Do Atheists have a leg to stand on? “God is dead, I teach you the superman”

I can’t possibly talk about atheism without touching on Nietzsche’s dramatic declaration of the death of God.   In ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra,’ Nietzsche puts a new age prophet in God’s shoes. Zarathustra comes down from his lonely mountain to save a Godless world. He tells a dying acrobat that he doesn’t need to fear retribution for his mistakes. “The soul will die even before the body.”   In the light of scientific knowledge, a belief in an afterlife, either as resurrection from the dead or as reincarnation has become difficult.  So, is death ‘the end,’ the final curtain? Alas! Nietzsche contradicts himself! Whatever is happening now has happened before and will be repeated from eternity to eternity! The acrobat will die again and Zarathustra will come to comfort him.  The bottom line is that even atheists find total annihilation hard or impossible to accept. All of us long for immortality in one way or another.  If you believe that God is dead, hail Zarathustra or whoever else takes your fancy.

Ref: Friedrich Nietzsche; Thus Spake Zarathustra

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