Article Review On God Existed Until Man Killed Him

Nietzsche’s mad man is sounding an alarm that man is losing his faith. More and more men stop believing in God or believe that God does not exist. Nietzsche is not questioning God’s existence, rather why man has chosen to deny God or to kill God.
Man’s loss of faith may be a result of the rapid industrialization and urbanization of society. Man is beginning to be able to conquer more and more things, even nature itself. This kind of thinking may have been spawned by the industrial revolution sweeping Europe during Nietzshe’s time.
The mad man asks non-believers if God has abandoned. The answer is apparently no. Non-believers chose not to believe any more. In a way, they killed God when they lost their faith. They lost their moral sense. They are suffering as a result.
When Nietzsche asks if the non-believer smell the ‘putrefaction’ of the decaying body of God whom they killed, he seems to be alluding to the moral decay spreading all over. Since man has lost his moral sense, he has lost his direction. He is wandering about in all directions, not knowing which way to go or which way is right. He has lost the light that guides him.
In the process of separating ourselves from God, we have drifted away from Him as though the earth had drifted away from the Sun. Without God, we have lost our moral compass, our guide to direct our future. Everything will come to an end. What kind of an end will we have if we do not have that compass or guide. This is not good history leave behind or lesson to teach future generations. They will inevitably become like men of Nietzsche’s time to be non-believers and do not see what they have lost.
Sadly, even those who remain active in Church or still remain faithful in God may actually not be believing in God in anymore. They may just be going through the motions of faith but do not possess it anymore.
At Nietzsche’s time, Churches are slowly becoming empty to which the madman was singing an ode or a requiem. The empty Churches that the madman foresaw is a reality today. Many Churches in Europe are empty and have become museums and mere tourist attractions. Nobody enters them anymore to pray.
The problem with man’s unbelief is not that God had never existed. Man denied his existence. Worse, man thinks that he is like God if not God himself. Modern comfort, science and technology during Nietzsche’s time until today had made man question the very existence of God. Man after all can do almost anything, so why should he believe in God? This is why Nietzsche is addressing those who do not believe in God.
The mad man is seeing a situation that we have now. No one understands him because no one else can see the situation that we have now—empty Churches, men of faith who actually do not believe. There is moral decadence everywhere, then and worse now. Yet man does not seem to realize what is wrong or why society have become this way. It is because man has lost his faith. Then as today, they do not understand the implications of that loss. They do not see what is wrong in society then and it is today.