"Gott ist tot" (God is dead – (and we killed him))

Nietzsche declared, and it wasn't a proclamation of pride or victory but worried observation
about his times that predicted the future with surprising accuracy. The full quote is: “God is dead.
God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who
will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? 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?” [1].
Nietzsche lived during the Enlightenment, also called "The Age of Reason", when Science began
to demonstrably prove that certain natural phenomena were not controlled by mystical forces
or deities, but by regular, natural processes [2] —This is the age that we still live in today.
Nietzsche is more correctly identified as a Nihilist, although Existentialism borrows a lot from
Nihilism.
And, as Nietzsche predicted, mankind in his narrow sphere of activity, has gained mastery over
many material aspects of human life. For the wealthy and powerful, basic necessities are an
afterthought. Almost any internal organ can be replaced – and soon tailor-made organs will be
grown. All but some illnesses are conquerable or don't even exist anymore.
The first primates were cloned back in January of this year [3], and humans are next. The TV
series "Altered Carbon" and the movie "Transcendence" look forward to a day when the mind
can be downloaded and transferred onto hardware or from body to body. Another show
"Westworld" imagines a near future with machines indistinguishable from humans. The movies
"Ex Machina" and "Her" imagine mankind creating an intelligence superior to its own that
ultimately surpassing itself, and all of these things may be a reality in the near future – some in
our own lifetimes.

It would seem mankind has gained mastery over his world through reason and the
tools of science and technology.
And yet...the populations of the most powerful nations on the planet are shrinking at an
alarming rate, and no one is sure exactly why or what to do about it. And, in the most powerful
nation on earth people are shooting each other dead at random and for no reason. Wars of
greed rage, and 80% of the world's population lives in what is defined as poverty [google].
Something's seriously wrong.
It's hard for the rich to enter into the kingdom of Heaven [The Bible, Matthew 19:23], because it's so
easy for the rich to ignore matters of the spirit, creating a world full of comfort and distraction,
addling their minds with pleasures even unto their death [Descartes]. Living a life that is
meaningless and creating a society that decays into nothing and laying waste to their
environment in the process.
 "Le coeur a ses raisons, qe la raison ne connaît pas" - (The heart has its reason(s),
of which reason knows not.)
Blaise Pascal had a famous phrase, which, like Nietzsche's sounds much better in his original
language. He essentially meant: there is more to man than pure reason – he has a heart which
has its own desires, which can overpower reason, and are often unknown to reason.
Before the "triumph" of reason, mankind died of diseases or bacterial infections easily cured
today with vaccines and antibodies. Now, in the age of reason, mankind dies of his own hand, –
he dies of despair. It seems Pascal recognized something Nietzsche may have not – man's
pursuit of spiritual matters is equally, if not more important than his pursuit of the fruits of
reason.
Nature brought man (and reason) forth, and not the other way around. Necessarily, man's
reason is born out of a mind without reason – the infant learns to reason, but before the infant
can reason it still has a spirit, basic morality and appetites, a framework of behavior, and an
ego.
Nietzsche *full* quote and prediction was quite accurate. Mankind didn't kill, but abandoned
God, and put himself in God's place. But men are unfit to be gods. Taken to one extreme, the
individual, given unlimited power and ability, takes over the universe, dominates everything,
controls everything, exploits and consumes everything. Taken to the other extreme, the ego
destroys itself in despair, which is also an egotistical act.

Self-worship is a death sentence, and the only salvation is mastery of the self, through
submission to the ultimate good.
Gods that war with each other for the souls of men
In the past, whenever two peoples met one God lived and one God died, whenever two
continents met, one culture and its religion/God(s) triumphed and one faded away or was
absorbed into the other. And so it will be. If and when mankind reaches another planet, again
the Gods will war. If and when a new great society arises, each will vie for the superiority of its
own God(s). The warring of these "Gods of supremacy" is the result of the tribal nature of man
and is unfortunate.
The successful individual, and society, and human race let's go of this God, or that God, and
embraces *goodness* both the material and the spiritual, both the reason of the mind and the
reason of the heart and gives each its proper place.
We are living in Huxley's "Brave New World" [5] and it's a terrible place that's going to get much
worse. But the ones who survive will be those who go in eyes open, recognizing and trusting
the duality of the flesh and the spirit that make them up, dedicated to what they can know of
truth, and clinging for dear life to each other, and to all that they know to be good, maybe even
codifying those principles into some sort of formal guidelines [6].