There is prophetic saying of Nietzsche's, " God is dead and man is free". He had tremendous insight into the matter. Very few people have been able to understand the depth of his statement. It is a milestone in the history of consciousness. If there is a God, man can never be free - that is an impossibility. With God, man will remain a slave and freedom will remain just an empty word. Only without God does freedom start having meaning.
But Frederich Nietzsche statement is only half: Nobody has tried to make it complete. It looks complete, but Frederich Nietzsche was not aware that there are religions in the world that have no God, Yet even those religions man is not free. He was not aware of Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism - the most profound religions of all. For all these three religions there is no God. for the same reason Nietzsche did, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, and Gautam Buddha denied God - because they could see that with God, man is just a puppet. Then all efforts for enlightenment are meaning less; You are not free, how can you become enlightened? and there is somebody omnipotent, all powerful - he can take away your enlightenment. He can destroy anything!
But Nietzsche was not aware of that there have been religions that are Godless. For thousands of years there have been people who have understood that God's existence is the greatest barrier to man's freedom - they removed God. But still man is not free.
What I am trying to help you to understand is that just by making God dead you cannot make man free. You will have to make one more thing dead, and that is religion.
Religion also has to die; it has to follow God. We have to create a religiousness that is Godless and religion less, which has no body above, and more powerful than you, and no organised religion to create different kinds of gauges - Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist. Beautiful cages....
With God and religion both dead, one more thing dies automatically and that is the priest hood, the leader, the different forms of religious leader. Now he has no function. there is no organised religion in which he can be Pope or Shankaracharya. He has no God whom he can represent; his function is finished.
Buddha, Mahavira, and lao Tzu talked God in the same way as Friedrich Nietzsche - not knowing, not aware that if religion remain, than even without God, the priest would manage to keep man in slavery.
To complete the insight of Nietzsche, religion has to die. There is no point to an organised religion if there is no God.
