I've been reading a little bit of Hegel and Nietzsche the past couple of semesters for school. It's worth spending the time and energy to review them, particularly if you wonder where we developed our bias of reading the world of people as a mass of individual self-deterministic consciousnesses. In any case the they helped develop and popularize the whole "God is dead" bit.
Interestingly enough, a century later, this supposed passing of God doesn't seem to have quite the impact that one might anticipate.
Even the Boston Globe gives John Allen space to note the expansion of Catholicism in Muslim countries
Christianity Increases in the Arab Middle East by 7000% the 20th Century (see here, it's stats!)
Even in the West, Christianity is growing even while the rate of population growth holds or even declines. Interesting
Now, some of this can be attributed to population increases and various geo-political events, but the point is that regardless of cause, the number of people who believe in God and profess a religious belief in him continues to increase.
And of course, the center of the world is not Germany, or Europe, or America. Heck, the Center of Christendom is no longer Europe and certainly is not America. So, what do those guys know? Watch our for WEIRD (western educated industrial rich democratic) and their dogmatic myopia.
And of course, Islam continues to grow as well. Not sure everyone is getting the memo Nietzsche sent...much to the chagrin of the New Atheists, such as Hitchens, Dawkins and the old Materialists at the NYT, etc.
Would it be too triumphalist of me to note that God seems to have well outlived Nietzsche?
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