Dr Paul Allen

When Nietzsche famously declared, “God is dead,” we often assume the atheist philosopher said it triumphally. Yet Nietzsche didn’t pronounce the death of God—by which he meant the idea of God and religion had died following the triumph of reason and science—as a wholesale victory. While on the one hand, it was a triumph (as he understood it), on the other hand, Nietzsche saw the cost: “our entire European morality.” Nietzsche prophesied a dark time to follow, a process of crumbling and terror when there would be no reason to be “moral.” He predicted a post-God world would result in the loss of “Christian” morality, descent into meaninglessness, and the breakdown of a unified sense of self, identity, and purpose. In the post-Christian West, we’re seeing Nietzsche’s predictions play out. If there's any hope of navigable meaning, something else must take the place of God. God’s absence must be filled by some presence—and many candidates are vying to fill the void. In particular, we’ve...