IS GOD DEAD?
MODERN ATHEISTS, CHRISTIANISM AND SOCIAL ORDER
THE WESTERN SICKNESS
The West is losing its moral fiber in a decomposition of its social cohesion. The sense of purpose that characterized it for centuries is becoming a cacophony of discontent. The United States, which used to define itself as a melting pot where people from all over the world integrated into a single culture based on a common purpose of freedom and individual rights, is now disintegrating into a myriad of groups in opposition to each other, defined by race, sex, gender, origin, and culture. All over the West, some of the main foundations of Western civilization—like the freedom of thought and speech—are being attacked or violated. At the same time, nobody seems to be doing anything to defend them. A civilization that once was proud of its attainments—it has created the most advanced, free, and just societies in history—is now confused, unable to make decisions, and ashamed of its foundations, incapable of telling good from evil.
This inability to tell what is good and evil is at the core of Western paralysis and disintegration. The firm decisions that characterized the West have been displaced by today's “yes…but…” indecisions. Everything has become relative; nothing is better than anything else—except that all Western traditions have become evil by definition. First came a period in which all principles and values were equally worthy, including the non-principles and non-values. Now, the cycle is closing with defining everything Western is becoming evil.
What happened?
Ironically, it was one of history’s most implacable atheists who, more than one hundred years ago, first diagnosed this problem and attributed it to what he called the death of God—which is the end of faith in God. In his inimitable style, he wrote,
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, ‘I seek God! I seek God!’—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter...The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I... …God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…
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? It is not the greatness of this fact too great for us?”[1]
In this and other writings, Nietzsche developed the relationship between God and morals and veered into the idea that if God is dead, everything is permitted and that, in such a world, the will to power will guide history.
This idea that morals depend on God was considered ridiculous by many people, particularly a pack of modern atheists commanded by Richard Dawkins, a professor of biology who wrote a book called The God Delusion and deified the genes as the givers of life and makers of history in The Selfish Gene. Through these and other means, he expressed his contempt for the people who believed in God and portrayed himself as a courageous person capable of being moral and strong even without believing in God. When talking about Christianity, he despised people who could believe in the virginity of the Virgin or the book of Genesis. He lamented that his country, the UK, was Christian and hoped that it would abandon religion as fast as possible.
Watching 9/11, Dawkins and friends blamed all religions for the fanaticism of the extremists that piloted the planes to their destruction, and, with them, they condemned God. All crimes have been committed because people believed in God and fought for Him. They compared the open society that exists in the West with the closed societies existing under different religions, saying that all of them were evil and despicable because they all believed in God.
He envisioned that once the UK and the West abandoned God, superstition and emotional decisions would be replaced by serene rationality, resulting from applying science to solve every problem. People would be happy; there would be no reason for conflict because we all would accept scientific facts and live in a utopia. He was glad to see that religion was declining in the UK.
Suddenly, he and some of his followers recently revised these opinions. Alarmed by recent events in the UK, he clarified that even if he was still not a Christian and despised people who believed in God, he was pleased to have been born in a Christian country and wished Britain remained Christian. He said he did not believe in Christianity but in Christian culture and civilization.
In an interview, he added that he liked Christianity because it is a decent religion, which he opposed to Islam, which he considers indecent.
He may have revised his opinion because the serene, happy society he envisioned did not appear as Britain became an atheist. On the contrary, as anybody who watches the news knows, the UK is splitting along many lines of division and shows a conflictive mood that has had no precedent since a century ago. Yet many other people saw this coming, among them Jonathan Sacks, once Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom in the 2010s.
GOD AND SOCIAL BONDS
Sacks began one of his articles in The Spectator with this observation regarding modern atheists.
“I love the remark made by one Oxford don about another: ‘On the surface, he’s profound, but deep down, he’s superficial.’ That sentence has more than once come to mind when reading the new atheists.”[2]
In that article, Sacks expresses surprise at the superficiality of the modern atheists who think that “if they can prove that the first chapters of Genesis are not literally true, that the universe is more than 6,000 years old and that there might be other explanations for rainbows as a sign of God’s covenant after the flood, the whole of humanity’s religious beliefs would come tumbling down like a house of cards and we would be left with a serene world of rational non-believers getting on famously with one another.”
Then he laments the passing of “the intellectual depth of the serious atheists, the forcefulness of Hobbes, the passion of Spinoza, the wit of Voltaire, and the world-shattering profundity of Nietzsche. Where is there the remotest sense that they have grappled with the real issues, which have nothing to do with science and the literal meaning of scripture and everything to do with the meaningfulness or otherwise of human life, the existence or non-existence of an objective moral order, the truth or falsity of the idea of human freedom, and the ability or inability of society to survive without the rituals, narratives and shared practices that create and sustain the social bond?” These are the significant issues that are in doubt today, and this doubt is paralyzing. If there is not an objective moral order (which, as Hume demonstrated, science cannot provide because it studies what is and cannot say anything about what ought to be), then everything is permitted; without a meaning, people veer into destructive inaction; if we are not free, moral and immoral behavior are equally valid; and there is no basis to want to keep in place a social bond.
Dawkins and his followers are just starting to visualize that these philosophical questions have a tremendous impact on society's behavior and that the concept of God is intimately linked with them. Nietzsche did not make this mistake, even if he considered it from a terrifying perspective. He thought that the death of God would have momentous consequences for people's behavior.
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER
In various works, Nietzsche discussed the relationship between God and morals, always associating God with the truth. If there was no truth, there was no God. In On The Genealogy of Morals, he takes as the target to destroy the theories of Friedrich Hegel, who believed that history was the narrative of humans’ search for God, which brought fulfillment when they attained Absolute Knowledge.
In this context, Nietzsche asked whether there was truth, a necessary condition to have knowledge. Then, without providing any justification, he asserted that the ultimate truth was that there was no truth. This, in turn, meant that men were free from their obligation of seeking Absolute Knowledge. Nietzsche said that people could not be free unless they knew that there was no truth. Only men strong enough to face this fact could be called free spirits.
The depth of Nietzsche's sickness can be perceived in the consequence he drew from this supposed discovery. Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despots, he felt that the ultimate manifestation of freedom was the freedom to destroy, as shown by the example of what he considered a free spirit.
"When the Christian crusaders in the Orient encountered the invincible order of Assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lowest ranks followed a rule of obedience the like of which no order of ranks ever attained, they obtained in some way or other a hint concerning that symbol and watchword reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." ¾ Very well, that was freedom of spirit; in that way faith in truth was abrogated."[3]
That is another occasion in which Nietzsche said that God is dead and that this fact liberated the spirits to do whatever they wished.
The Assassins were members of a secret sect established by Hassan ibn al-Sabbah in the tenth century, who, with their cold killing efficiency, gave the word assassin its meaning in so many languages. They had their headquarters in an impregnable mountain fortress in northern Persia called Alamut (which meant Eagle's Nest). The ultimate secretum that Nietzsche was referring to was transferred to them by the Ismaili sect of Islam. The initiation started with a promise that the sect would lead the entrants to the ultimate secret: “God is All.” However, the secret of the eighth stage was that nothing could be known of God and that no worship could be given to Him. The Great Master was the only one who received the ultimate secretum that Nietzsche wrote about: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
Lower members of the order, however, did not go through the whole initiation and did not receive any inkling of the secretum, which is logical because otherwise they would not find themselves willing to obey their superiors. They were recruited and motivated to kill by more primitive methods. The entrants were given hashish, and while under its influence, they were taken to a beautiful garden. When they woke up, they were told that this was the garden of paradise. Around, they found "ladies and damsels who dallied with the men to their heart's content."
After a few days, they were given hashish again and taken away from the garden. Then, they were told that to return to paradise, they had to kill, according to the Grand Master's orders, the one who knew the secretum¾ and die in his service.[4] Thus, Nietzsche was romanticizing in his twisted way the motivation of the lower orders to kill. This, however, is not important. What matters is that Nietzsche thought that the Grand Masters killed due to an intimation of the secret, making them free spirits. For Nietzsche, they were the ones who had not only discovered the truth that there is no truth but also the ones who had decided to kill in consequence. That showed how spiritually strong they were.
This shows Nietzsche's concept of social order. He did not criticize the Assassins' order even if the lower ranks had to obey blindly to their masters ¾which was a form of taming. For him, they were not tamed because they were free from any moral hang-ups in the destruction of the people they were sent to kill. Thus, what Nietzsche admired in them was their destructiveness, even if linked to serfdom. It is unlikely that Nietzsche would have admired them so much if they had been sent to collect garbage after discovering that there is no truth.
Thus, Nietzsche saw what Dawkins and his followers did not: that the lack of God would destroy morals and lead to destructiveness. The world of reasonableness that Dawkins and his fellow modern atheists promised never came to be. On the contrary, what has accompanied the decay of religion is much more disturbing than what existed before. There were two reactions to the supposed death of God. One was His replacement with materialistic gods adored under materialistic religions, with terribly destructive consequences. The other was the paralysis that people who worshiped science fell into.
This is what is happening today. But it happened before in the first four decades of the 20th century when two atheistic religions—communism and Nazism—appeared and grew at an astonishing pace.
THE MATERIALISTIC RELIGIONS
Linking religion with communism and Fascism-Nazism seems to be absurd. Both doctrines were profoundly anti-religious, understanding religions as traditional, spiritual faiths. But their hatred for religion was the hatred of the competitor. Like religions, they relied on faith to support their beliefs, and this fact, in a time of desperation, was a crucial factor of success.
The common characteristic that cuts across all the countries that fell prey to destructive regimes was not that they were poor, lacked social security, or had low technology, but the fact that they all had sustained a rigid social order that resisted change for a long time. One day, the sway of change becomes too strong for the old structure—be it Tsarist Russia or the German Second Reich. When it collapses, it spreads chaos all over society. Amid the social dissolution, people look for the leadership of strong tyrants, who then use destructiveness to unify the dissolved society again.
Communism, fascism, and Nazism successfully preyed on the resistance to change that the Industrial Revolution was eliciting on all those that were left behind by the new technologies, those who dreamed of the return of an idealized pre-industrial world. These people eagerly awaited ideas and people who would lead them out of the chaos caused by change and into sustained, non-disruptive growth. And, amid the anguish of the times, the two doctrines appealed to the religious anxiety of societies veering into chaos.
Joseph Schumpeter, a famous economist, saw the religious nature of Marxism as the key to its success. His Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy starts with a chapter called Marx the Prophet. I quote the first few words of that chapter:
"It was not by a slip that an analogy from the world of religion was permitted to intrude into the title of this chapter. There is more than analogy. In one important sense, Marxism is a religion...[Marx] was a prophet, and in order to understand the nature of his achievement, we must visualize it in the setting of his own time. It was the zenith of bourgeois realization and the nadir of bourgeois civilization, the time of mechanistic materialism, of a cultural milieu which had as yet betrayed no sign that a new art and a new mode of life were in its womb, and which rioted in most repulsive banality. Faith in any real sense was rapidly falling away from all classes of society, and with it the only ray of light...Now, to millions of human hearts the Marxian message of the terrestrial paradise of socialism meant a new ray of light and a new meaning of life. Call Marxist religion a counterfeit if you like, or a caricature of faith -- there is plenty to be said for this view -- but do not overlook or fail to admire the greatness of the achievement."[5]
Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher and mathematician, also saw this religious dimension in Bolshevism:
“The war [the 1914-1918 World War I] has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and despair which calls aloud for a new religion, as the only force capable of giving men the energy to live vigorously. Bolshevism has supplied the new religion…Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs — such as philosophic materialism, for example — which may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be true with any certainty. ”[6]
Nazism was religious, too. The idea that Nazism was based on economic vested interests is quite common. Yet, it would be contradictory to believe that individual Germans would surrender their lives in the terrible battles of World War II for the sake of their economic vested interests. Germany lost between 7 and 8 million people in that war, of which about 5 million were soldiers. Konrad Heiden, a German journalist who knew Hitler personally in the early 1920s, saw the religious dimension of Nazism as a response to people’s longing for transcendence. He believes that this was the reason why Hitler succeeded in imposing his tyranny on Germany.
“Hitler was able to enslave his own people because he seemed to give them something that even the traditional religions could no longer provide: the belief in a meaning to existence beyond the narrowest self-interest. The real degradation began when people realized that they were in league with the Devil, but felt that even the Devil was preferable to the emptiness of an existence which lacked a larger significance.” [7]
It was these unifying, religious ideas that the Communists and the Nazis fed to their populations.
In this way, both identified an absolute Evil—the social disruptions that were taking place due to the Industrial Revolution—and an army of Devils causing those disruptions, the traders and financiers threatening the state control of economic activities that gave stability to preindustrial society. They both promised redemption from absolute Evil, which required an act of social exorcism to eliminate the Devils from the face of the earth. For the Nazis, these Devils were the Jews, for the communists, the bourgeois.
Thus, in this way, communists and Nazis proved that destructiveness was not associated with a spiritual God. The spiritual God had been the pretext for the will to power, which Nietzsche discussed with terrible clarity in his works. The problem was not God or the religions. The problem was fanaticism, which does not need a spiritual God to manifest. If the spiritual God is dead, the fanatics will invent a materialistic one to justify their will to power. If God can no longer give a transcendent meaning to life because they no longer believe in him, a Hitler will give it to them.
This was one of the dimensions of religious feelings that Richard Dawkins and his fellow modern atheists did not see because they were focusing on the number of days that took the Creation and the virginity of the Virgin—a fixation that, no doubt, Freud would have found interesting. Well, not all of them. Led by one of them, distinguished historian Tom Holland, they gradually veered to the opposite side of the river as they realized that the impact of Christianity on Western civilization had gone well beyond such virginity.[8]
A CONVERSION?
And then, suddenly, the conversion took place. As magisterially described by Madeline Grant,
“Not since the road to Damascus has there been a more notable spiritual volte-face than the one made on LBC this week. Having spent a career breathing threats against the disciples of the Lord, a certain Richard Dawkins is struck by a moment of realization. And lo, the voice of Rachel Johnson came unto him and said, “Dawko, Dawko, why persecutest thou me?”[9]
Rachel Johnson, from Leading Britain’s Conversation, LBC, interviewed Dawkins. [10] He told her that, though he is not a Christian, he still feels deep contempt for Christian beliefs because they include the idea that the Virgin gave birth to Jesus without losing her virginity. Even if he is pleased that Christianity has been decaying in the United Kingdom, he is glad that the country is Christian and happy that Western (and British) civilization is based on Christianity. In his words, “Substituting Christianity would be dreadful.”
Of course, Dawkins fell short of Paul of Tarsus in stature and coherence. How can you say that you despise Christian beliefs and, in the same breath, add that you are pleased that the West developed under Christian values? That is the contradiction that breaks the posture of the modern atheists. If Christian values were stupid and evil, the society based on them would be foolish and wicked. He hates the causes and loves the consequences. All pretense of rationality is broken.
Jonathan Sacks was right. The old atheists would have never made such weak reasoning. They were much more intelligent and more cultured. Independently of your beliefs, you can see that superficially, Dawkins and friends look deep, but deeply, they are quite superficial.
THE VOID
Science cannot say anything regarding the existence of God. Its existence or nonexistence cannot be proved scientifically. Faith is needed to believe in Him and for not believing in Him. Believing in God is a personal decision. Or, as some say, a touch of divine grace. But it is not a superficial matter. Some of the most intelligent people who have lived, like the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza, classified by Sacks as atheists, believed in an impersonal God embedded in the order of nature. And the belief in God does not just have social implications. It provides consolation and strength to many people. The great mystics of the Christian religion were not stupid.
Indeed, the Church, a human institution, has committed innumerable crimes and horrors like the Inquisition and led to wars like the Thirty-Year War, which devastated Germany more than World War II. But it has also done many good things, educating people, caring for the sick, and providing a structure to the freest, most developed, and most compassionate societies in history. The sign of the cross serves as a witness to these achievements.
The concept of God is not the product of analysis. It is the synthetic response of the human being as a whole to the unfathomable realities of life. In addition to filling spiritual needs and providing a firm structure for moral principles, it also provides a sense of belonging, which leads to strong social cohesion. I was always impressed by the feeling of connection projected by a cross standing over a tiny chapel in a small valley in Iceland, over the spire of a Gothic cathedral in Europe, or marking a hospital or a school in a poor neighborhood in any place, or among the rooftops of houses in a Latin American village. If there is a unifying symbol, it is the cross. No one can deny that the absence of the cross has left an enormous void. No wonder social cohesion has declined.
But the problem is not just of values. It is one of the human need for transcendence. We can go back to Konrad Heiden, the biographer of Hitler. He ended his book about the monster with these words:
“The problem today is to give that larger significance and dignity to a life that has been dwarfed by the world of material things. Until that problem is solved, the annihilation of Nazism will be no more than the removal of one symptom of the world’s unrest.”[11]
Heiden wrote these words sometime before 1944. They are still valid for our times.
THE PRODIGAL SON
Despising people who believe in God is an act of hubris. Dawkins has lived enough to eat his words.
But, as Jesus would have said, “Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”
This is an answer that could not be produced by science. It is the essence of Christian values, which can’t be separated from God. Regarding these values, as expressed by Madeleine Grant and apparently endorsed by Dawkins,
“The bigger task facing the West is living out these values in an age when they are increasingly under threat.”
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, (New York: Vintage Books, 1974 [1882], pp. 193, Kindle Edition, location 3048.
[2] Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi: atheism has failed. Only religion can defeat the new barbarians. The Spectator, 15 June 2013, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/chief-rabbi-atheism-has-failed-only-religion-can-defeat-the-new-barbarians/
[3]Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 24, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche pp. 586.
[4]Eventually, the Assassins found their match. Their stronghold was destroyed in 1234 by a grandson of Genghiz Khan. See Durant, The Age of Faith, pp. 261-262 and 309-310.
[5] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1975 [1942], pp. 5-6.
[6] See Russell, Bertrand, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1920, pp. 6-17.
[7] Heiden, Konrad The Fuhrer, Castle Books, New Jersey, 2002, [1944], pp. 603.
[8] Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, New York, Basic Books, 2019.
[9] Madeleine Grant, Christianity’s decline has unleashed terrible new gods, The Telegraph, 3 April 2024, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/christianity-decline-unleashed-terrible-new-gods/
[10] Rachel Johnson, Richard Dawkins: I am a Cultural Christian, Video, Leading Britain’s Conversation, LBC,
[11] Heiden, Konrad The Fuhrer, Castle Books, New Jersey, 2002, [1944], pp. 603.