It is not simply a matter of man against man, it is the way of all of nature, all of life. — Fooloso4

What is natural does seem to be the central issue. And how we talk about that seems to be the most contested thing.

For me, the Holocaust is an all purpose symbol of the pain of life. I think one of the advantages of a divine source of purpose is that even if you don't understand why God would allow the Holocaust, through faith, you trust that there's a reason.

When we try to prop it up in our own, we don't have that luxury. The question is: does the Over-human work on any level to help with this? — Tate

The text I read says that no such help will be given toward that end. The writing seems to go to some effort to welcome the absence of such assurances. Zarathustra takes away from the community of men what he left intact for the Saint.

For myself, the celebration of war and struggle in Nietzsche's writings is hard to listen to on this side of the Shoah. I have no interest in washing his hands of the responsibility he bears for his rhetoric. It would be interesting to pour some blood into his cup in Hades and see what he says after all that has happened.

There is more than that to consider in his ideas. Your statement: "When we try to prop it up in our own, we don't have that luxury" is exquisitely Nietzschean. If "you" are not the overman, there is none.

'I think therefore I am', a subjective declaration by Descartes. — ArielAssante

Was not the point of the declaration to remark upon how the experience is given as fact? An aspect of the given reality no more or less 'real' than the other stuff we are stuck with?

The message from Hicks I hear relates to how Nietzsche said that one has to be careful who one decides is an enemy because one elevates them by fighting them. So, by fighting Christianity he became stuck with it.

The only true choice is to look into the face of reality, see nothing which resembles ourselves, and then decide that in spite of that, something, somewhere must resemble ourselves, or it is to recognize that all of reality is hostile to life and that we are a mistake in the eyes of reality that will one day be corrected. — 64bithuman

I am not sure 'reality' has been backed into a corner on this matter. The little we understand is not written against a promise that we should have received in some agreement. We have drafted those promises entirely on the basis that it would be great if they were in effect.

Alternatively, the message could have been:

I wonder if the element of differentiating between 'objective and subjective' puts the cart before the horse when looking at earlier views of the divine.
The desire to win the favor of gods is closely linked to not wanting to piss them off either. Shamans, priests, and smarty pants of all stripes, point to advantages of accepting that certain agents are calling the shots. The traditions that give one a map of this kind are not propositions or credos so much as markers of feedback loops. The desire to know the environment we are operating in is prior to what we call natural or supernatural.

I object to the following language in the article:

But we know from other passages that the Overman derives his identity not from his lineage, his racial or national background, but from his self-chosen destiny. The identity of the Overman is anchored in the future, not in the past, which is why so many transhumanists identify with Nietzschean philosophy and why Nietzschean ideas feature prominently in so much of our science fiction.
In chapter 56, “The Old and New Tables”, Zoroaster calls for a new atheistic nobility that must rise to oppose the theistic populace and rulers. He is referring to our ongoing evolution from ape to Superman — Hiram

This overlooks Nietzsche's rejection of 'natural' selection as a mechanical process as described by Darwin. It also does not appreciate that our generation cannot know the identity of future creators The overman is not a target but a process that is either underway or not. The rejection of deity as an escape from the world is not the start of the process but a phase of it.
I prefer Philip K Dick for my science fiction.

Also, he misspells 'Nietzschean' (a defect I corrected while quoting him).

No songs for the saint.
But what will Nietzsche sing to us...? What will Zarathustra sing to the lower crowds...?
And will we/they dance to the tune we/they hear or think we/they hear?
Will we/they part laughing... like two boys?
Tell me how do 2 boys laugh, and at what, who? — Amity

I think the chapter, On The Afterworldly, addresses those questions:

Drunken joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to lose himself. Drunken joy and loss of self the world once seemed to me. This world, eternally imperfect, the image of an eternal contradiction, an imperfect image--a drunken joy for its imperfect creator: thus the world once seemed to me.
Thus I too once cast my delusion beyond man, like all the afterworldly. Beyond man indeed?
Alas, my brothers, this god whom I created was man-made and madness, like all gods! Man he was, and only a poor specimen of man and ego: out of my own ashes and fire this ghost came to me, and verily, it did not come to me from beyond. What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself. And behold, then this ghost fled from me. Now it would be suffering for me and agony for the recovered to believe in such ghosts: now it would be suffering for me and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldly. — Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufman

The youthful quality shared between the Saint and Zarathustra is different from the image of the Child which has just been presented as the final metamorphosis of the Spirit. As a parodic echo of Paul, Z says it is time to put away childish things. The echo of Paul is also heard in the invoking of "This world" as the equivalent of the "tis Kosmos' which Paul expects to pass away.

As Nietzsche would probably say to J Peterson if he was around:

With this feeling of distance how could I even wish to be read by the "modern men” that I know! My triumph is just the opposite of what Schopenhauer’s was—I say "Non legor non legar” — Neitzsche, Ecce Homo, Why I Write Such Excellent Books

I am willing to keep reading and respond to interesting observations.
Let's see how many other people want something from the discussion.
I think unenlightened has brought a good dish to the potluck.

So, N has gone beyond the original prophet? — Amity

That question cuts across a number of themes that don't resolve into a single interpretation.

In the Divine Songs of Zarathustra, the language of the prophet being a gift is deeply established. An example from a verse:

Come, Lord, with loving Vohu Man' to us,
And bring the long-enduring gifts of Truth,
As promised, Mazda, in thy Words sublime;
Grant to Zar'thrusta joy of Inner Life,
And to us all as well, O Ahura,
That we may overcome the hate of foes. — ibid from link.

One natural question to ask is where these gifts are coming from. The 'transcendent creator' is strenuously objected to by N, as a concept, in many places. One of the clearest examples comes right after he introduced the phrase 'death of god' in The Gay Science:

Let us beware.- Let us beware of thinking that the world is
a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it
feed? How could it grow and multiply? We have some notion
of the nature of the organic; and we should not reinterpret the
exceedingly derivative. ]ate, rare, accidental, that we perceive
only on the crust of .the earth a11d make of it something essen·
tial, universal, arid eternal. which is what those people do who
call the universe an organism. This nauseates me. Let us
even beware of believing that the universe is a machine: it is
certainly not constructed for one purpose, and calling it a
"machine" does it far too much honor.
Let us beware of positing generally and everywhere anything
as elegant as the cyclical movements of our neighboring stars;
even a glance into the Milky Way raises doubts whether there
are not far coarser and more contradictory movements there,
as well as stars with eternally linear paths, etc. The astral order
in which we live is an exception, this order and the relative
duration that depends on it have again made possible an excep-
tion of exceptions: the formation of the organic. The total char·
acter oE the world, however, is in all eternity chaos-in the
sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrange-
ment, form. beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there
are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. Judged from the
point of view of our reason. unsuccessful attempts are by all
odds the _rule, the exceptions are not the secret aim, and the
whole musical box repeats eternally its tune 2 which may never
be called a melody-and ultimately even the phrase uunsuccess-
ful attempt" is too anthropomorphic. and reproachful. But how
could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of at-
tributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is
neither perfect nor beautifu\, nor noble, nor does it wish to be-
come any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate
man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it. Nor
does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other
instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware
of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessi-
ties: there is nobody who commands. nobody who obeys,
nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no pur-
poses, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only
beside a world of purposes that the word accident has mean-
ing. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The
living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.
Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates
new things. There are no eternally enduring substances, matter
is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. But when
shall we ever be done with our caution and care? When will
all these shadows ·of God cease to darken our minds?t When
will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we
begin to naturalize" humanity in terms of a pure. newly dis-
covered, newly redeemed nature?' — 109, ibid from link.

So, whatever attracted N to personifying Zarathustra wasn't for the sake of championing a competing metaphysic. My reading of the choice is that, despite trying to retrieve a Greek spirit not poisoned by Christianity, N did not think the effort would topple the edifice of Christian Platonism.

I am not sure how the above dynamic plays out in the messages by Zarathustra in TSZ as coming from outside the community, but the role of 'nature' is now the least understood thing. Nature is neither a machine (ala Newton) or a living being. We are further from distinguishing soul and body than our friends in the past. In this regard, it is interesting to consider the arguments of Plotinus against the 'gnostics' (as he called a number of groups he objected to). I can imagine Nietzsche agreeing with Plotinus that it is arrogant to say the world is naturally evil. But Nietzsche would accept that a struggle is underway, and man is at the center of it. And that sort of knocks at the back door of many syncretic themes where different mythological scenes were considered. Which comes around to this odd reference to matters Zoroaster:

This is the total number of the demons: 365
They worked together to complete, part by part, the psychical and the material body.

There are even more of them in charge of other passions
That I didn’t tell you about.
If you want to know about them
You will find the information in the Book of Zoroaster. — The Secret Book of John

The Prologue alone is proving a challenge... — Amity

Many of the responses are not invested in finding something for themselves in the text. The discussion has become a parade where the ideas need to be pissed upon from the balconies.

The relief provided is palpable.

Kierkegaard's point was that Christianity is a dead religion. — Tate

This expression does not fit with any of the text I have read. It contradicts the argument in Philosophical Fragments. It turns the Works of Love into a cruel joke. I think you are mistaken.

Students are often the harshest voice against their teachers.

Nice dodge.

Which folk?

Is that a metaphor for what I am asking for or the quality of what you revile?
Or both?

Nietzsche is himself something to overcome. — Tate

Which he himself observed.

Maybe the thread you want to anchor is not a reading discussion of a particular book but a list of what you reject from his text. Then you can own your interpretation instead of referring to secondhand sources to represent what you don't like. And we the readers can decide if the bad things are as you describe or something else.

Your question is a good one.
In the Republic, Glaucon wants to get to an end and be done with the matter. Socrates turns that desire into a new problem. But it is still the old problem too.

Is trying to understand him, as he presents his thought, an act of praise?

Is your revulsion the measure of all who don't share in it?

I think it is important to note that Nietzsche's ideas are potentially explosive. — Tate

Especially when they are profoundly misunderstood.

I suggest reading Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3, section 26 for a thorough thrashing of antisemites, nationalists, and the supposed 'scientific' gas emitted by many a fraud.

Where in Nietzsche's text do you see him "erase the distinction between soul (psyche) and body?" It may reveal the source of some misunderstanding.

For Lyotard, it is "never certain nor even probable that partners in a debate, even those taken as witness to a dialogue, convert themselves into partners in dialogue". — Joshs

Do you have a body of text from Lyotard that you could link to give a better view of his thinking? Academic journals give references to his work, but I cannot find a source open to the general public.

Zarathustra spares the Saint from disillusion but tries to shake the community of men from the dream. The key element is the contempt that kept the dream alive:

"Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth! Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do no believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-makers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.
"Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.
"Once the soul looked contemptuously at the body, and then this contempt was the highest: she wanted the body meager, ghastly, and starved. Thus she hoped to escape it and the earth. Oh, this soul herself was still meager, ghastly, and starved: and cruelty was the lust of this soul. But you, too my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim of your soul? Is not your soul poverty and filth and wretched contentment? — TSZ, chapter 3, translated by W Kaufmann

The totality of the Christian God was toxic from the beginning of its reign. Now that it has lost its grip, we are not able to just pick up where we left off. The cruelty the soul has become accustomed to consuming through the centuries is still expecting its next meal. The appeal to something people lack is difficult to convey. The overman is an expectation of an unknown future that is supposed to replace the previous experience of certainty. Zarathustra tries the following:

"They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them. Let me then address their pride. Let me speak to them of what is most contemptible: but that is the last man. — TSZ, chapter 5, ibid

It relates because it undercuts the language of purpose regarding the production of great people in the other Schopenhauer quote.

In the general discussion surrounding how Nietzsche developed his views, his willingness to develop lines of thought that do not fit with each other seems to be something he was more comfortable with than his readers. When I read him, I hear the following challenge:

"Who gave you a promissory note that assures you that this all makes sense? Talk to Hegel, if that is your bag."

Well, that collection of thoughts is at odds with Nietzsche saying the following about will as expressed by Schopenhauer:

Aftereffects of the most ancient religiosity. - Every thought·
less person supposes that will alone is effective; that willing is
something simple, a brute datum, underivable, and intelligible
by itself. He is convinced that when he does something-strike
something, for example-it is he that strikes, and that he did
strike because be willed it. He does not see any problem here;
the feeling of will seems sufficient to him not only for the
assumption of cause and effect but also for the faith that he
understands their relationship. He knows nothing of the mechanism
of what happened and of the hundredfold fine work that
needs to be done to bring about the strike, or of the incapacity
of the will in itself to do even the tiniest part of this work. The
will is for him a magically effective force; the faith in the will
as the cause of effects is the faith in magically effective forces.
Now man believed originally that wherever he saw something
happen, a will had to be at work in the background as a cause,
and a personal, willing being. Any notion of mechanics was
far from his mind. But since man believed, for immense periods
of time. only in persons (and not in substances, forces, things,
and so forth), the faith in cause and effect became for him the
basic faith that he applies wherever anything happens-and this
is what he still does instinctively: it is an atavism of the most
ancie11t origin.
The propositions, "no effect without a cause.'' "every effect
in tum a cause appears as generalizations of much more
limited propositions: "no effecting without wiling"; "one can
have an effect only on beings that will"; "no suffering of an
effect is ever pure and without consequences, but all suffering
consists of an agitation of the will" (toward action. resistance,
revenge, retribution). But in the pre-history of humanity both
sets.of propositions were identical: the former were not gen-
realizations of the latter, but the latter were commentaries on
the former.
, When Schoenbauer assumed that all that has being is only
a willing, he enthroned a primeval mythology. It seems that he
never even attempted an analysis of the will because, like
everybody else, he had faith in the simplicity and immediacy of
all willing-while willing is actually a mechanism. that is so
well-practiced that it all but escapes the observing eye.
Against him I posit these propositions: First, for will come
into being an idea of pleasure and displeasure is needed. Second, when a strong stimulus is experienced as pleasure or displeasure, this depends on the interpretation of the intellect
which, to be sure, generally does this work without rising to
our consciousness: one and the same stimulus can be interpreted as pleasure or displeasure. Third, it is only in intellectual
beings that pleasure, displeasure. and will are to be found; the
vast majority of organisms has nothing of the sort. — The Gay Science, 127, Translated by W. Kaufman

It has been noted by Kaufmann and others how this doesn't square with the claims about N's idea of the will to power.

Yes, I see how the Genealogy of Morals quote ties into the 'ethics of power.'
But from where do you see the process being about 'producing great human beings?'

How do you relate these commentaries to the clear rejection of Christian belief put forward by Nietzsche? Do you have a set of quotes by Nietzsche that supports these ideas?

That is some kind of glitch I cannot remove. No link there.

I think that references outside of the TSZ text throws light upon what is going on there. But I take your point that I am asking everyone to read all of Nietzsche to understand some part of it.

My question about: "Which passages argue that 'humanity should be bent toward creating great human beings?'" is still germane.in the text of TSZ. The text seems more focused upon how to survive difficult conditions.

Which passages argue that 'humanity should be bent toward creating great human beings?'

Nietzsche went to much effort to demonstrate that such a measure was tied directly to sets of values that were not shared amongst all.

I am not sure about McPherson's contention that the treatment of the Saint was a function of changing views N had of the 'ethics of power.' The view of Christianity as a suicide pact was developed through earlier and later views as depicted in The Gay Science, which includes writings before and after TSZ. So the following statement regarding saints strikes me as applicable whether the agency of the figure was something that served a narrative or not:

On the critique of saints.- To have a virtue, must one really
wish to have it in its most brutal form-as the Christian saints
wished-and needed-it? They could endure life only by
thinking that the sight of their virtue would engender self-
contempt in anyone who saw them. But a virtue with that
effect I call brutal. — The Gay Science, 150, Translated by W Kaufman,

I like it because it calls out what I too reject.:

I know these godlike men all too well: they want one to have faith in them, and doubt to be sin. All too well I also know which they have most faith. Verily, it is not in afterworlds and redemptive drops of blood, but in the body, that they too have most faith; and their body is to them their thing-in-itself. But a sick thing it is to them their thing-in-itself. But a sick thing it is to them, and gladly would they shed their skins. Therefore, they listen to the preachers of death and themselves preach afterworlds.
Listen rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body; that is a more honest and pure voice: More honestly and purely speaks the healthy body that is perfect and perpendicular: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth. — On Otherworldly, Thus Spoke Zarathrrusta, translated by Walter Kaufmann

A couple of strong themes in Nietzsche work against the arbitrary quality of narratives suggested here.

The genealogy of morals may not make them necessary in a proof by means of universal law but does claim the logic of reproduction. The children reflect the parents. You come from a place.

The use of the idea of perspective to differentiate expressions is not an abandonment of objective criteria. One could object that it is too much of the opposite of that. The locations have a relationship to each other that becomes more determined than the ones who call out from those places. As a philologist, Nietzsche sees the words as prior to the speaker unless proven otherwise.

If you are keen to discuss the work, perhaps you could start with the beginning passages and give your impressions.
Book discussions are difficult to carry out in this forum. I suggest looking at other attempts to get a bearing on what you want to discuss. The difference between responding generally to a group of ideas and closely reading texts is large.

I think the work of Jacob Gorender: Colonial Slavery, does an excellent job of challenging Hegel's view while recognizing the importance of it. It is ironic that many challengers are doing the anti-thesis process being discussed.

Apart from that work, there are interesting takes from a range of political inclinations on the role of the 'overseers' in particular forms of administration, that is to say, the role of the slave replicating the condition of the master in their own existence. As an example of contrast, one can read of the dynamic in Ralph Ellison and in György Lukács without claiming they ultimately agree about what is happening.

Yes, I recognize my statement is provocative.
On the other hand, have you read the text? It is very short.

We know the Paul message because that is what became the church. The focus upon the end of days was paramount. You were either in the salvation life raft or you were not.

The emphasis upon being who you truly are in the gospel of Thomas is not an outright objection to the Pauline view. But it is not a great fit otherwise. If one has the source of what is worthy in their own being, looking for it is different from a war between one cosmos or another, as imagined by Paul.

I do think the message is about the "the inverse of the popular belief that being wise leads to financial wealth and the idea that those who are rich are poor in spirit." That is consonant with many other passages in the New Testament.
What is different about Gospel of Thomas is the emphasis upon betraying one's own being as the danger involved. The proximity between what can kill you or give you life.

I get that. A big part of the success of the Republican Party has been getting people out to vote no matter what is on the ballot. I don't know how that relates to what the OP proposes.