of the ball park. Man's existence prevailed whether or not there was a god or other deity that influenced values. Many humans existed without the deity concept therefore rendering the existence of one irrelevant.

Answer 3

I'm not sure this was Heidegger's reasoning, but I think the same is true. Hume made very powerful arguments for why a deity would not fall within an empirical domain. This implies that there is no phenomena that requires a deity to explain, which means there ism no reason to posit a deity. No definite effect in space/time, no relevance to humanity.