Lark-thank you for your comment.
(a)indeed Nietzsche's book(thesis) is akin to Marx's thesis.
Yeah but I dont see that as a negative, I think Marx made sociological points about Christianity and religion in general, similar to either Voltaire or Rousseau, not sure which one it was who said that if religion didnt exist it would be necessary to invent it.
(b)Secondly indeed people in this recent and current generation, have employed a view which is devoid of any fear with regards to a possible eternal sentence (law) and thus Nietzsche's diagnosis was that eventually Christianity would die out..(however he was wrong here-as we can see Christianity is still alive..)
Taking the long view and comparing Christendom to the secular age in which Nietzsche lived he was correct that Christianity had died, I dont think that should be confused, if you are a believer, with the death of God or Christianity as a spiritual as opposed to temporal order.
I'm not sure that its devoid of the eternal sentence Nietzsche didnt deal with those things so much but with what was going on in this life, the only one he recognised, and I believe that he made some good points, when he for instance declared in Thus Spake Zarathrustra that those who enforce virtue do so in a manner which itself could be considered a vice.
I think there's a good point there, the persecuting zeal with which all sorts of Christians have evangelised or policed believers is a matter of record, it has its equivalents in the modern political ideologies too and I think its a good indication that there's underlying characterological or personality structure issues.
(c)A third part to Nietzsche's work is his attempt to challenge some of the Christian maxims. It is mainly this third part that I am examining in my book.
Nietzsche's problem is that he takes rather the extreme case in which he encourages a 'system' built based on impulses rather than reason. So he exhorts the people to abandon the Christian system (whose principles he attempts to challenge) and then instead of providing an alternative, a system based solely on reason perhaps, he unfortunately reduces the human to the same plane as the animal... at the instinctual level...perhaps his motto could be 'be like the animal'...rather than a rational being..
earnestly Marius Manci
Hmm, I'm unsure, Nietzsche had a brain disease which caused him to deteriorate and I think that's reflected in his work, I also think that his family circumstances meant he had adopted a narcissistic copeing style which permeated some of his work too. However that said some of his work is rationalising, and I'm inclined to believe that mankind are rationalising rather than rational, but its difficult to see because like other existentialists he deals in aphorism etc.
So I dont agree that he wanted to give people licence to behave as animals and give in to the most bestial of natures, the same allegations have been made of Freud, both were writing in an age long before the permissive society, modernism or consumerism, it was an age riddled with different neurosis and hang ups than ours so they encouraged a relaxing of norms in order to re-examine them. I do think there should be a geneology of morals etc. I just dont believe that I could come to the same conclusions as Nietzsche.