And we have killed him.” So says the prophet in Nietzsche’s anechoic tragedy, where his words go resented and unheard. Suppose you are affected by my saying “God is dead.” Why should this matter? If God lives, then there is nothing that anyone can say or think to make him not exist. And if God does not live, then it is only belief that sustains him. No, what is really the tragedy is not the need for a proof in God, but the conflation between what is real and what is mere thought. Now thoughts are not unreal for their being thoughts. But that is what they are—thoughts. A projection on a screen is a projection on a screen. It is not false or unreal, it simply does not have the same dimension as it seems to have. The projection is believable because it runs on the contours of the mind, filling all its cracks and crannies like water flows through the mountain seams into its roots and streams. This is why stories are desirable. Stories are not the less or more real for their being stories. They are stories, and stories are important.

If you equate God with the incessant nagging in your mind, then of course you will understand God as the ultimate judge and savior—his existence is rooted in your problem-solving! But if God lives outside the mind, or, alternatively, even if he never was or is or will be anything more than a thought, then there is nothing that you can do or think to make him come into being or go away. Your world may crumble, and yet—


November 1, 2020
San Luis Obispo