Christian Atheism & The Death of God

In his words 30

“The message of Christianity is: God dies. And we are the... God's gift to us is our freedom.”
2:00:43 From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Enjoyment · Christian atheism / God's death as liberation

“So my thesis is that only that Christianity is the only consequent atheism.”
1:02:40 Is there a Post-Human God? · Christian atheism as the only philosophically complete atheism

“I am a Christian atheist. Because in Christianity for a brief moment God himself knows that he doesn't exist.”
~0:00 Ideology Between Fetish and Symptom · Christian atheism — Christ's dereliction as atheism within religion

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

anecdote · in 21 of its talks

Niels Bohr's horseshoe

Niels Bohr had a horseshoe on his country-house door; when a scientist friend asked why a scientist would keep a superstitious charm, Bohr answered 'I was told it works even if you don't believe in it', Žižek's model for ideology today.

anecdote · in 9 of its talks

Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope

Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope and places it on his own head; the Pope tells him he will fail at ruining Christianity because 'we Catholic institution have been trying to do this for years and didn't succeed'.

example · in 9 of its talks

Book of Job as first critique of ideology

Job's theological friends tell him his suffering has a deeper meaning; Jehovah appears and says Job was right, the suffering has no meaning. Chesterton reads God's 'where were you when I created monsters' speech not as arrogance but as: look, the whole world is a mess, you're …

example · in 7 of its talks

Critique of Life is Beautiful

Žižek argues Benigni’s film fails because it shifts from comedy to sentimental melodrama at the end. He proposes an alternative ending where the son reveals he knew it was a camp all along but played along to protect his father, creating a more poignant, authentic comic tragedy.

anecdote · in 7 of its talks

Stalin joins the applause

When a fascist leader finishes speaking the crowd applauds and he simply accepts it. In Stalinism the leader joins in the applause himself. Žižek (drawing on Dolar's work) reads this as the difference between the fascist structure of voice, charismatic reception, and the Stali…

example · in 6 of its talks

Canned laughter / TV laugh track

Mentioned as another example of passive consumption and the removal of substance (laughter without the joke/comedy).

Organic apples as ideology6 Gulag birthday telegram to Stalin6 Santa Claus Belief6 coffee without cream / coffee without milk7 Primo Levi's Selekcja5 Starbucks ethical consumerism6 Native Americans prefer 'Indians'5 Proust's grandmother on the telephone4 Hitler and the obscene underground4 Chesterton's reading of God's answer to Job4

Where it comes up 95

186 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

Slavoj Zizek: God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse2024-06-27 · 37:09

~19:00 Christian atheism

we are still not ready to confront it, of what Christianity is truly telling us. Which is why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist, but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense. But this authentic atheism in …

~15:50 death of God

mess, everything goes wrong and so on. That it's in a refined way like God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. I think that this is maybe an incredible ethical revolution, because this is already the first step out of this traditional pagan view …

34:20 transcendence

… Because you know like for me the message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence.

+3 more in this talk

God in Pain2012-04-24 · 1:16:53

19:05 Christian atheism

… why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist—but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense, but this authentic atheism in the sense of experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee—and in this sense for me Stalinist communists or some Darwinists are not atheists, you know they always have some higher figure of necessity and so on—you have to go through Christianity.

1:07:28 death of God

… cannot this would have been another Fidel Castro explosion of two hours why, but you remember I said this: I claim that to really think the death of God is not a matter of simple atheism.

1:08:07 God is unconscious

… The here I refer to Jacques Lacan who said the true formula of atheism is not "God is dead" but "God is unconscious." That is to say, it's easy for us not to believe.

+2 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek -Timelapse Drawing [+Speech at The European Graduate School]2017 · 41:25

0:09 Christian atheism

… what i call christian atheism is still.

37:06 negative theology

… so it's just that our world is out of joint, inconsistent, lacking something, but it's literally negative theology.

~10:20 God as atheist

who finds himself in exactly the same position with the famous father, father, have you forsaken me? so that it's a wonderful insight that you should see in a very hegelian way how our separation, we overcome our separation from god, not by rejoining god, …

+3 more in this talk

Lesson from „Airpokalypse“2017-06-30 · 1:49:37

58:35 Christian atheism

… try to explain you through one example what do I mean by the weird term that I like to use when people ask me "What are you?" I say I'm an atheist Christian.

~1:05:33 death of God

as divine utter arrogance, you know, in the sense of who are you shitty human to even talk to me like this, you are not at my level. But my favorite theologian, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, proposes a totally opposite reading. That God's answer means basically, …

1:09:01 negative theology

… So we have here negative theology but not in the usual sense of God is beyond all our descriptions but in sense that God is just a name of this gap.

Slavoj Žižek and Alex O'Connor Live in London2025-11-09 · 1:23:32

1:10:44 Christian atheism

… Well, you know, earlier you were describing yourself as as somewhat Christian in the sense that you're a Christian atheist, that you identify with something about Christianity, and then you say that your political motto is to abandon hope...

8:51 death of God

… No, what dies, Hegel says this, what dies on the cross is God of Beyond itself.

1:06:44 the dead God

… So my position of the God is dead doesn't mean let's be cynical there is no high...

+3 more in this talk