“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” -Friedrich Nietzsche

The true meaning of this philosophical statement has been often misunderstood among interpreters and general audience of society. The first sentence “God is dead,” implies the idea that the existence of God has ended or there has been an end for the creator that has held faith from so many people for so many centuries. This is not exactly true. Nietzsche’s statement expressed more of a fear of that the spiritual connection between God and his people, his followers, was gone. That the decline of religion and fall of belief would lead to chaos in the world as atheism grows. The meaning behind God has gone for years to express all unnatural events and their happenings. Without God, there is no social order or meaning to life.

There have been arguments made against this proposal, “God is dead,” and many are from religious viewers who oppose the idea of saying, or stating, that God can die. Albert Camus replies with an opposition of the absurdity of which is the human need for a higher order. He argued that the “death” of God was inconsequential—that humanity had no need of a superior or higher authority or even the threat of eternal damnation to live a good and moral life. A lot of other philosophers didn’t completely dismiss the idea of a superior being as Camus did, but instead tried to imagine an absolute morality that did not need to depend on a supreme being.

I happen to agree with Nietzsche’s statement since I do believe that God is dead. However, not in the sense that you may think. I do not refute my beliefs. Yet the entire ideology of religion has become a lost practice to me and thousands of others. There is no kind of deep, spiritual belief anymore between one and their creator. We carry our religion on our names, on our tongues, on our mindset. There have been many times where I rejected ideas of my religion and questioned my own faith and I’ve grown to the conclusion that maybe, faith and religion weren’t the same at all. Maybe religion provided a set of rules to follow as you would do with laws for the government but this was towards your morality.

If you know that you are a good person why is it right for someone to point at their beliefs and biblical knowledge and tell you otherwise? Right and wrong aren’t and will never be a set or fixed, “engraved in stone” judgement. It all ties back to perception and how YOU as an individual define right and wrong. Honestly, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to deconstruct your perception because that is what defines you and when you lose that, you lose yourself. And that’s why religion has become so unpopular among our (my) generation.