“I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers.”Friedrich Nietzsche · Știința voioasă · 1882 · Știința voioasă, aforismul 125
No one killed God alone, yet we all contributed through our modern way of thinking.
Nietzsche refuses consolation: the death of God is not a misfortune that happened to us but a deed of ours, of the whole culture that chose science, criticism and natural explanation over faith. The mechanism is the collectivity of guilt: no one killed him alone, yet all contributed, through the modern way of thinking. A person who lives without religion without ever having faced the question belongs to the same act, even if he never pulled the lever.
Nietzsche does not stop at the killing. He notices that the slain god leaves behind a long shadow: habits, morals, and the sense of what is right remain standing long after belief has vanished. A person can be convinced he believes in nothing above himself, yet judge good and evil exactly like his devout grandfather. Think of someone who never enters a church but still feels guilty for resting on a Sunday. The killing is our deed; the shadow raises the next question: what do we do with the habits that outlived their killer?
Why it matters It obliges anyone living post-Christian to own the fact that his freedom has an author: himself and his culture.