Brittany Rexroat 
Lacy Hanson I was hoping the title would catch your attention, becasuse it certainly did mine. This is perhaps the best known statements made by Friedrich Nietzsche. When I first saw the caption I was like wow…what is his problem? I know he is an existentialist, but really? As I read on I realized what he meant by it, and it was quite profound. When he said this, he was speaking about the influences of European society and how they had become so secular and far from God that they more or less “killed” Him because God was a symbol of values and upholding righteousness and Nietzsche was seeing values being tossed out the window all around him.
Nietzsche’s view of God being a symbol of values showed how important keeping the God “alive” in society would be and without God there would be no objective truth or universal perspective. Perspectives would be individualized and we could only rely on our own perspectives. This introduces the concept of perspectivism, which says all ideas come from particular perspectives. That implys that no way of seeing things is actually true and that is how one of Nietzsche’s contributions to the existentialist view came about.
Candice Watson
10:31 pm, 02.21.11
He must have felt strongly about this to use such strong words. I am glad he did because I think it is a huge issue to abandon values and righteousness in a society. It must have been hard for him to see these values being cast aside so freely as you mentioned. I am glad his strong words caught your attention and that your title caught mine. He spoke of important issues and used his passion and words to capture those who might have otherwise kept overlooking a serious problem.
Jacob Luedecke
10:56 pm, 02.21.11
I’m not sure that Nietzsche intended for his words to be taken so literally or to mean that he wished or desired God to be “dead”. I agree that the church had, at the time, taken a predominantly secular approach and Nietzsche was merely providing a social commentary on the events of the time. I do agree with the idea of perspectivism. We, as humans, are incapable of fully seeing ideas or events from other’s points of view simply because we are not someone else. We look at the world through our own eyes and do our best to sympathize and empathize with others even in spite of our limited capacity to expand our thoughts.
Alison
11:14 pm, 02.21.11
Nietzsche was quite the atheist, and his use of the “Death of God” idea was really more in reference to values being overthrown. He basically decided that since Christian values were no longer a good foundation, the new value system should be based on the idea of “will to power”; that everyone at their core just wants power, and they should do whatever it takes to get it. Not sure if I’m crazy about all of Nietzche’s ideas.