On Good Friday 1966, Time issued their magazine with the cover emblazoned with just three words: Is God Dead? What followed was a firestorm; Christians once again feeling threatened by an ever more hostile culture, atheist and free-thinkers eagerly awaiting what they just knew would this time be final victory. But both the question itself, and what played out was really nothing new. To be sure the cover garnered much attention and sparked much debate, but it was really nothing new under the sun. The same question had been raised for centuries, millennia even. The truth is, the question of the death of God was first raised by Lucifer, when Eve, in some sense, agreed with him. It seems to me there truly is nothing new under the sun, not even a question about the death of God. Sure enough, thousands of years later Fredrich Nietzsche’s Madman asks the same ageless question: “Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? . . . What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?” These are powerful and timeless questions that reside deep in the soul of most all men; questions that demand answers; questions that deserve answers. And that is precisely the intent of this weekly column, to look at the evidence available to help answer the timeless question: Is God dead? Whether you are a Christian, a Seeker, or a Non-believer, I welcome you to join along each week to consider the evidence for yourself.
To begin to answer the question, Christian philosopher Charles Taylor may be on to something when he asks a related question: “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in say, the year 1500,” while today things are so very different? In the year 1500 there really was no question as to whether you would believe in God. In fact, it was a foregone conclusion that anyone you met on the street would believe in God. Today, obviously, that is not the case. So, what changed? A lot of things have changed. But these things that have changed, as they relate to religion and belief in God, can be grouped into three broad categories. The first category is the natural world where in the year 1500, the natural world was seen as grand and constant testimony to the design and purpose of God. Looking into the cosmos there was no question who made the moon and stars, and who constantly kept the planets in perfect orbital motion. But the scientific revolution beginning in the 17th century eventually gave people a scientific theory about how the moon and the stars came into being without the help of God. In that way science gave people an option of belief.