What does Nietzsche mean when he says "God is dead"?

What does German Philosopher Nietzsche mean when he says : "God is dead"? In one of the books of an Indian Mystic Osho, I read this reply from Osho: "Nietzsche is wrong because God has never been born". What is Nietzsche trying to imply from his statement? Does Nietzsche also deny spirituality -- the idea of eternal soul, meditation, enlightenment (in the sense of Buddhism and Hinduism)? Some of your comments imply that he denies. But I have read a story (that sort of contradicts these implications, I think) about him in a book: One night he was found dancing on a street in Germany at night keeping a book on his head. Asked what he was really doing, he said: "I read many books in life. But throughout this long journey, I never encountered a book as beautiful as Geeta. After I read this book, I could not hide my happiness." As someone with some knowledge in Hinduism, I can tell that Geeta is perhaps the most important scripture in the religion. I however have no references for this story as I read it long time back, and don't remember the book where I found it. If this really was a truth, Nietzsche certainly cannot deny spiritualism.

Nietzsche meant the concept of God was "dead", and therefore, any ethics and indeed sense of direction in general founded on this metaphysical claim of the existence of God and religion was "dead" as well.

In addition to "conceptual" death, at least one other implication here is the cross: the historical event of God's death (which Nietzsche doesn't place any great faith in, of course, but it seems worth mentioning as one of the valences of God's death)

I found a nice article regarding the same here, theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/07/…. I hope it'll be helpful too.

Nietzsche was greatly concerned with nihilism. His analysis of Christianity went substantially beyond it's standard presentation as a philosophy and political force, into it's role in shaping cultural and social cohesion, and the implications of the end of this. I found this article insightful on this aeon.co/ideas/…

6 Answers 6

First, it's important to avoid the not-so-uncommon misinterpretation that Nietzsche is saying God once was but no longer is: Nietzsche is definitely not saying that something happened to God as an entity (according to Nietzsche, God never existed), but rather that we have done something to God as an idea. Specifically, we have abandoned the idea of God, hence "killed" him, much as we would say "you are dead to me" to someone we no longer care the slightest about - though again, Nietzsche doesn't think God was ever real as an entity.

To Nietzsche, this is an inevitable step in the timeline of civilization. He claims that we both created God and are bound to destroy him, and furthermore that this latter event is on the horizon.

Note this passage:

There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rungs; but three of these are the most important.

Once one sacrificed human beings to one's god, perhaps precisely those whom one loved most. [examples in history]

Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, one sacrificed to one's god one's own strongest instincts, one's "nature": this festive joy lights up the cruel eyes of the ascetic, the "anti-natural" enthusiast.

Finally - what remained to be sacrificed? At long last, did one not have to sacrifice for once whatever is comforting, holy, healing; all hope, all faith in hidden harmony, in future blisses and justices? didn't one have to sacrifice God himself and, from cruelty against oneself, worship the stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, the nothing? To sacrifice God for nothing - this paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty which was reserved for the generation that is now coming up: all of us already know something of this.-

_{Beyond Good and Evil - 55}

In the final paragraph specifically, Nietzsche is asserting that after all we have given up for God, all the "life-denying" actions of "ressentiment", we are overcoming the illusion that we need him, and in doing so metaphorically "killing" him.

Likewise, in another passage:

"What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

_{The Gay Science - 125}

If, as Nietzsche says, "God is dead and we have killed him," then these remnants of our worship to God will be all that remains once we have fully realized this ultimate murder. Among people God will be but a distant memory of ages past, if even that; their strengthening life-instinct and growth toward the overman (i.e. that gradual progression of humans toward a stronger race which Nietzsche advocates) will mean that there is simply no use for the idea of God - hence, his death.