Well, actually, they later influenced me--but coming to atheism is not a study in an ideology, but disbelief in god.
Now, Nietzche and Atheism. I understand that many people believe that Nietzche was an atheists, but has anyone ever thought to ask Nietzche what is his definition of God was.
In many of his works, Nietzche loved to talk about the creator, and denounce religion. But Nietzches first work--I think his dissetation, was actually a celebration of Hellenic religion. Kind of strange considering that religion is a dead one. Strange until you consider the rest of the body of Nietzche as a whole--Nietzche celebrated the both the potential and abilities of man. His denounciation of religion through statements such as "God is Dead" was meant to aggravate conscious thought about creation and ask questions concerning mans whole in the universe from differing perspective. Nietzche argued against Dogmatism--regardless of whether it was enshrined in a religion or found in the Athesits of Marxists communism. Dogmatism is death--and in the time of Nietzche, Dogmatism and God was synonymous.
One should take care about labeling Nietzche an atheists. For some one that claimed God was dead, he borrowed heavily from Christian Theology. One example is:
"Fellow creators is what the creator seeks. Not corpses, not herds or believers."
When reading Nietzche, One normally associate "creator" to the creative or inventive man. Yet, when one talks of Nietzche, even fools can be a creator. So can the dogmatist when he (mistakenly)strays from his strict ideas.
Another case in point is:
"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star"
For someone that is opposed to religious thought, his use of "soul" is a contradictiion. To add a hypothesis here, I do not think Nietzche believed that inspiration springs forth from shrew calculations, but relizations of the observed and those that are intuit. To me, for an Atheists, Nietzche was not. Nietzche was more of an Anarchists than atheists. He dislike authority and railed against it, yet would take from them what is of great benefit to expressing his ideas. His religious beliefs I would actually say are questionable.He could have been a skeptic of Christian belief.
Now for the other guys--I say I have read little Hegel, Kirkegaard--the only thing of Marx I know of is the communist manifesto, and I have to confess,Marx philosophical writing is almost as bad as character creation in Atlas Shrugs by Ayn Rand. I mean really, if you are going to write something.......
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