The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced “God is dead” because he believed that the concept of God was no longer relevant or useful in the modern world.
Nietzsche’s statement was made in a time when religion was still very important in society and he was concerned about the impact this would have on humanity. He believed that with the death of God, so too would go morality, culture and all other human institutions.
In addition, Nietzsche’s announcement was part of his larger philosophy of nihilism, which states that all ideas and values are baseless and meaningless. He saw that traditional ideas about God were no longer relevant to most people in Europe, and he believed that people needed a new set of values to guide them through life.
Thinker believed that traditional morality had become outdated and irrelevant in his time. He believed that human beings had outgrown their need for religion because they were now more sophisticated than before:
What formerly passed as Christian morality has been undermined by higher views of life; what was regarded as its essential features are today often regarded as its deformities — thus it is no longer possible to deduce the laws governing society from the existence of God (or from any other metaphysical concepts). In consequence, those laws have lost their binding power; there exist no absolute standards for determining what should be forbidden or permitted — what constitutes good or evil.
