Where … the fire of the religious imagination is extinct …

there the existence [of God] becomes a dead, self-

contradictory existence, which falls irrecoverably into the
negation of atheism.
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot, New York, Prometheus
Books, p. 203 (II, 20, 1841)

… they did not notice that man has killed God in order to
become now - 'sole God on high'.
Max Stiner, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2000, p. 139 (II, Intro, 1844)

God has died and his death was the life of the world.
Philipp Mainländer, Die Philosophie der Erlösung (1876)