Death of God, Overman, Evolution

Probably the best-known expression from Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the phrase "God is dead."  Now, it seems unlikely that Nietzsche means by this that an immortal existent deity is now deceased.  Instead, it is more likely a reference to the implication of the repudiation of Geocentrism--that the concept of a deity that inhabits a realm that encompasses the Earth is no longer tenable.  If so, then he is hardly the first to do so--it is also implicit in Spinoza's Pantheism.  But, as is evident elsewhere in his oeuvre, Nietzsche's main concern is not strictly Theological; rather, his concern is a consequence of that 'death'--the decline in effectiveness of a sustaining myth, that he diagnoses as incipient Nihilism.  Accordingly, he concomitantly recognizes the urgency of replacing it, which is why he complements the announcement of the Death of God with the positing of the Overman.  Now, as has been previously discussed, one interpretation of the Overman is that it is the Evolutionist successor of the Human species.  If so, then in these passages, Nietzsche anticipates the Religion vs. Evolution conflicts to come, though with an emphasis on the future of the Human species, not on its origins.