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On the Death of God, Cultural Melancholia, and Scientific Dogmatism
“Where is god?” asks Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science (YEAR). “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers.” The madman’s audience ridicules him for being foolish, and he admonishes them for their ignorance. “Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him!”
The madman’s fervor increases in relation to the silence of his audience as he tries to get them to understand the severity of their deed. “How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? … 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?”
The audience stares in silent astonishment. The madman throws his lantern on the ground; it shatters and its light goes out. “I have come too early,” he says. “This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men … This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars — and yet they have done it themselves.”
The madman leaves, and I am writing on behalf of his return —
For I can smell divine decomposition seeping from misuses of the scientific method;
For I…
