Just came across this passage on Nietzsche and religion that I liked:

Nietzsche’s “religion” begins with the assumption that there is no absolute truth, or, at the very least, that there is no good reason to believe that such absolute truth exists. In particular, Nietzsche makes the assumption that there is no such thing as absolute evil, and thus humanity is not actually “guilty,” but merely feels that [s]he is (Nietzsche 129). Nietzsche explains unhappiness as a sickness that produces dissatisfaction with life as a symptom. He also refers to the ascetic ideal as a sickness, which causes feelings of guilt, by placing the blame for dissatisfaction on one’s self. Nietzsche describes religion and its “ascetic priests” as doctors who are sick attempting to alleviate the sickness in others, but in actuality they only treat the symptoms by placing the blame on the self, by means of the ascetic ideal (Nietzsche 125). In this way, the sick person makes his[her] self into a guilty sinner, trapped “like a hen imprisoned by a chalk line” (Nietzsche 141). Nietzsche escapes this chalk circle of guilt in two ways, first by rejecting the idea of true sin and sinfulness, and therefore guilt, and secondly by placing himself among the healthy and the free spirits. Nietzsche describes a healthy man as one who “digests his experiences (his deeds and misdeeds included) as he digests his meals, even when he has to swallow some tough morsels” (p. 129). Freedom of spirit occurs when “faith in truth itself [is] abrogated” (p. 150). Nietzsche believes that he himself is a healthy, free spirited man: he can deal with his experiences and move beyond them and he believes he has rejected truth, and thus is free to do or think whatever he pleases. Nietzsche turns rejection of the ascetic ideal into a savior that frees him from his chalk circle of guilt.