These distinctions came to the fore during the Enlightenment, when, for example, Voltare and Hume were attacking philosophical reasons for the existence of God. Theism was meant to cover not only Christianity but any belief in a supreme being (such as that of the Deists), while Agnosticism was the view that neither argument was conclusive. The point I am going to make is that this is a very unsatisfactory set of distinctions. The first problem when trying to 'circle' theism is that there are at least three very different groups who might be included: the monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity), superstitions (not geographically located, often occurring 'within' larger religions), and philosophical religions (not just the Deism of the Enlightenment but certain Eastern beliefs). Even if someone says that they are a Christian this is an almost meaningless statement unless we know they are a fundamentalist, liberal, radical etc. The definition of atheism as rejection of the existence of one supreme being is the result of certain historical forces: Christians were called atheists because they did not believe in the gods of the polytheistic religions, which was once the 'norm' for belief in god (eg the gods of the Norsemen, Egypt, Rome, Greece etc) just as now in the west monotheism is the norm.

Nietzsche does not level his charges at the philosophical justification for god, his basis for evaluation of Christianity is psychology, and his charge that Christianity produces 'sick' people. His description of Christianity brings a number of contentious value judgements:

1. The Jesus teaching was vastly different to Paul's. Traditionally this would not have been conceived of, but today a number of scholars would hold not only that Jesus teaching of the Kingdom of God uses a different terminology to Paul's teaching of the Resurrection, but that they actually teach things, eg Paul taught of a future state of redemption while Jesus taught of no future state, that eternal life was now.
2. That Christianity is a teaching of the poor and sick, a teaching based on resentment and a pulling down of all that is great and noble in man. Because of the vast divergence of Christianity this needs a lot more 'unfolding'. Nietzsche could cite cases of Christians closing down Baths, or burning libraries but can he also account for Michaelangelo and Pascal ?
3. Nietzsche claims that Christianity favours the masses, and is responsible for the doctrine of the equal rights of man, but this was a result of the Enlightenment: Thomas Pain, Mary Woolstonecraft, etc were not representative of the views of the church. Nietzsche seems to get these problems by a conceptual difficulty: how do you relate a body of thought to a certain culture ? We can't have Christianity as a machine that churns out certain types of people, but on the other hand it can't be ignored. The solution is to see Christianity as not having an essence which must appear in all Christians, but having a dynamic within which certain traits are dominant. Thus I can concede that nowadays certain groups of politicised Christians will justify human rights from a theological argument, but I can't see how historically the established Christianity fought for the oppressed. What needs to be included within a critique of western culture are the various systems of thought, not least of which is the ever recurring neo-platonic/aristotlian dialectic, in addition to which a new set of experiences needs a new discourse to articulate it, even though that discourse steals from discourses of the past. It is more likely that democracy comes from Greece than Jerusalem, but to identify the origin of a set of values the historical conjuncture has to be investigated.
4. That Christianity 'grows out of' Judaism. Of course this is a traditional Christian claim, that Jesus fulfils all the prophecies for the Jewish messiah, that his criticisms of the Pharisiees, Sadducees and Torah were all valid, etc. With Nietzsche the claim is inverted- Judaism was good, Christianity is better becomes Judaism was bad, Christianity is worse. His evaluation of Judaism, like his attitude to all non-Christian forms of religion, is partly ambiguous, but he certainly likes it a lot less than most other religions he refers to (eg Islam, Buddhism etc).

It is a pre-condition of Post-Modernism that the subject must hold compartmentalised viewpoints, unable or uninterested in uniting them. In using the symbol 'Christian' or 'Believer in God' as a self-referent, what are we attempting to communicate (to ourselves)? To answer this question it will be useful to look at particular cases:

1. The religious radical. The Christian CND supporter, or the Christian Socialist, or the Christian Pacifist or the Christian fighting for freedom for third world peoples all conceive of God as a God of justice, which grounds their critique in an objective moral order, whereby they have both a justification for their political actions and a set of values for fighting 'evil' (appeal to public conscience, dissemination of information, symbolic actions, possibly holy wars in the case of S. America).
2. The religious conservative. Finding that they cannot understand the modern world, religious conservatism seeks to stop change. The problem arises with the split between the elite and the masses (which has existed for centuries in the west), and the responsibility the masses are now expected to have in ordering the world, means that there exists an elite culture that the masses now have access to, but which they fail to understand, but yet which they feel they must have an attitude towards. The attitude invariably taken is thus one of hostility to the unknown. Ignorance of modern thought, ignorance of contemporary history, ignorance of modern art, ignorance of other races, ignorance of alternative sexual preferences all meet with a feeling of isolation and uncertainty in the conservative. The need to label and dispense with the 'modern' is given satisfaction in religious conservatism: a small vocabulary in which it is possible to confront the huge unknown and 'make sense' of it in terms of their own reactions. They FEEL it to be evil/alien/immoral and thus a discourse that confirms that initial reaction, that says that it REALLY IS LIKE THAT, and that a 'silent majority' think like they do, indeed that God (reality) agrees with them fulfils a very deep need. Two other points:
   1. The apocalyptic part of religious conservatism recognises that we cannot turn back the clock, that its aims are unrealisable, but justifies them on the basis that the world is about to end (or may be about to end) and therefore it is not necessary to be realistic, or aim for the achievable, or worry about any bad consequences of our actions. It soothes the fear of impotence.
   2. Why does religious conservatism contain two groups who should be able to adapt to change: youth and ex-radicals? Although each case would have to be individually examined, it is generally the case that certain people are confident and able when given specific tasks, but are anxious when the 'rules' are not clearly defined, where the result is open ended, or not quantifiable. This is where a fundamentalism (and not just conservative fundamentalism) has its appeal because it does not contain any difficult, open-ended questions left unresolved. For someone who has little routine, order or structure to their lives, fundamentalism may offer a simple solution.
3. The religious artist. TS Eliot, Blake, Wordsworth, Renaissance artists etc all use religious themes to express themselves, can artists ever express the world truly, can they leave the world as they find it ? This is too large a subject to enter into, the only point I would make is that artists must look at any 'object' (or pre-objects or abjects etc) in an artistic manner and hence be concerned with balance, grain, form etc and not necessarily with truth. Unless Nietzsche is against any sort of allegory or metaphor (re: Zarathrustra, obviously not) he cannot oppose the simple use of religion by art but can only object on grounds such as the use to which the art is put. In cases such as Pascal, Nietzsche argues that Christianity spoilt Pascal, that he would have been even better without it. This seems rather speculative and not really important for the main case Nietzsche is putting.

What are we to make of Nietzsche's 'Ant-Christ' ? It isn't simply a matter of pointing out that all 'small-bigots' aren't Christians, we have to look at whether there is a sick-bloodline running through the Christian psyche, and if Christian thought/belief is responsible for this.

The crux of Nietzsche's argument that must be recognised before a clear assessment can begin is how he defines Christianity. With something so big it is easy to counter any example of sickness with one of health. Where can the meaning of Christianity be found ? An attempt could be made to list certain 'facts' about Christianity and then see how the pros and cons balance.

For example, There IS a shallowness of thought which accepts simplistic solutions and explanations, or rather is not concerned with finding a solution as much as reinforcing a prejudice.

Christianity's exclusivist claims result in a bigoted mentality, IF no other relativising beliefs are present.

The world of first century Israel was light years away from the pragmatic world of Rome, any attempt to 'live it' today with any seriousness leaves the believer cocooned from reality. etc etc

However Nietzsche's method is more sweeping. He looks at Christianity on the basis of World-History. When did the course of World-History change and what part did Christianity play in that change ? Nietzsche is able to identify at least four 'moments':

1. The Fall of the Roman Empire, and the ancient world. The Ancient World had the basis for thousands of years of progress. The foundations had been laid for Art, Science, Government and Wealth to progress, yet they were all destroyed. The reason is the 'worm' of Christianity which weakened the Empire and allowed it to be sacked.
2. The Civilisation of the Moors was another attempt of health, beauty, and culture to re-establish itself, but was again defeated by the Christian Crusaders.
3. The Renaissance was an effort from within to overthrow Christianity and re-establish the ancient world of art, civilisation, philosophy, and nobility. The establishment of Caesar Borgia as Pope was the replacing of the Christian sickness with Life. However Luther and Protestantism again turned the West back to decadent mediocrity.
4. Our current age is again one in which the West is attempting to throw off Christianity and restore Life: the attempts at science, art etc are still poisoned by Christian influences (Nietzsche identifies Socialism as the main enemy, the attempt to stir up the mediocre masses rather than let the elite rule).

The 'success' of Christianity Nietzsche credits to Paul. He says that the vision Paul saw was of nihilism: placing the meaning of life outside life. It was this ability to render life meaningless that made Christianity able to feed off the other cultic mystery religions of the time and weld them together into a political, powerful whole, to mobilise the sick into power.

Nietzsche's attitude to religion is interesting, in that he not only sounds very religious (eg Zarathrustra) and seems to give a lot of importance to whether people are religious or not, but that his idea of a perfect society seems to have religions in it (eg Islam, Renaissance Catholicism, Imperial Rome). He divides society into the masses, who have rights, but not the same rights as the elite. They have the right to work, to be craftsmen, artists etc, but the fact that they are mediocre means that they will be happy to be mediocre. Does part of this mediocre life style include a religion of sorts?