By JD Snodgrass

When Friedrich Nietzsche penned the phrase “God is dead” more than 130 years ago, he likely didn’t think it would rank among the most misappropriated and misunderstood quotes in history. He wrote it in a few places, perhaps most famously in his parable “The Madman,” which appears in his 1882 work, The Gay Science. The parable tells the story of a man who runs through a market crying, “I seek God! I seek God!” The market-goers don’t believe in God and ridicule the man. He responds:

“Wither is God?… I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers… 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? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hereto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners… “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way…”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1882), The Gay Science, § 125, translated by Walter Kaufmann

To fully understand what’s going on, you need some background on the quote’s context and Nietzsche’s broader project.

During Nietzsche’s time, Western society — certain portions of it anyway — was increasingly aware that it lacked any metaphysical foundation. In their unrelenting quest for truth, especially scientific truth, many had cast off their notions of God and transcendence, concluding they were groundless. God was no longer needed to explain how the world worked, and the very idea of God was increasingly untenable. But in ridding themselves of God, they failed to consider the horror that lay ahead. Once you pull the metaphysical rug out from society, you risk falling into widespread nihilism. What’s needed is not a replacement God, but an entirely new way of viewing life that negates the need for a transcendent realm.

The atheists of Nietzsche’s time had rid themselves of transcendence, but they hadn’t taken the next step of revaluing life. And the madman knew what lay ahead for them. When he said, “What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent,” he was warning them of the nihilism to come. Nietzsche’s task was to revalue life and avoid nihilism, and he was actually criticizing his atheist contemporaries for failing to do so — the madman knew he had come too soon, as the market-goers hadn’t yet realized the consequences of rejecting God. All this led Nietzsche to conceive the Übermensch, or Overman, who affirms life and its eternal recurrence through the will to power.

Rather than delve into an explanation of the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the will to power, I’ll just say this. Nietzsche seemed to think that some sort of aesthetic ideal was the answer to the problem of life — the problem of living in a world devoid of objective meaning. For Nietzsche, creation, especially the artistic kind, represents the highest exercise of the will to power and allows people to overcome nihilism. Creation is the most human activity, and a life of creation is a life well lived.

Although Nietzsche’s philosophy is problematic in certain ways, he expressed something important about human psychology: the need for meaning and purpose. And his solution to the problem of life contains real wisdom. Creativity not only brings joy, it allows you to build your very own apparatus of meaning and effectively cope with the absence of objective meaning. Creativity helps you avoid nihilism.

As I wrote in my previous post, I don’t believe in a deity. For me, the very concept of a deity is flawed and I don’t feel the need for one anyway. But that might leave you wondering where I find meaning and value. Ultimately, I find them in the same places as everyone else: family, friends, and the desire to have a positive impact on the world. And creativity helps me along the way. This podcast is a creative venture, and it allows me to explore the human intellect with my closest friends. There’s infinite meaning and value in that. Despite what right-wing commentators like Bill O’Reilly and comically bad movies like God’s Not Dead (2014) would have you believe, atheists aren’t a bunch of amoral misanthropic malcontents bent on destruction of all that is holy. We’re not all Richard Dawkins. Moreover, morality isn’t dependent on religion. In the end, I live my life by the words of the inimitable Frank Reynolds: “I don’t know how many years on this Earth I got left. I’m gonna get real weird with it.”

JD Snodgrass is the Executive Producer of The Will to Power Hour. He fancies himself a writer slash philosopher slash beer connoisseur. In reality, he is none of these and is lucky if he buttons his own shirt correctly. He was recently chewing gum when he yawned and lost command of the small, soft object, which landed on his desk in front of four coworkers. That was one of his better days.