On the Death of God

16.06.09, Ben Dench, for OPEDNEWS (US). The phrase “God is dead” has a number of meanings. Firstly, it is diagnosing a condition. People no longer believe in God. Not in the way that they use to. Some have done away with the belief in God altogether, but this is not all that secularization means. There was a time when God was the explanation for everything, and everything made reference back to “supernatural” causes. Not anymore. Natural explanations abound. There was a time when Christianity was the unquestioned, taken for granted truth in European culture. Not anymore. We live in a continually more global and pluralistic world. People are confronted every day with the fact that others do not ascribe to the same set of beliefs that they do. The process of secularization has been, as Peter Berger explains in The Sacred Canopy, the process of removing religious symbols from the public sphere. In place of this we are left with scientific understanding—the only worldview in which there could even conceivably be consensus, without force to prevent questioning or exposure to other worldviews.