When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) looked into the hearts of his contemporaries, he found that God had already died, there, but as yet very few people were aware of this.79 In The Gay Science (1882), he told the story of a madman who ran one morning into the marketplace, crying: “I seek God!” In mild amusement, the sophisticated bystanders asked him if God had run away or emigrated. “Where has God gone?” the madman demanded. “We have killed him—you and I! We are all his murderers!”80 The astonishing progress of science had made God quite irrelevant; it had caused human
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