This makes me think of a word from Deleuze... that the death of God is the condition that must be considered already acquired for the creation of real problems. So for him, the death of God is not a tragic thing. How is this, is a question I'm asking myself (I'll have to read him further)

He talks of serene atheism, also...

I guess same is the position of Foucault in Order of Things and prior to that in his long unpublished introduction to his own translation of Kant's Anthropology.

If you never were a Christian, it's easier. Also, I think that *many* people put forward the kind of teachings and mental reference models that make life possible for non-philosopher atheists: people like Ayn Rand, Nietzsche himself... not necessarly true (should I say "True") but their works can give you some sort of reference.

Also, I think it's a very bad idea to judge life and lifestyles using Christianity as a point of reference. As we are all aware, it's a huge aberation in history (actually, I mean the entire Abrahamic root). Nothing stops people today to live like Greeks, Romans or Huns did, intellectually.

Saying that the lack of Christinity is "nothingness" is a very "resentful Christian" things to say. Christians should get over their egocentrism and see that not only they aren't special, but also very wrong.

The importance of Christianity (positive or negative) for modern civilisation can be hardly overemphasised. You do not have to be Christian to realise the significance of Christianity for the making and unmaking of our world. Habermas (for example), who calls himself a methodical atheist, confesses that significance without hesitation, you do not have to be Charles Taylor to do that. Nietzsche's merit was to realise this. What he was saying was that we should realise the price we pay in order to abandon Christianity. Whatever one's judgement of Christianity, its abandonment cannot be an ordinary event.

Christianity and Abrahamic religions being an aberration or not, is a matter of faith, in Connolly's sense, and not a philosophical issue, which can be decided through "argumentation." As far as I am concerned I do not think that Abrahamic tradition is an aberration.

Nietzsche is often interpreted as 'no saying'-- philosopher: as being against this and that--eg Christianity, morality, Platonism, liberalism and socialism. This nay-saying is commonly expressed in Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals.

But Nietzsche is also a yea saying philosopher: as expressed in the latter part of the Gay Science, Thus Spake Zarathrusta and The Will to Power.

That yea saying comes through a re-evauation of our values (morality as a code to live by), which we have previously used to cope with chaos and nihilism. It is a revaluation because these (eg., Christianity) no longer do the job of helping us distinquishing between right and wrong and good and evil as they once did.

Christianity, with its ascetic ideals and conception of sinfulness, is life denying as it makes us unhappy, miserable and sick.

The re-evaluation of our previously highest values, leads to a healthy noble morality, which values and enhances life. This is done through a reworking of the classical culture of strong aristocratic values.