Since ancient times, humans have worshipped a divine being, most notably named “God”. It has been widely accepted that this divine God created the Earth, humans, and everything we know to exist, however, if science is correct, there is no God and these religions are faulty. The question of why it matters whether God exists or not is essential to our daily lives, because we would change our lives in order to appease a God. If there is a God, humans have a purpose, and that purpose is to serve our creator in order to achieve a chance at an eternal afterlife. If there is no God however, right and wrong do not exist, and are simply ideologies formed by different cultures of people, therefore there is no meaning to living a good life as there is no afterlife to experience afterwards. If there is no right or wrong, there is only the will of man, and only the consequences man can face is in the physical world. If there is a God, man can face consequences spiritually and physically, with the chance of not living a happy afterlife after the short time humans are given on Earth. Therefore, if there is a God, the will of that God should narrate how we live. Many philosophers over the past few centuries have risen to the task of questioning our existence, Soren Kierkegaard of Denmark is considered the father of existentialism, and one of the first to question why we are here.
	Kierkegaard was a different type of worshipper of God; he criticized Christianity and even went to the extremes of calling it non-religious. Essentially, he believed that humans could not understand God’s infinite wisdom and that our relationship with God needed to be practiced, not just taught in a Church. He believed that an individual’s relationship with God was one that was formed through a special type
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian Orthodox believer and believed that God created us all beautifully, in fact one of his most famous quotes accurately describes his religious views. “To love someone is to see them as God intended” is what Dostoevsky stated, which further narrates the idea that he believed God created us all to be able to be loved. In his writings he illustrates multiple theological points of view, especially in his novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, in which one brother is a staunch agnostic, and the other wants to spread love through Christianity. The agnostic tackles questions such as why God created a world in which children and innocent can suffer, only to re-question himself with the conflicting viewpoint of the Christian, who believes that God and humans can spread love and are meant to. Dostoevsky lived his life finding meaning in loving others, he believed that if someone could be loved, they have successfully completed their meaning in life to God. Dostoevsky also was a skeptic of God however, and also contradicted his own opinions a lot, which caused controversy when taking his opinions into further analyzation. He led a life as if there was no God, he was envious, and gambled away all of his money, and his friends’. However, when questioned about why he was living life this way, he still believed as if there was a God, and certainly wished to believe there was one, but did not quite know how to live his life if there was a God. Therefore, Dostoevsky believes that because we cannot fully prove there is a God, we can live a life of uncertainty and a life of deeds that are seen un-Christian, although there might be a chance that there is a God still. Friedrich Nietzsche on the other hand, believed in God, but was born too late to practice believing in him.
Nietzsche believed that there was a God that was worshipped correctly, but because of the rise of individualism, he was killed. In “The Gay Science”, Nietzsche talks extensively about the idea of what we must do now that God is dead, what festivities will occur, what days to celebrate, all because our meaning of living has ceased to exist. Without a God there is no reason to live, because there are no consequences for what we do in our mortal life, beyond that of death. If there is no God, once a human is deceased, they decompose into energy to be redistributed to the Earth, and nothing else. Nietzsche would agree that there was no reason for living and was commonly labelled as a nihilist for thinking this way, although did not consider himself one. He did not reject the possibility of a God, he simply believed that there was a God, and we killed him. In the Enlightenment era, science became more widely accepted as a means of the creation of the Earth, creating a divide between the Church and the State. The Church lost its power due to this scientific rationality overtaking religion, and when the Church lost its power and holiness, God was killed. Nietzsche argued that individualism caused the Death of God because God intended us to live in his image, he did not intend for us to live freely and have our own will. He intended for us to live, worship and live in his image, and then die and live an eternal life in Heaven. However, due to the dawn of the era of science, individual freedom arose, and people started believing their actions had no consequence in an afterlife, because there was no afterlife. People would reject Nietzsche and claim that his views were preposterous, that God exists because Christianity exists, however would not take into consideration the fact that the rest of the world had killed God as well. Due to this rejection, Nietzsche believed that people would start outright denying God and nihilism would become more widely practiced. To put it bluntly, Nietzsche was a pessimist about God, and believed that he was already dead, so there was no reason we are on Earth, but believed that humans would start valuing themselves more, and living more in the present as opposed to the future because of this. Jean-Paul Sartre would further agree with Nietzsche; however, Sartre was considered an atheist.
Sartre went through life questioning the existence of a divine being from his early years, in his book “Being and Nothingness”, he dabbles on the idea that previously in his life, there was an absence of God when he needed him most, not that there was no God. Sartre tackles the question of God’s existence quite differently than the rest of the philosophers mentioned above, as well as the rest of atheists. He wished to develop an atheist point of view that was concrete enough to be practiced and uses freedom as his point of interest. He believes that free people do not need to believe in a God because free people have nothing to live for after they pass, like Nietzsche. Believing in God is false faith in the eyes of Sartre because it is putting faith in a mystical being that has not been proven in the physical world, and that people that worship God are afraid to live free and have responsibility. However staunchly against God as Sartre was, God had an important role in the development of his life, especially due to the fact that he was a known existentialist who had no religious roots.