Now we are getting to the heart of the problem...

I understand where you are coming from. The word religion can have different meanings to people. My definition is quite different from yours, and perhaps because of that we seem to be so much in disagreement. Actually, I don't disagree with you despising a doctrine that inhibits free thinking or the labeling of free thought as being sinful. Some churches and religious doctrines do push that sort of agenda.

To me religion is just a private feeling one has regarding the existence of a Creator that lies outside our full understanding and physical perspective. To this extent, I am outside the norm of what most other people call religion. I have a good friend who is a Christian Fundalmentalist. He believes in Noah's ark, Adam and Even and the Garden of Eden, and literally, anything written in the Christian bible. Growing up, I attended some "country church" services with my parents, where "fire and brimstone" sermons were delivered every Sunday---aimed at "putting the fear of God" in every sinner's soul.

I don't believe in any of this. To turn one's brain off, is something I can't do; and obviously, you can't either. But unlike you, I have come to the conclusion (with a completely open mind and without fear)that there must have been a Creator. My religion does not have all the answers, but at the same time it does not preclude me from reaching my own rational decisions.

I do not attend church. I see no need to pay someone to tell me how to live my life or to quote and interpret from a book that I can read on my own just as easily. I have no need to belong to a large group of people and share those thoughts. I am perfectly capable of coming to my own conclusions. Sounds like you have done the same.

For the most part then, I do not believe in actively participating in organized religion. When they help the needy and the poor, I support that; but otherwise, I don't need an "organized" form of religion. It is kind of like the fact that I purposely don't belong to clubs or organizations. I don't need them.

So we have an intellectual difference--you an atheist and me a theist. But we don't disagree on the philosophy that everyone should feel the freedom to come to their own conclusions. I only seem to violate this philosophy when someone attacks by own views as being ignorant or mindless. Out of defense, I then attack back.

I attack Nietsche on the basis of his attack on religion in general. Some of his philosophy, I find otherwise thought-provoking and cleverly expressed. His views on "love" for example are not only realistic but somewhat comical at the same time:

Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.