6.3.08

The Death of the Mythic God.

Article by Carter Phipps at What is Enlightenment Magazine

“God is dead. And we have killed him,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in his most famous work, Thus Spake Zarathustra. That statement coincided with the beginning of a century of religious upheaval unprecedented in human history. Only three generations after those words were published, the religious make-up of Western culture is almost unrecognizable from the way it looked when Nietzsche penned his declaration. In Europe, traditional forms of Christianity have plummeted in popularity, and many churches and synagogues are becoming monuments to a bygone age. And in the United States, a rapid decrease in adherence to Catholicism and traditional Protestant denominations combined with a rapid rise in nontraditional forms of Christianity, particularly Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, has left social scientists struggling to keep up with the changes. Moreover, there has been an explosion in nontraditional forms of spirituality. New religious movements, New Age philosophies, and transplanted Eastern religions have all attracted millions and millions of the so-called spiritual but not religious contingent of the Western population Read More>>

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