Why do you think Nietzsche fans are losers?
Anyways.... Philosophy enabled me to overcome my religious upbringing.
During this difficult transition, life went from being full of meaning to having absolutely no meaning. It sent me into a deep depression. It took me years to finally come to grips with the fact that after death there is nothing.
I was still young at the time, probably 15. I tried to push my ideas on other people, and so they pushed me aside. This made me very lonely as a teenager, not just because I had few friends, but mostly because nobody else thought like me.
I want you to re-read the above paragraph objectively. Can you see why some people might
think Nietzsche fans are losers? I had a friend who liked Nietzsche in high school, he was a nice guy and funny but he was often a downer. He's fine today, but I want you to know that I know a
little bit about Nietzsche and I'm not speaking out of animosity here.
Also, Nietzsche was a lonely, depressed young man, who created a lot of his own problems in life (such as his torturous syphilis, not that anyone deserves to suffer that but I'm pretty sure God would not have approved of the brothel visits that gave him said syphilis anyhow) and who's legacy would be to ensure that many other young people would spend their formative years lonely and depressed. Nietzsche himself may have advocated against nihilism, but I think you can see if you think about it how many of his adages taken on their own might seem nihilistic to people. Though people often misquote Nietzsche and you have that to work against public perception of you too. A lot of atheists themselves are fond of simply saying "God is dead", but Nietzsche said something to the effect of "we killed him, he existed in every thing that's beautiful." which is a far more profound quote in my opinion even if it doesn't fit on a t-shirt.
I'm happy that you're happier, but when it comes to pushing your beliefs on others, a lot of atheists never get past that stage. They spend the entire rest of their lives being smug, angry, judgmental, acerbic people, often with superiority complexes. Even if they grow out of it, the people they met at that nasty stage probably don't have the best impression. So once again I hope you can understand why you see negative public perception. The ones who rail annually against Christmas for example. You'd think they could like it for no other reason than everyone is a little nicer around Christmas time but no, nothing about religion is excusable, even the good stuff. To that end I think it's great that you can be tolerant. I think tolerance is a necessary component of any person, and a boon to any belief. If you would be a christian or an atheist then at least be a
balanced christian or an atheist. I think the angry adherents of any philosophy, who go around evangelizing and tearing down others are bad examples of humanity in general and poor representatives for their beliefs. Who would
want to be like them?
I guess though, people are going to always be at the mercy of whoever gives them their ideals. I can also see why there might be atheists who seem to think all religion needs to be wiped off the face of the planet. For my part, I was lucky that as a catholic I had good priests. They taught us, me and the other kids going there, the value of tolerance, mercy, compassion, they even told us to ask questions of our faith. They stressed adherence to Christ's ideals more than adherence to dogma. Father Steve I recall expressly said that. They made good logical arguments, they probably taught me how to speak publicly and debate, and they stressed the value of words and concepts and a reliance on ourselves rather than divine intervention. To this day I remember homilies that included phrases like "You can not
love apple pie, because apple pie can not love you back" and "God did not build Noah the ark". I suppose I'm also lucky that the church holds a figurative interpretation of the bible. If I was told I had to
literally believe that the earth was made in six days, all the animals in the world boarded a boat or that god sends bears to eat children for calling bald men bald then I'd probably find religion incompatible with
reason too. And if I did accept all that... I would probably be an
unreasonable person. I feel sorry for the atheist kid who grows out of, and grows up in, that kind of environment.
