According to adherents dot com, 54% of US citiens label themselves as Protestant, Mormon or as a Jehovah's Witness. Once you remove the groups that are not known for proselytization (most Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians) you've got a minority. Sure some of these groups I've named as not being known for proselytizing do proselytize, but some Evangelicals don't.

This is why in "The Madman", the madman addresses not believers, but atheists — the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order.

The Madman in the ``God is dead'' vignette is preaching to atheists. The shadow of God that remains is modernism, specifically Enlightenment modernism that believes in science as a route to absolutes, and is the object of disdain to the Madman. This is Nietzsche's argument against not only religion but against any objective truth.

Consider another portion of The Gay Science:

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave--a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but give the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be sown.  --And we--we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.

This is actually the first appearance of the doctrine of ``God is dead'' in Nietzsche. The key to understanding it is to take it context of the rest of Nietzsche. Knowledge in his view is never absolute, but convention, an artifice of men. Truth itself is a value assigned to ideas by men. Modernism, scientific rationalism that believes in objective truth, is one of the very problems that Nietasche is arguing makes men mediocre instead of aspiring to greatness like the Greeks of old that Nietzsche so admires.

Go back and read Book I of The Gay Science which contains a full frontal assault on science itself. Then read the pericope about God being dead with understanding of the context in which Nietasche himself placed it.

Unfortunately, the Soviets never really took Marx to  heart. If they had, they'd have realized that Russia was not ready for the Revolution as it had yet to be come an industrial capitalist society. Marx would have argued that the real Revolution can't happen until until society truly only contains two classes: the capitalists and the workers. At that point, the overthrow of the ruling class leaves only one united class: the workers. A revolution before that point leaves several unresolved problems: a bourgeoise, artisans, feudal lords, etc. The result is just a big mess.

I used to argue that the relationship was the reverse, but the facts keep getting in the way of that assessment.

You simply cannot prove that God does or does not exist. You are certainly welcome to believe what you want, based upon the facts at hand, and I have no problem with anyone who chooses not to believe that some greater power doesn't exist in the universe simply because they can't touch or see it. Personally I look around and see lots of stuff we can't explain and I'm willing to believe there is some greater/more-evolved power involved somehow.

WRT organised religion - I've always had a problem with it as well, but I view it as a different issue than the "does a greater power exist" question. Just because some people use organised religion to manipulate people doesn't have any bearing on the existence, or lack thereof, of God.

Frankly I submit more people have died for their "country" which is just as silly as dieing in the name of God in my opinion.

I'd be willing to believe that God doesn't exist if someone can explain/prove where the planets originated from.

Warmest regards,
--Your best pal Bob
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