The Grand Inquisitor, By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In Frederick Nietzsche’s The Death of God, his madman cries, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?”(The Madman) To Nietzsche, the phrase "God is dead" is not to be take literally in the sense that he believed in an actual God who existed and then died. Rather, he is implying that the Christian God is no longer the go to for absolute moral principles. In a way, Nietzsche’s The Death of God is explaining that because people are starting to no longer believe in god, their morality isn't tied up in the idea of some imaginary being. It seems that Nietzsche's intended purpose was to do away with the traditional idea of “Christian” morality as he believed that because people were evolving to a place where they could create their own morality, God was unnecessary and irrelevant.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamosov, Ivan Karamazov meets his brother Alyosha at a restaurant to talk.

In perhaps one of, if not the most famous chapters in the novel, "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan tells Alyosha a poem that describes a leader from the Spanish Inquisition and his encounter with Jesus, who has made his return to earth. This Grand Inquisitor rejects Jesus and throws him in jail exclaiming:
Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that... We are working not with Thee but with him [Satan]... We took from him what Thou didst reject with scorn, that last gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of the earth. We took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth... We shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of

man.
The assumption at the heart of the Inquisitor’s case is that Christ’s resistance of the temptations he was offered by the inquisitor is meant to provide a symbolic example for the rest of humankind, yet places an impossible burden on mankind, which is inherently too weak to use its free will to find salvation. The Inquisitor then argues, the only option is for people to lead sinful lives ending in damnation. The Grand Inquisitor's church, at least, provides an earthly happiness for the masses even though it will not lead to eternal salvation. “In place of the clear and rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou that he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down wit the fearful burden of free choice?”(279)
The previous two readings seem to revolve around the idea that God is no longer at the forefront of peoples thoughts anymore. This also comes across in an interview with English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist, Stephan Fry. In this interview on The Meaning of Life on Sunday Fry was asked what he would say to god if he were to die and come face to face with him. Fry responded, "Bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you.” He continued: "How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?”(video)
When he was asked whether this such a response would get him into heaven, Fry replied that he wasn't interested in going to heaven according to the terms of the sort of God he had just described. "It's perfectly apparent that he is monstrous, utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”(video)
This goes to show that even today, people are still question the motives of God. In the pre-modern era God was the ultimate source for truth about reality and morality. However, in the modern era science and reason have replaced God. With all the terrible things that our world had endured, it only make sense that if some people will draw closer to their God in order to be comforted and convinced that they will be taken care of, there will also be those on the opposite side of that who like Nietzsche and Stephen Fry, will question what kind of man would allow these atrocities to happen and decide that their faith in a God like that is no longer warranted or wasn't in the first place.

How do some people who believe in God, justify their actions when their morality is tied to the belief that if they are naughty they go to hell? Isn’t being moral only for the sake of not facing eternal damnation, not actually being moral?

In reading some of Nietzsche's works, his disappointment with humanity and God is obvious to me. Was he an atheist?
Did Dostoevsky share the same religious beliefs as those in some of his books?