Oddbean

My read on Nietzsche was that one of his primary issues was Christianity is often viewed as a list of thou shalt nots. A blob on the couch meets that requirement. By contrast think of stoicism, real stoicism not internet influencoor to lost boys stoicism. The entire philosophy is a set of virtues that you must strive to live up to. Inaction is failure. There are a few passages where that model doesn't apply, but it is the primary model of instruction given. As for christians vs what the bible says, if they all arrived at the same place that is surely a failing on the part of an allegedly all knowing beings ability to write a decent instruction manual.

He wrote 12 books of original philosophy we're talking about over 100 years later. You managed 1 word in your insult for every 3 books he wrote. Go read The Man in the Arena and see if you can figure out why I don't value your opinion on the subject.

He probably did dislike the 'thou shalt not's, but his main gripe was what he called "slave morality" - which is pretty much the opposite of stoicism. An important distinction is that he didn't disagree with Christ - he disagreed with the church. IMO, he understood Christ better than anyone in any physical church. Something I'm seeing is that the church tends to eject anyone who actually understands - and the more constipated the church, for example Catholic or EO, the less tolerant they are of real followers of Christ.

I agree that his critique of the church is incomplete. We've had another 100 years of the great conversation he didn't have when we point those missing things out. Standing on the shoulders of giants. As an atheist, I'm currently most interested in the way christians and the church use god and the devil to absolve themselves of personal responsibility. The devil made me do it may be said in jest, but it is a real view that taints how they act in the world. Outside forces beyond their control can force them to act in ways they would not choose to. It is like living with the ultimate case of learned helplessness as your core belief of how the world works.

Interesting perspective. I've fairly recently become a Christian, after being agnostic but spiritually curious for a long time. So far, almost universally, the Christians I've met have been all about taking responsibility. Sometimes annoyingly so... This is also pretty close to that crack in the matrix I mentioned.

Very interested in taking responsibility for small things but not so much on the big hard things. How will you provide for your family? Grow your skills and save or god will provide. To go back to stoicism, you can't really stop until you've done everything in your power to secure their future and still be living the stoic virtues. That said, christianity includes lots of varied sects and geographic changes in personality, we may well be seeing different things.