Final

Name: Brian Ridenour

User Name: wt4god98

Email address: wt4god98@yahoo.com and bcridenour@gmail.com

Website: http://noverimte.blogspot.com/

Reading: I did not read all of the Nietzsche Channel and I have a little left to go in The Antichrist or The Gospel of Unbelief. I will probably finish it before you grade this test.

Movies: I could not get the audio working on the Thakar Singh clips. Beyond Belief session 6 stopped after 1hr15min a couple times I attempted to watch it (just when Beth Loftis begins to speak). I didn’t have time to watch all of Session 9, but I definitely will plan on it because the conference was intriguing.

Mid-term grade: B/B+

11. Posts – http://noverimte.blogspot.com/

12. Mark Juergensmeyer believes that acts of terrorism are used by religious zealots because of the common teaching in religions that there is a battle between good and evil going on constantly. For Christians, for example, the battle is commonly found in the battle between the flesh (evil) and the spirit (good), and our fight to act fully in the spirit. For many zealots, this battle between good and evil is brought into the everyday life in things like the government and politics and their fight is therefore in the same physical world. If they see the government and evil, their battle is to destroy the evil so that good will prevail. It is a war between good and evil and the zealots use terrorism to “open the eyes” of the everyday people. Unfortunately, most people focus their eyes on the evil of the terrorist act and not the message they are trying to send.

His proposition to mitigate such attacks in the future is to take a moral high ground. Ghandi showed the world how this is done. We are not to fight to win, but we are to fight with integrity and purity which preserves who you are. When we fight them on their level and using their tactics, we only prove that we are just like them. Doing so does two things, 1) it gives them more reasons to fight forward against the “evil power” that is against them, and 2) it in no way proves us better than they. We are not to just fight against them, but we are to fight them as we are, not conforming or changing who we are in order to fight against them. This is the way to fight correctly and with purity, and this is what will open their eyes one by one to see what evil they are doing to good, innocent, pure people.

13. We cannot say that there is sufficient evidence to prove the Edgar Cayce was a psychic. Neither can we there was sufficient evidence to say that he wasn’t. What can be said is that what he did, whether it was or wasn’t psychic, had an important and positive impact on many lives. This can be proven and is important. But apart from that, there is no evidence to prove that he did or did not have psychic powers, but from what we know it certainly appears that he could have.

The problem of verifying it is not falsifiable. We can prove that he sometimes was wrong, but when he was right there is no way of saying how he knew. There is a great many ways he could seem to have psychic powers, and many could only be proven by he word. We would have to simply believe his claim that he has the powers, because there is no way to test the tangibility of psychic powers. This makes it an impossible claim to test. Based on the ability to repeat his “paranormal powers” many times, and that there had been no evidence proving he received the messages otherwise, could only give us a hunch, as Professor Lane says, that his psychic powers were indeed paranormal.

14. My professor is very critical of cults because he wants people to know everything they can about what they are accepting. He uses the example that people are very critical when buying a car. They examine the car, pop the hood and check the motor; they want to know everything there is about the car before they buy it. But when it comes to religions, he makes the point that many people just accept them blindly. And when there is a problem they just look past it and turn a blind eye. If he can put material out there so that people can know all there is to know about a group, or cult, then they can take all the information, the plagiarisms, the lies, the good and the bad, and they can make a decision based on all the material. He wants people to be wise, logical, and reasonable when making a decision about something that could be the most important decision of there life.

Apart from all that he also likes the pleasure of finding things out, like Richard Feynman says. He enjoys the ability to play detective and look into things and find out what is really going on. In a way it is a lot of boys dreams to play detective and find things out.

15. Sai Baba proves himself a hoax. Thanks to the video that was captured, we see him slyly exchanging something from one hand to the other, only to make it “appear from nowhere”. This guy is just a deified magician or illusionist, but he isn’t even good enough to be a Copperfield. It is clear that the “paranormal” powers that Sai Baba possesses are merely normal powers through a normal sleight of hand.

What is disturbing is the number of people who follow him and adore him as a man with paranormal powers. He is abuses people by misleading and hoaxing them into believing he is something he is not. There are more and more cases of “gurus” and spiritual leaders who discredit any possibilities that there may be a supernatural or metaphysical or paranormal. Does this mean that there isn’t? No, it simply means that Sai Baba did not possess it.

16. I was never able to get the sound working on these videos. I tried to on 3 different computers and on five different occasions. Though there was no sound, it seemed to me that Thakar Singh was trying to get the children to perfect the practice of meditation. I am not sure that the method is the best way, but it seems as though he feels forcing the children to meditate is the best way to better them in this ritual. It is cruel and an abuse of children’s rights.

17. John Polkinghorne believes in science for logical reasons that come from the facts presented. Being a physicist he dedicated 25 years to science and research and he fully believes in it. His research in physics has allowed him to learn more about the details in the universe and the incredible constants that allow life to sustain itself. Things like the delicate balance in the nuclear reactions within a star which allows it to delicately make carbon, and the reaction that makes the star burn at the right temperature for the right amount of millions of years which are necessary for the sustainability of life.

Along with these constants, the universe is also rationally beautiful and transparent in its rationality. The fact that Newton can find a law which can be applied universally shows the rationality in the universe and how we are able to learn about it for our survival. There is a kind of mathematical beauty to nature, the way that everything is linked mathematically. These two things lead him to believe in religion, or better said a type of mathematical God or mind from which came the universe.

But it is a personal encounter with God which allows him to come to know the persona of God. As a Christian believer he has experienced God in his religious daily experiences like reading Scripture, prayer, and meditation. But it is difficult to deny the religious encounters that other religions experience, that they truly have had an experience with the sacred. These are the reasons why John Polkinghorne believes in both religion and science.

18. Nietzsche critiques religion, mostly Christianity, on a few grounds. One of which is that it is a sacrifice of “all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation”(Beyond Good and Evil, Part 3, 46) He goes on about how religions create the very thing they serve for in humanity. Kind of like an anti-virus program, if there are no viruses there is no need for the program. Therefore, in order to keep it living viruses need to be kept alive. Christianity for example uses “sin” to keep people at a level where they need to be brought out of this condition.

He says he doesn’t agree with religion, but he seems to have a special spot for Buddhism. There are things in Buddhism that to him make a lot more sense, like the getting rid of a god and focusing more on the self. Nietzsche himself felt that we needed to think higher of ourselves and not be belittled by the lowering of our status that religions put on humanity. But the fact that Buddhism deals with the status of suffering and not of sin, among other things, really got a soft spot in his heart. Either way, he wants no part of religion, and he believed that the day we got it out of the way and out of our minds and hearts, would be the day that mankind would begin to advance because it would have the self-esteem and audacity to take the necessary steps.

He further goes on to speak of how unclear and incapable God is of communicating. He says “he does not hear – and if he does hear he would not know how to help”, referring to his belief that God does not understand our feelings to hate, anger, revenge, etc. How can God know how to help a situation which he does not comprehend? This Nietzsche asks indirectly. In the end he thinks that it will one day come to an end, he says, “Perhaps the day will come when the most solemn concepts which have caused the most fights and suffering, the concepts “God” and “sin,” will seem no more important to us than a child’s toy and a child’s pain seem to an old man” (Beyond Good and Evil, Part 3, 57).

19. Dr. James Watson believes that genes hold the secret to understanding human behavior. He believes that through the research already done we have been able to understand more about how we as humans behave and why. His specific studies lately are on the genetic reasons for autism. Studies have shown that there is a large coincidence between an autistic child and both their parents who are systematical”) and mathematical (they have “male minds. There is a peculiar coincidence that parents of autistic children have an average IQ of 112.

Apart from autism, Dr. Watson has studied many cases. His thoughts on our human behavior are that we are who we are by “nature and not nurture”. Basically what he is saying is our behavior is caused by our genetic makeup and not our environment, our society, or our parents. He does not deny that they are an influence, but the reasons for our behavior lye in our genes. There are so many aspects to our “nurture” that it would be much easier to find genetic makeup of people and then compare their behavior to others with the same or similar genes. This way it would be a lot easier to see what part of the genes effect human behavior and therefore find out how their nurture plays a part as well.

Many people have a hard time believing that we are just bundles of DNA because it takes away from “who we are” in terms of importance and purpose. We are just glorious pieces of meat as Patricia Churchland would say. If this is the case there would be very little reason for our existence and many people would have a real hard time with life and why should we live. Believing that we are more than that gives us hope to keep going on when things are not good. Believing we are more gives us a purpose to live and an importance of being. Who would want to give that up for a bundle of DNA?

20. ID is regarded as “junk” science by most evolutionary biologists because there is so much stacked up against it scientifically. There are even Christians who go out and teach the fallacies in the ID theory. The main advocates of ID, Behe and Dembski, have put forth quite a few arguments to prove ID and/or disprove evolution as a fact. But there are two big problems, 1)they do not use facts to prove ID, but rather they use facts to suggest another possibility, and 2)the scientific arguments they use have been proven false, unreliable, or mistaken. Instead of finding evidence for proving ID, the find weaknesses in the evolution theory, “the problem is that even if they prove evolution to be false they do not improve the credibility of ID” (http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html). Behe’s irreducible complex system theory and Dembski’s improbable theory have been debunked by biologist and mathematicians alike. Nothing they have brought forth has scientifically proven ID in any way, it has only brought doubt to evolution and natural selection or suggested that there could be another explanation, either way ID has no scientific credibility.

21. The underlying theme behind the movie ZAHIR is that what may seem to be a magical object, something that seems to be very special, could actually be the source of our worst nightmares. A simple 20 centavo coin, common and ordinary, affixes itself in the mind of her beholder because of an inscription. This common object takes hold of the mind of its owner, and even though he tries to be rid himself of the coin, it has ownership of his every thought. What seemed to be something special has now taken control of him.

Sometimes we think we have found something special in our lives and in turn it becomes the worst thing. It begins to take control of our mind, our thoughts, and our every moment. We cannot escape what was thought to be something magical and it ruins us.

22. Though some things seem to be at a standstill, they appear to be something, they are really in constant movement and constant change. The universe is not what it seems to the common eye, but rather it is something that is in constant movement. Even ice is in constant jiggling motion and this jiggling causes pressure and as the pressure goes up with temperature, it pushes out of its “box” and begins to “unfold” into another shape, this we call melting. All of this is really just a bunch of atoms jiggling around at a high rate. This tells us that the universe is really a whole bunch of jiggling things that can change according to their temperature. But more importantly it tells us that the universe is built up in this order and the more we can understand this, the more we can understand the universe.

23. Fundamentalism is a mental disease because the mind of the person does not believe facts that are presented to them. Any logical, reasonable person could believe in a fact when it is proven to them, but in the case of fundamentalist that put the believe in something that has no facts, and disregard the facts the are provided to them in order to believe a statement contrary to what they believe. This is clearly a mental setback.

24. 1) Red Herring or Guilty by Association

In many congregations and Christian groups, there is a correlation between alcohol and the negative consequences that sometimes result from drinking too much. Because of these negative consequences of alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, etc. many Christians look down on other Christians for drinking even though there is nothing wrong with drinking according to the Bible. The Bible does speak about not getting drunk, but nothing about not drinking alcohol. I myself enjoy drinking wine and beer, and I have found myself explaining to Christians and non-Christians alike what it is the Bible actually says and why it is not wrong to drink even though there have been many people who have done many horrible things because they were drunk.

2) Fallacy of Propositional Logic

I was speaking with someone in my church who wanted to lead worship, he was a good man but I told him that he couldn’t lead the worship because he wasn’t baptized. A young man overheard our conversation and later came to me and said that he had been baptized therefore he wanted to lead worship. The problem was that this young man was known for getting drunk and doing drugs, therefore he couldn’t lead worship because there were more requisites to leading worship than just being baptized.

3) Argumentum and Hominem (Poisoning the well)

Being from the United States and living in Peru, sometimes it is said that I couldn’t know what I am talking about when it comes to Peru, because I was not born and raised here. There is definitely a fact in that I do not share the same experiences, but that has nothing to do with what it is that I am saying. If a Peruvian were to say the exact words would they then be logical? It does not matter who says the argument, it matters what the argument says.

4) Begging the Question (Loaded Words)

I have a friend who when he shares the Gospel of Jesus with others sometimes he tends to use a lot of “Christian” words and lingo. This overload of uncommon terminology often confuses the listener into accepting everything he says. I have told him that the Gospel is simple and there is no need to speak so much and use so much terminology, and that if he really believed what he was sharing he only need present it simple and easy to understand.

5) Non Causa Pro Causa

We were planning what we were going to do with a group of North Americans that was coming down to Peru for a couple weeks and someone mentioned doing a presentation in a plaza. Someone else in the group made the rebuttal that the presentations no longer work based on the fact that the last couple of years people were not coming to the church after doing presentations. What she did not realize was the bad quality which we were doing the presentations at a very low quality level and we were no longer doing any follow up.

6) Appeal to Nature

Nietzsche argues that Christianity nooses what is natural in humans. This is an argument to prove that Christianity and its morals are bad, but it is based wholly on the fact that our natural instincts are good.

7) Loaded Question (Complex Question)

I was speaking with a small group of Peruvian men when one of them asked, “Is your church still harboring bombs and weapons in the basement?” I was more than shocked by the question, and upon my answer of no he fired back another series of questions about where we took them, when did we get rid of them, etc. If I hadn’t been able to talk to the group afterwards, they would have all assumed that we store or had stored weapons and bombs in the basement of the church.

8) Tu Quoque

A local radio station here in Tacna, Peru is known for its morning program which finds things that are wrong and they report them publicly on their station. The local government responded to some of the accusations about how they were misusing the money by stating that the radio program only stirs up trouble within the community and never suggests a solution to the problem. They did not address the situation at hand, and did not explain why they were using (or misusing) the money in the way they were doing it. Instead they simply spoke of the bad influence the radio station had on the community, avoiding the allegations altogether.

25. The war on terrorism can be broken down on a few levels. First, lets look at the moral choice that each side made. Osama Bin Laden believes 100% that the United States is the great evil and that it is his moral duty to do all that he can to destroy this evil. President Bush believes that Osama Bin Laden and his group, and the acts they are performing are evil. He feels that the killing of innocent people in the Twin Towers, the numerous bombings, etc are all acts that go against what are his beliefs of what is good, correct, and democratic. He does go on and on about the goal of each state to have a democratic government which allows people to be free. Looking at it in this way, both these men are acting according to what there conscious and thoughts tell them is correct, moral, and good.

From a strategic level. I think that Osama Bin Laden and President Bush are not thinking it through very well. Osama says that he wants the American government to stop meddling in middle eastern affairs and that they need to stay out of Iraq. He and other terrorists also say that they do what they do to open the eyes of the people to see how wrong it is for them to support such a bad government, and also so that the people would see how evil the government is. Strategically he is not very wise because each time he kills an innocent man, a family, a child, he is only creating hatred in the people for him and others who act alike. Attacks on the Pentagon or other armed forces locations at least keep the war a war and they keep as many innocents out of the danger as possible. Likewise, Bush needs to do some changes in his strategy. If he thinks that he is proving that we are better than the enemy who kills innocents, but then turns around does the same, he is only making himself and our country out for fools and shows some of the reasons why Osama might be partially right. For us to fight on the high ground, like Ghandi says, with character and dignity, we cannot act the same way the enemy does. If our soldiers are acting up and doing things that they shouldn’t be, the government should be even harder on them because they are representing our country to the rest of the world; likewise with politicians. Instead the president is vetoing congressional bills which would not allow torture as an interrogational tactic. This would at least keep our character clean in the way we go to war.

As for taking action and going to war, I agree. If someone of some country attacks us, the government is established to protect us from such attacks. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the people, likewise of the people to do the same. In the same way that a murderer needs to be tracked down and brought into custody, an international terrorists need to be tracked down and brought to justice for the sovereign freedom to exist from the rest of us. All acts of tyranny and terrorism must be confronted and fought, but done so with dignity, honor, and character; even when those acts come from the established government.

26. The Beyond Belief conference was very thought provoking and insightful into some of the great secular minds today. The speakers spoke on the impact of religion in the past, and the place for religion in the future. It was very interesting to hear the input from physicists, professors of human thinking and feeling, biologists, etc. all from their distinct fields of study providing input on the subject of the riddance of religion in society. There can be no doubt that there have been positive and negative impacts of religion throughout history. Many of the speakers spoke about scientific truths that have been found and how evolution and these proofs push God aside when it comes to logical and reasonable truth. But other speakers, like Prof. Ayala of UCIrvine, also made the important points of the billions of people who find so much meaning to life in religion and help in times of need, and it would be wrong to take that away from them.

There were two speakers who were least persuasive to me, and both were for different reasons. Stuart Hameroff had a real hard time convincing anyone what he was trying to present. Unfortunately, the field of study he is in is relatively new and he himself let everyone know that what he was saying was just ideas that were being recently tested and no one really knows. He was just kind of giving a couple of options to think about. What he presented was lacking evidence, reason, and facts. Sam Harris was the other speaker who seemed to be forgetting a lot of facts. The last speaker in the conference, Jim More (I didn’t hear his name very well) touched on the error throughout the conference, including Sam Harris’ approach; that being a lack of empirical evidence to back up his claims. Sam made comments like “religion is leading us to the edge of something terrible”, the celestial teapot rebuttal, religion allows for violence based on fairy tales, etc. He should be well aware of the majority of organized religions that do not condone violence. He himself showed the kind of compassion on Buddhism that Nietzsche showed, because of the fact that Buddhism does have such positive effects on people and the society. He is not being logical to claim that all religion needs to be done away with because of the negative violence, yet concede that the Buddhist are the most compassionate people he knows of. The two statements contradict themselves. He would be correct to say that some extreme religions and fundamentalist of certain religions should be done away with because of the negative impact they have, but to say all of religion. It would be like saying all the police force should be removed from the streets because there have been various beatings and shootings unjustly done by them. It completely forgets all the good in order to attempt to persuade. They are red herring arguments attempting to make all religion guilty by association to terrorist attacks.

The most persuasive and instructional of the conference I believe was Mahzareem Banaji. She presented a lot of very well prepared material to a lot of doctors and scholars who had no idea. The irony of it all is that she was teaching them that we really have no idea what we really think sometimes. Though our mouth says one thing our mind really thinks another. Because of politically correctness, and I am sure that peer pressure as well, we often say things with conviction that our minds really do not fully accept.

But Lawrence Krause and Michael Sherman were definitely persuasive in one very important thing they said, that of the approach the group was taking in the religion vs. science confrontation. Both of these men noticed the unattractive appeal the speakers had to believers and the public with the direct attacks on the stupidity and non-sense in their form of thinking. All the information presented in the conference was helpful to learn more about the subject matter, but these two especially touched on a point that Mark Juergensmeyer spoke about in “Terror in the Mind of God” when he spoke on how we should combat our enemies with dignity, honor, and character. If one wishes to win over his enemy he cannot fight at his enemies level, he must stay on the high ground.

27. I enjoyed the ability to read and learn the other side of the story. I have been a Christian for almost 10 years now, just out of high school, and I have always heard things from one side. This class has allowed me to hear things from the other side, in their purity and not filtered by some Christian who uses only the parts that are convenient. This has allowed me to question things and it has forced me to find answers or at least begin to look. There is nothing more important to me that finding out the truth, and seeing how that truth changes my life. It is good to be challenged and it is good to hear and study things that are against what you believe. This allows us to purify what we do believe with other facts by changing parts, adding parts, or totally removing parts. There will always be things that we will learn, and this class has shown me how to listen to it all critically and to take from it what is logically correct.

The ability to hear thoughts and lectures straight from the experts was enlightening. I also really enjoyed the short films; their messages, music, and creativity.

Religion and Medicine

Should religion and medicine intertwine? I know that there is proofs that religion has helped many people to have better health and a better life, and if that is what people have found works for their health who can tell them to do otherwise. It is working and that is what people really want in the end. But should doctors be prescribing religion to their patients, that is just absurd. To tell them to do some religious practices like meditation or yoga is in fact suggested physical medicine, just with a different name. We know that these exercises do in fact help with circulation and oxygen to the muscles, therefore they are indeed religious exercises and medical ones, just like stretching before a game. There must be a distinction between the things in religion that are medical and those that aren't. Then there can be a distinction between what can be prescribed, that which is medical like yoga and meditation. We cannot tell people to pray to this God or that in the medical field, because that isn't medicine, and it isn't legal. Plus, doctors are not trained in all the different fields of religion and medicine to be able to say which god will be better for each situation. There clearly can be some things that can cross over, but it must be understood that just because a religion practices something that it is medicine; and that there are some religious exercises that are medically proven to be healthy.

Mental Disease

Fundamentalism is definitely a mental disease. Like that guy who went off and wrote the 50 page post on the occamsrazor site, mental! Whenever we simply take something as is, because we feel it or someone has told us so, we are truly closing our minds to the inability to find truth. If I were to tell you that my head is actually the head of a cow, or something absurd like that, and everyone did everything they could to show me and prove to me logically and scientifically, and I stubbornly said, "No, I know that it is true and there is nothing you can say to prove it to me", we would all agree that I have a mental disease (well, maybe "I" wouldn't, but I would). Likewise, when someone turns into a Fundamentalist and believes everything literally and acts illogically because of those beliefs, we agree that they have a mental disease.

Sadly, there are many fundamentalist who do many irrational things like kill doctors at abortion clinics even though the very sacred scripture that they read says "Thou shalt not kill". And sadly there are other fundamentalist who bomb buildings and public places to send a message that the enemy is bad and evil, but they do not see the evil in bombing innocent people, even people who sometimes share their same convictions. These are mental diseases which block the normal, rational and logical process the brain should process information and facts in order to come to a correct conclusion.

Intelligent Design

Michael Behe and William Dembski should look into either expanding their research or conceding many of their bad theories to their opponents. The fact that these two have done so much research and ended in little should do something to their consciouses. I have not looked into finding their answers to the raised doubts, but it doesn't seem like there is much to say other than they were wrong. Dembski has some more interesting things to say, and to a point he was able to at least incite his readers to think about the chances and the possibilities. The example that was given about the hand of cards being dealt does not convince me too much about the improbability, because having the cards dealt concedes that their was a hand dealing them and that each of the cards existed and they were just placed in the same place. We can say that about every single thing that exists and how it happens to be where it is at the time it is there; there are so many possibilities that go into every single reality that we see daily.

Either way, the Intelligent Design theory has been clearly debunked as simply creationists changing their name. I don't think that anyone was fooled by this. We all know that all, or at least almost all, are Christians. But while there are parts of evolution or natural selection that are being shown as untrue we must keep researching and confirming what is right and what is wrong. And while there is still many interesting studies which suggest that there was someone or something that began the universe, we must continue to research and try to find answers.

Dr. James Watson

The research that Dr. James Watson is very intriguing. The fact that it goes against the politically correct line shows that they are not concerned with what the majority think, but with what the facts suggest. This is very necessary when trying to find the truth. If there is a higher rate of autistic children from parents with higher IQ's, then it should be looked into and an answer (either correct or incorrect) should be found. The more that we can learn about our genetical makeup, the more we will be able to understand where certain things repeat in different people. And when we understand that we can work toward finding the solutions.

The studies that Dr. Watson and others are doing in this field could be revolutionary in science, leading to breakthroughs that could change the future of society. For this reason alone they should continue and others like them. If they can cause one child and family to not have to suffer from autism it is worth it, but imagine if they find a scientific breakthrough which finds the genetical cause which would lead them to find the solution. For the suffering of each individual it is worth it. For the quest for knowledge and truth for a better future it is worth it.

Brain Burn

Very clever little video. Brain burn...kind of like heartburn...that's funny. I would definitely agree with what the video is conveying. Because of our consciousness, the awareness in our head, we have been able to think through situations like a simulator. Because we can fully see through situations and imagine their consequences, we are able to see which of the situations will give us our best results. All these things combine to give us an advantage over those who do not have a consciousness, because they must act things out in the real world and this could lead directly to the worst of results, ultimately their death. Questions arise out of our mental evolutionary needs.
Philosophies do come out of an uneasiness between what we think and what we see. Whatever questions we ask about the universe is contingent on the structure of our mind. When we are approached with a situation, an event, or maybe a crisis, these things cause our minds to wonder and ask, and our thoughts and philosophies towards such things come from the makeup of our minds. That is why so many people have different philosophies for the same questions. Their philosophy fits their mental make-up. Many philosophies and thoughts could answer the same question, and they could all have examples and/or evidence to provide a good case, but in the end it matters on the minds of each individual. And the minds of each individual is made of a lifetime of events and situations which have molded it.
Whose could be right? We must think critically and rationally to try to find out.

Neitzsche

Nietzsche is very harsh in his beliefs against religion and morality. I think he takes it to an extreme that somewhat demeanors the quality of his writings if we take them as a whole. It is important not to judge everything based on a few points that might not be correct, or maybe exaggerated or illogical. Nietzsche seems to have a hatred toward religion, especially towards Christianity, that leads me to believe that there is a further reason behind it, maybe an event in his life that traumatized him, or maybe his parents forcing religion into his life. Many people are turned off by religion because of those fanatics who try to force religion into someones life instead of presenting it to them and allowing them to decide.
Nietzsche's thoughts that Christianity's morals and commandments restrict human nature are based on one of two things, that being that 1)our human nature is good and therefore should be allowed to express itself as it pleases, and/or 2)the rules and morals written in scripture have not proven to be good in the lives of people and in society. The truth is that there are millions of testimonies throughout history that speak of how God and scripture have changed there lives for the better. Nietzsche would say that these people are weak and that is why they need religion. But it takes great strength and self-discipline to be able to control the "natural desires" of ourselves, which lead us to make many mistakes. Our nature attracts us to women (speaking as a man), but we know the effects that a womanizer has on the psyche of children, the negative impact it has on their upbringing, their misunderstanding about the role of a father, etc. We can see how many children and families are in trouble financially, psychologically, in unity, etc. Therefore, we can see the importance of there being a rule of thumb of how we should act for the good of society, families, and individuals. Though we have the desires to do things without limit, a limit is what we need to keep everyone and everything orderly for the advancement of our being.