The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche is confusing. There are passages that are clear, but for the most part it is difficult to get past the weird sentence structures and get at his meaning. This is no doubt due to the translation, which is by Thomas Common. The translation I tried before was by Walter Kaufmann in his Portable Nietzsche, and on Gutenberg they use a translation by H. L. Mencken, from which most of the quotes here are gathered.

He criticizes christianity exclusively and in the first few sections he takes time to suggest that it tends to cultivate weak individuals, given its nature to worship a god and savior that caters to the downtrodden and sympathizes with the suffering. To Nietzsche, this is a detriment to society, because it saps the will for greater achievements, and, by making sympathy (or pity) the moral standard, it "It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction." He says we have instincts for compassion, and instinct for achievement. When we place sympathy on a higher moral ground than achievement, our energies are directed away from advancing humanity. Although this makes sense, I must admit that it appeals to the tendencies I harbor against religion. Still, it is noteworthy I think that he gives a sense that pity is not to be disposed of completely, but that to make pity a higher moral virtue than a passion for the advancement of mankind is itself immoral.

He also talks about truth being the antithesis of religion, or rather vice versa, and about how christianity stifles the human spirit in general. He was not the only one, but may be the most notable. It will be interesting to see exactly how his writing could be used by theists to discount his notions, whether there is something specific, or whether it is the antitheism in general that warrants a blanket condemnation. Regardless, Christopher Hitchens believes things are getting better in this day and age because more atheists are speaking out, but it may be that we are just in the middle of an ongoing revolution that has been taking us slowly out of the middle ages, and Nietzsche is just one of many smart enough and courageous enough to accept the role of theistic antagonist. Maybe the proliferation of evangelists are just lame attempts to rein in the flock, so to speak, from what they see as a growing threat to their dominion over the masses.

These notions remind me a lot of Ayn Rand. Her ideas of the valuation of human achievement above collectivism are similar to this, and it looks to me she reaped a lot of her ideas from these notions of Nietzsche.

Does Nietzsche do more harm than good? In modern times people have subverted these ideas and used them as justification for allowing the suffering and exploitation of people. People have blamed Hitler on Nietzsche's message. It may be so, but I would argue that Hitler was inherently evil, and he sought out notions of scholars such as Nietzsche and the like that appealed to him, that he assumed supported his previously established biases. If not them, he would have found what he was looking for elsewhere.

Are things getting better as Hitchens believes? There have always been those willing to denounce the teachings of religion. According to Nietzsche, the Greeks saw the religious approach to alleviating suffering by offering hope as evil.

Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most malign of evils; it remained behind at the source of all evil.)

Then there is fact that some deny christianity today is nothing like Jesus would have approved of. He says that christians subvert aspects of Jesus' life to suit them. This is what he has to say about the crucification...

This is what brought him to the cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put upon the cross. He died for his own sins—there is not the slightest ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died for the sins of others.

This will have to be investigated, it is a small but interesting point. Anyway, I am still not done with the essay, just had to get these things down before I forgot them completely....