Why would Freidrich Nietzsche say God is dead do you think that many people today feel that God religion or spirituality is irrelevant?

Answer 1

Nietzsche was not talking about God as a 'person'. What he meant by this was that Christian morality as represented by God no longer was and should be the source of absolute moral principles. As to 'why': Nietzsche thought that religion was a restraining force on people's ability to discover and live by the values that the natural and supernatural world has to offer. Truth be told, religion by the end of the 19th century was often used to restrain people's freedom of thought - as it still is today in the Muslim world.
As to the relevance of religion today: it varies greatly across the globe. As already said, millions of Muslims all over the world today feel the growing pressure of ever more orthodox and even fundamentalist tendencies in religious rules that are applied to their everyday life. Among Western countries, the US stands out as a country where Christian religion and values are still a big influence on people's thinking on morality issues; and all public figures in the US will at least try to publicly give the impression that prayer, Bible reading and upholding Christian values are their favorite pastime.

In other Western countries, especially in Europe, the influence of Christian religion on peoples' thinking and convictions has much diminished and "Christian" political parties - still all-powerful in the Fifties and Sixties - play an almost marginal role today. Political leaders in Europe practically never refer to their religious convictions, even if they still have them and any moral opinions given by churches (even the Roman Catholic Church ) in Europe are duly noted but rarely sway opinion or decisions.

That doesn't make religion or spirituality 'irrelevant', though. The mixture of Christian beliefs, Graeco-Roman philosophy and Enlightenment thinking are still at the basis of almost all laws and conventions in all Western countries, even if their citizens are today no longer restrained by any rules of 'religious thinking'.

Answer 2

I think he probably didn't believe in God, or he thought that belief in God, among the population in general, would decrease over time. Probably both.