My take-- "Anti-church" - Maybe, mostly. Still, he remained close friends with a few preachers. "Anti-religion" ? - Too simple, I wouldn't use the phrase. Here's a man, not unlike Nietzsche, who was arguing with all things spiritual and religious his whole adult life. A simply secular-minded fellow would have put it all aside as so much illusion and delusion, and many intellectuals started to do in his day. A Job-like figure, is what I see. -- demanding an answer to the question "Is misfortune always a divine punishment for something? " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job#Exegesis ) Were MT to have built a church, truly, it would be an interesting place of worship indeed. ;-) DDD QOTD : "Post tenebras spero lucem" ("After darkness, I hope for light." From the Vulgate of Job 17:12 - no longer regarded as an adequate translation of the underlying Hebrew BTW).