God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. These words from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science are among the most famous and most misunderstood in philosophy. They are not a celebration. They are not atheist propaganda. They are a diagnosis of cultural crisis and a warning about what comes next. Nietzsche was not announcing his personal atheism. He was observing that Western civilization had lost the capacity for genuine religious belief and had not yet grasped the catastrophic implications of this loss. The proclamation is delivered by a madman in the marketplace who asks: “Have you not heard...