ha..very nice.

I disagree with this one....

Payouts for the top 10 in the World Series of Poker 2006:

1 Jamie Gold -- $12,000,000
2 Paul Wasicka -- $6,102,499
3 Michael Binger -- $4,123,310
4 Allen Cunningham -- $3,628,513
5 Rhett Butler -- $3,216,182
6 Richard Lee -- $2,803,851
7 Doug Kim -- $2,391,520
8 Erik Friberg -- $1,979,189
9 Dan Nassif -- $1,566,858
10 Fred Goldberg -- $1,154,527

Winning is not the only thing when you win a million for coming in tenth place.

I am a fan of Nietzsche.

Calling him a nihilist is a misunderstanding of his work. I would call him, if pressed, a perspectivist.

The reason he says bad things about atheism is his main method of making points is by saying something, then saying something apparently opposite and seemingly contraictory. His intention, much like Zen koans, is to get you to transcend the question by showing you two characterizations of the issue. For Nietzsche, it's not so much whether God exists or not (or whatever issue he's talking about) so much as it is that the question is often viewed by someone, no matter which side they take, in terms of what will provide their own conclusion. The way we frame concepts, words, etc effects our conclusions. A basic concept for us today, but not in Nietzsche's time.

This is why it's so hard to talk to fundamentalists, because they cannot see the question from your point of view. If they saw it from your point of view, they would not be able to believe any more than you do. And if you saw it from theirs, you would understand the belief. In order to transcend one's view, one must adopt a method of granting possibilities, of allowing one's mind to ask "what if" and "perhaps." Most people here have done that, and so (I would argue), by fiat are fans of Nietzsche's thinking because it has influenced so much about how modern people think (or, if we switch cart and horse, Nietzsche was among the first to sufficiently understand the implications of the modern mind)..

One of Nietzsche's main points is that there is no "truth in-itself", which is a concept that is not as simple as asking whether there actually is Truth or not, but is related to it. Only through extensive reading of Nietzsche did I come to understand the point. When I did, it just seemed to pop into my awareness, and it was a kind if illumunation or enlightenment. I've seen things very diffeently since that happened. It was not why I because an atheist--I was already a non-believer at that point--but it is why I became a fan of Nietzsche.

Shaun

Nietzshe literally wrote about why he was so awesome. Entire chapters of his books were dedicated to this subject alone.

I'd say that qualifies him as a nihilist.

That said, I'm still a fan of his work. He WAS a good writer, and had had every right to be proud of the fact (even if he was a bit egotistical about it).

...Hey wait a minute. It's so early in the morning, and I didn't sleep last night, so I didn't notice:

You're posting in the freethinker's forum.

Oh dear. I feel so sorry for those posts you created. Because, speaking of oblivion... 

Boy, does the last part of that phrase reek of disingenuity.

Though you're most certainly correct (for the first time this morning). At the end of my life, I'm headed to the same place your points are headed:

Nowhere.