…and this is a 
(I thought this was a perfect time to repost this list.)
Douglas Theobald passed along an interesting collection of quotes from that atheist evolutionist, Adolf Hitler. It's particularly interesting that he outlawed atheist and freethought groups in 1933.
It's a long list of quotes, so I'll tuck it below the fold.
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
[Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."
[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]
"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 46]
"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125]
"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.152]
"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.174]
"Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.309]
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"
[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]
"Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, p. 171]
"I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1]
"I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 2]
"...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]
"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
"I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
"Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
"I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 6]
"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I]
"The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8]
"To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8]
"The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right]
"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
"While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]
"Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]
"....the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11, precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings]
"Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
"All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]
"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
"Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]
"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture- race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5]
"For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5]
"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]
"In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]
"For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'
[Adolf Hitler's prayer, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2 Chapter 13]
"The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life"
[Adolph Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933]
"ATHEIST HALL CONVERTED
Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers
Wireless to the New York Times.
BERLIN, May 13. - In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership.
The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members ..."
[New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree]
"I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker."
[Adolf Hitler, Speech, 15 March 1936, Munich, Germany.]
"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life...."
[Adolf Hitler, Berlin, February 1, 1933]
"Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years."
[The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872]
I can imagine a few objections that will be raised.
Objection! Hitler was no true Christian.
Reply: None of them are.
Objection! Christians don't commit genocide.
Reply: Look up the Albigensians, review your history of the Crusades, and what about the Jews of Spain? Did Darwin coin the word "pogrom"?
Objection! Hitler was merely cynically manipulating the German people by using their beliefs in God.
Reply: I'd say something similar of his misuse of scientific theory.
Objection! You're doing the same thing we are, only instead of blaming Darwinism, you're blaming Christianity.
Reply: No, I think humans have done evil throughout their history, and are always willing to grab any convenient rationalization for their behavior, whether it's science or religion or twinkies. Science doesn't dictate morality, and it's also rather clear that religion does a piss-poor job of it, too.
Objection! But evolution is a scientific theory that has more rhetorical and philosophical power than mere religion, and therefore must bear a greater weight of responsibility.
Reply: I don't think the kind of people who blame mass murder on evolution will actually make this argument. Still, I'd just say what is, is. Science describes it and explains it, but doesn't tell us what we should do with it.
Comments
Posted by: mikerattlesnake
|
September 17, 2010 9:19 AM
Of course our troll from the other thread would insist that Hitler was just pretending to be catholic to advance his atheistic agenda. She never did mention how one determined atheist was able to overcome the inherent goodness of his millions of catholic and protestant followers to get them to perform such horrible acts, though (unless of course she thinks Adolf himself was manning the gas chambers).
Posted by: nathaniel.tagg
|
September 17, 2010 9:24 AM
Thanks for this list, PZ - nice to have this in one place, the sheer mass of it.
Of course, it makes no difference: Hitler had to be an atheist because only atheists can be so evil. Which only goes to prove how evil atheists are.
(goes to go listen to the 'fuck the pope' song again)
Posted by: toth
|
September 17, 2010 9:26 AM
Ah, but you're forgetting the Scott Lively Conjecture: that if you want to hide your true beliefs, then persecute those who share your true beliefs (like that gay Nazi Hitler)!
Posted by: MosesZD
|
September 17, 2010 9:27 AM
Adolf Hitler was John Galt. It's obvious, Germany didn't lose the war until AFTER he killed himself.
Posted by: Gaebolga
|
September 17, 2010 9:27 AM
That was all part of Hitler's genius; no one ever saw his atheism coming.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
|
September 17, 2010 9:31 AM
Yeah, as mikerattlesnake has noted, even if Hitler was an atheist, it doesn't change the fact the greater proportion of Germany was strongly Christian, and were able to be manipulated by their Christian beliefs into doing what they were told their god wanted.
Not to mention the fact that if God did exist, he was a dick for not doing anything to stop him. As usual, it was left up the humans to take care of.
Posted by: MosesZD
|
September 17, 2010 9:34 AM
ScienceBlogs is broadcasting a virus:
Trojan FBJack-A
It started yesterday, but I wasn't sure what tab was picking it up. Now I know as this is my only open tab.
From what I've read, it's attacks through the Facebook "Share" application. Article Here:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226700456
Posted by: vanharris
|
September 17, 2010 9:39 AM
The Dope was on a hit list apparently. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11346001
Must've been those aggressive secularists, or even militant atheists, eh.
Posted by: slugsie
|
September 17, 2010 9:42 AM
Hitler, that damn dirty atheist! It's all so obvious to me now.
Posted by: Tigger_the_Wing
|
September 17, 2010 9:45 AM
I couldn't read the whole list. The man was evil and his words make me ill.
Well done, PZ, for having the stomach to collect all that.
#7
I don't get viruses. I have immunity. I have a Mac. :-)
Posted by: Moggie
|
September 17, 2010 9:48 AM
You know who else used a Mac? Hitler.
Posted by: nomen-nescio.myopenid.com
|
September 17, 2010 9:52 AM
in light of certain homosexual republicans, this is not so good an argument as we might wish it were.
Posted by: Victor
|
September 17, 2010 9:57 AM
Hitler drove a Volkswagon, therefore ...
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
|
September 17, 2010 9:57 AM
Beaten to the punch by #5.
Posted by: mattheath
|
September 17, 2010 9:59 AM
@Van Harris: It was. http://twitpic.com/2p94vy
Posted by: Ken
|
September 17, 2010 9:59 AM
MosesZD wrote:
Yesterday "Thoughts From Kansas" blog on this site had a problem with it's sidebar connecting to a virus distribution site (blogrolling.com). As of this morning that has been fixed. I haven't seen any other problems so far but who knows.
Posted by: RationalityatWork
|
September 17, 2010 9:59 AM
Whether or not Hitler was a "true" Christian doesn't matter, he used religion to propagate hatred, racism, and ultimately genocide. Currently the Pope has 2 out of 3. Understudy perhaps?
Posted by: CatherineCanny
|
September 17, 2010 10:02 AM
In 1985 the German historian Wilfried Daim published a photograph of an alleged document signed by Hitler in 1943, which proposed the:
"Immediate and unconditional abolition of all religions after the final victory ('Endsieg') not only for the territory of Greater Germany but also for all released, occupied and annexed countries ..., proclaiming at the same time Hitler as the new messiah. Out of political considerations the Muslim, Buddhist and Shintoist religion will be spared for the present. The 'Führer' has to be presented as an intermediate between a redeemer and a liberator, yet surely as one sent by God, who has to get godly honour. The existing churches, chapels, temples and cult places of the different religions have to be changed into 'Adolf-Hitler-consecration places'. The theological faculties of the universities have to be transformed into the new faith. Special emphasis has to be lain on the education of missionaries and wandering preachers, who have to proclaim the teaching in Greater Germany and in the rest of the world and have to form religious bodies, which can be used as centres for further extension. (With this the problems with the abolition of monogamy will disappear, because polygamy can be included into the new teaching as one of the statements of faith.)"
Hitler was an indifferent to religion as an atheist; he merely used it to manipulate its adherents into supporting his agenda on the basis of its supposed Godly endorsement. Indeed, Hitler's view align more closely with that of an atheist and the questions that such a position poses: if there is nothing higher than the Self, then Man, then by what greater authority can a man be stopped from proclaiming himself a God?
Posted by: Ken
|
September 17, 2010 10:03 AM
Posted by: RationalityatWork
Yup. And here's a picture of that understudy when he was young:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/09/the_pope_was_a_nazi.php
Posted by: hyperdeath
|
September 17, 2010 10:03 AM
I hate the "[evil person X] [was/wasn't] an atheist" debate. It completely ignores the fact that atheism is merely a minor subset of rationalism. Hitler may have been an atheist, but he certainly wasn't a rationalist.
A rationalist is someone who provisionally believes in things which are well evidenced, provisionally disbelieves in things which are ill-evidenced, and withholds judgement on things where no firm conclusion can be drawn. Hitler was no such thing.
Even if Hitler wasn't afflicted by delusion 231.4.1 (Christianity), he was certainly afflicted by delusion 35.3.27 (German nationalism), delusion 1.1 (racism) and delusion 1.4.7 (anti-Semitism). Similarly, Stalin wasn't afflicted by delusion 231.4.1, but he was certainly afflicted by delusions 2.1 (paranoia), 254.3.2 (Communist political theory), 302.1.6 (Lysenkoism) and many more. Hitler was an irrational, delusional crackpot, who committed atrocities based on his ridiculous misinterpretations of the world around him. The precise combination of delusions that he happened to hold is largely irrelevant; it's the irrationality that counts.
The Christian "but Hitler was an atheist" defence basically amounts to "You lack delusion 231.4.1; Hitler lacked delusion 231.4.1. Ta Da!". It ignores the fact that delusion 231.4.1 is essentially a random example picked out of a huge catalogue. The real issue is the number of atrocities committed by people who were acting too rationally. As far as I can see, the answer is "none".
Posted by: ursulamajor
|
September 17, 2010 10:04 AM
Nice inclusion of the Twinkie Defense.
Posted by: MosesZD
|
September 17, 2010 10:14 AM
I haven't been attacked since that post. But I'd been attacked three times just prior to writing.
Posted by: Tim Harris
|
September 17, 2010 10:15 AM
This is a fascinating, and appalling, list of quotations that shows how fervency can trump virtually anything - for Hitler was not an unintelligent man (to pretend that he was unintelligent is, as in the case of Stalin, to underestimate him and to render oneself unable to account for his successes); nor, as his service in the First World War shows, was he an uncourageous man. But to put that intelligence and that courage into the service of such poisonous and deluded ideals - Hitchens talks of how religion poisons everything, but one of its poisons is surely to suggest that mere fervency (which need not be obviously religious), and the concomitant lack of doubt, is its own justification, and a strength. I believe this! And then all sorts of horrors follow. Bin Laden, too, is not unintelligent (which is not to suggest that he is greatly intelligent); nor does he lack courage. It is that fervency, that conviction, that is the temptation for a certain kind of mind and the trap.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 10:16 AM
Let us assume that CatherineCunny is right about Adolf Hitler being an atheist. What does this say able the ethics of all of the catholic and protestant Germans who welcomed the arrival of a Führer? What does this say about the ethics of all of the christians who rounded up all of the various enemies of the Volk? What does this say about all of the believers in god who staffed the concentration camps and the death camps.
This does not speak well of your contention that a belief in god is needed to have a true respect for life.
Posted by: Kome
|
September 17, 2010 10:17 AM
See, PZ. You're just quote-mining. All of those quotes are taken out-of-context. Clearly, if you read the actual primary documents, before and after each one of those quotes Hitler included something like "... psych!" or "Now here's a crazy idea:..."
Posted by: Truckle
|
September 17, 2010 10:17 AM
Canny @ #18
How do you photograph an alleged document?
Posted by: Kome
|
September 17, 2010 10:18 AM
@Truckle - Same way you photograph an alleged moon landing.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 10:19 AM
Yawn, CC is back with more lies and misrepresentations. Hitler called himself a Xian. Therefore, he was an Xian, until a direct and conclusive smoking gun is shown, which CC has not shown, ergo she is nothing but a liar, bullshitter, and obfuscator. Also, she doesn't get to make the decision on whether Hitler was an Xian or not. That is for true historians, not pathetic and inane internet trolls.
Posted by: vanharris
|
September 17, 2010 10:23 AM
mattheath @ 15, that was an update to the breaking news story that could only be expected, given that atheists, & indeed, secularism, are so evil.
Richard Dawkins' evil conspiracy can now be exposed to the delight of the religious faithful. I mean, they'll believe anything, eh.
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 10:28 AM
You really are a never-failing source of stupid: here you make a major part of the atheist case against religion: that it can be "used to manipulate its adherents". Exactly. If Christianity is so wonderful, how could Hitler use it (whatever his own beliefs) to induce millions of Christians to carry out his evil plans for conquest and genocide? BTW, some atheists are indifferent to religion; others - including those you are addressing here - are far from indifferent to it.
This is straightforward lying: you have been shown quantities of evidence that Hitler was a theist. Weasel words such as "align more closely with that of an atheist" do not disguise your dishonesty.
It is not authority that prevents people proclaiming themselves gods, but sanity and a sense of proportion (qualities you are sadly lacking): their own and that of those who would laugh at them. However, if they have already been persuaded to believe absurdities such as Christianity, this defence is no longer available. Note: Hitler was able to persuade an almost entirely Christian nation to treat him as if he were a god. Oh, and once more, atheism does not imply that there is "nothing higher than the self" (not "Self", you semi-literate idiot). This is more outright lying on your part.
Posted by: raven
|
September 17, 2010 10:30 AM
Same old lie as yesterday. Wacko evil xians are so predictable.
The usual one. Canny is pretending to be able to read the mind of a man dead for 65 years. The lie. "Hitler wasn't a real xian. He was just pretending." Needless to say, wacko xians who can't tell truth from lies aren't capable of reading the minds of living much less dead people.
Next lie. Forged documents showing Hitler wasn't very religious. Xians knew after the war they had a PR problem. They have a predictable strategy for dealing with it. Lie, then lie some more.
And cue Piltdown the troll in 10 9 8 7....
Toxic religion turns its victims into literally mindless robots, easy to predict. Canny is so far down that pathway, that even robots are laughing at her.
Posted by: christophe-thill.myopenid.com
|
September 17, 2010 10:30 AM
Bad choice of quote, in my opinion. Hitler is obviously criticizing another anti-Semitic movement that he perhaps sees as a competitor. For him, racism based only on "religious ideas" is an inferior kind.
Posted by: stvs
|
September 17, 2010 10:34 AM
Hitler refers to Christianity as the "unshakable foundation" for the Nazi state numerous times. Here's a Hitler quote not included above:
Hitler also cites Catholic anti-semitism as a foundation for his various policies against the Jews. Hitler had the technological means to implement the will of Catholics over the centuries who called for the extermination of the Jews, such as the important 4th century Church Father Saint John Chrysostom who called for the Jews to be killed:
This is a Sainted Father of the Christian Church calling for the mass murder of unconverted Jews, quoting Jesus' own ugly parable in Luke 19:27 as his authority for their murder. Christians, including Hitler, followed through with this teaching of Jesus, as interpreted by Chrysostom. In his Final Solution, Hitler followed Chrysostom, Luther, and others to the letter. The Nazis did not invent the "Judenhut" yellow armband for the Jews: this was introduced by the Fourth Lateran Council (which also declares "There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation", consistent with Ratzinger). The Catholic Church has never repealed the Fourth Lateran Council's Judenhut laws for the Jews—they stand to this day. Here is Hitler discussing this very issue with Bishop Berning in 1933:
Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann later describe these talks with Hitler as "cordial and to the point".
The strong connection between Fascism and Roman Catholicism is well established and quite easy to find. In spite of these obvious facts, many people choose to ignore or deny them.
In contrast, Hitler never used Darwin or evolution. All of Hitler's speeches are online at Google books: go search The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary for all instances of "Darwin" or "evolution". Hitler never referred to Darwin: searching for "Darwin" yields "No results found". Searching for "evolution" yields twelve results, none of them referring to biological evolution.
Posted by: stvs
|
September 17, 2010 10:36 AM
Hitler refers to Christianity as the "unshakable foundation" for the Nazi state numerous times. Here's a Hitler quote not included above:
Hitler also cites Catholic anti-semitism as a foundation for his various policies against the Jews. Hitler had the technological means to implement the will of Catholics over the centuries who called for the extermination of the Jews, such as the important 4th century Church Father Saint John Chrysostom who called for the Jews to be killed:
This is a Sainted Father of the Christian Church calling for the mass murder of unconverted Jews, quoting Jesus' own ugly parable in Luke 19:27 as his authority for their murder. Christians, including Hitler, followed through with this teaching of Jesus, as interpreted by Chrysostom. In his Final Solution, Hitler followed Chrysostom, Luther, and others to the letter. The Nazis did not invent the "Judenhut" yellow armband for the Jews: this was introduced by the Fourth Lateran Council (which also declares "There is one Universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation", consistent with Ratzinger). The Catholic Church has never repealed the Fourth Lateran Council's Judenhut laws for the Jews—they stand to this day. Here is Hitler discussing this very issue with Bishop Berning in 1933:
Bishop Berning and Monsignor Steinmann later describe these talks with Hitler as "cordial and to the point".
The strong connection between Fascism and Roman Catholicism is well established and quite easy to find. In spite of these obvious facts, many people choose to ignore or deny them.
In contrast, Hitler never used Darwin or evolution. All of Hitler's speeches are online at Google books: go search The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary for all instances of "Darwin" or "evolution". Hitler never referred to Darwin: searching for "Darwin" yields "No results found". Searching for "evolution" yields twelve results, none of them referring to biological evolution.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
|
September 17, 2010 10:40 AM
"Indeed, Hitler's view align more closely with that of an atheist"
You continue to be wrong. Doesn't that get tiring?
"then by what greater authority can a man be stopped from proclaiming himself a God?"
I dunno, the Coast Guard?
See, that's the trouble with you and your type, you're always waiting for a "greater authority" to come to the rescue. You're exactly the kind of rube that Hitler built his empire on.
Posted by: raven
|
September 17, 2010 10:42 AM
CatherineCanny called atheism a "horrendous dogma" or some such yesterday.
This is just a mindless bigot, a common Hater and Liar for jesus. Atheism haters are a dime a hundred.
It's OK, it is always good to have the truth out there. Just don't turn your back on atheist haters.
The Pope uses religion to manipulate its adherents into supporting his agenda on the basis of its supposed Godly endorsement.And Canny is one of those adherents.
Hitler used religion to turn his xian followers into mindless killing robots. Because that is what religion can do.
Religion has turned Canny into a mindless, hating meat robot. She hates atheists. So who is Canny's Hitler equivalent. The Pope, of course.
Posted by: Snoof
|
September 17, 2010 10:46 AM
There are _heaps_ of things higher than my Self. For example, there's that light fixture. Also the ceiling. And those fruitbats in the trees over there. Also those clouds, and the moon, and any satellites that might be overhead...Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 10:50 AM
Hitler called himself a Xian. Therefore, he was an Xian, until a direct and conclusive smoking gun is shown, which CC has not shown, ergo she is nothing but a liar, bullshitter, and obfuscator. Also, she doesn't get to make the decision on whether Hitler was an Xian or not. That is for true historians, not pathetic and inane internet trolls.
..................
Next lie. Forged documents showing Hitler wasn't very religious. Xians knew after the war they had a PR problem. They have a predictable strategy for dealing with it. Lie, then lie some more.
The "direct and conclusive smoking gun[s]" are: the Hossbach Memorandum, Speer's postwar memoir, and Goebbels's diary, all of which show Hitler to have been privately contemptuous of Christianity. (I've given specific quotations from all three in earlier postings on this site; look them up sometime.)
Given your penchant for throwing insults around, Nerd, I think you should hesitate before calling anyone else a troll. And given your other penchant for loudly insisting on proof, proof, proof whenever you hear an opinion you don't like, it behooves you once in a while to actually look at the evidence.
Raven's assertion that all the evidence of Hitler's hostility to Christiany has been forged is quite simply false, and has been proven to be false repeatedly. The Hossbach Memorandum and Goebbels's diary are accepted by the great majority (if not all) scholars as authentic documents. And I am aware of no scholar who thinks Speer was grinding some personal ax when he made note of Hitler's anti-Christian sentiments.
To say it again, slowly: one may completely disregard the Table Talk if one likes (although it consists of notes created at different times by different people, and so most scholars do not reject it in toto. Have you gotten that yet, Raven? Come up with some rebuttal to Hossbach, Goebbels, and Speer, or give it up.
Posted by: raven
|
September 17, 2010 10:51 AM
That is simple. Any atheist could do it.
Hitler: I'm god.
Atheist: Nonsense. God doesn't exist.
That is a meaningless sentence anyway. The mental hospitals usually have several jesuses running around. You have to keep them separate, otherwise they get into heated arguments when they see each other.
People proclaim themselves gods all the time. Most of the time they get carted off to mental hospitals. Occasionally like Rev. Moon they manage to form short lived cults.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 10:57 AM
Ha! The statue got me high.
Posted by: raven
|
September 17, 2010 10:58 AM
Well, you are still wrong.
But you do have one advantage I can't match. The ability to be wrong forever and post repetitively for days on end. OCD can do that.
I have a life and work to do. You may have the floor all to yourself and spend the next week repeating yourself to yourself.
Posted by: venturefreemcgee
|
September 17, 2010 10:59 AM
What shameless quote mining! You need to read those quotes IN CONTEXT! You see, what isn't shown here is that every single one of those quotes is followed by "...is what I would say if I wasn't an atheist."
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:01 AM
I'm not going to rehash Hitler's complicated (and often hostile) relationship with the German churches here (see Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power for an excellent account of that)--but I will add that the suppression of the German Freethinkers' League probably owed more to its leftwing and emphatically anti-Nazi politics than its hostility to religion (see the Wikipedia article on its leader, Max Sievers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Sievers).
Posted by: Steven Dunlap
|
September 17, 2010 11:03 AM
Forgive me if I posted this before. Nonstampcollector addressed this "motivated by atheism" canard in one of his videos:
20th century killers
BTW I love the metaphor for his screen name: atheism is a religion in exactly the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
For some Xians the idea of some mode of thought Not being a religion or Not making claims of some sort of cultural hegemony is so alien to them they can not squeeze it into their heads.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:04 AM
Translation: Because Table Talk is not completely untrue, I feel free to pick and choose those bit the support my claim (Against all evidence!) that Hitler was an atheist who was out to destroy christianity.
Posted by: JS1685
|
September 17, 2010 11:04 AM
hyperdeath, #20 and Tim Harris, #23 = NAILS HIT ON HEADS!
The problem w these horrible despots is not whether they were/weren't atheists, it's all their other crazy ideology. Ideology they FERVENTLY adhered to no matter what; a practice which looks an awful lot like religion.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
September 17, 2010 11:06 AM
Lemme get this straight: so, Catholics were mislead by the accidents of Hitler (his feigned Catholicism), even though his substance (his actual atheism) remained unchanged. And yet, in the supposedly dual miracle of transubstantiation...
I am now convinced that the Albigensian Crusade was not carried out by Catholics. These fuckers couldn't tell their asses from holes in the ground with two pedophilic priests and an enabling pope to guide them.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:10 AM
But you do have one advantage I can't match. The ability to be wrong forever and post repetitively for days on end. OCD can do that.
I have a life and work to do. You may have the floor all to yourself and spend the next week repeating yourself to yourself.
Well, thanks for setting me straight. Nothing proves one's case like flouncing off theatrically. (Since mental illness has come up, you might try getting your Tourette's under control.)
For the adults in the room, I'll repeat: please address the demonstrably authentic evidence.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:11 AM
Why, yes, Aaron Baker. Because Hitler wanted a "Aryan" version of christianity, that proves his atheistic hatred of traditional churches. All this means is that he wanted a religious organization that was pliant to his views. What a shocker coming from a megalomaniac.
Posted by: Alverant
|
September 17, 2010 11:14 AM
Aaron Baker
Hitler's contempt of christianity was about how it was being practiced. The same way Martin Luther got upset at how the catholic church was acting. He was still a christian despite his contempt.
And let's not forget Hitler patterned his anti-Jewish laws and treatment of women to be baby factories after Luther.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:15 AM
It is not possible that all of you have lives, jobs and responsibilities! Now I demand that all of you respond to my baseless accusations!
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:17 AM
Translation: Because Table Talk is not completely untrue, I feel free to pick and choose those bit the support my claim (Against all evidence!) that Hitler was an atheist who was out to destroy christianity.
I don't know how you extracted that from what I said. For the purposes of the discussion, I'm disregarding the Table Talk completely. It can be assumed to be worthless, but doing so does nothing to negate the other, unquestionably authentic evidence. In passing, though, I repeated the fact, and it is a fact, that most scholars don't think the Table Talk is inauthentic in its entirety, and they have good reasons for not thinking so. So, once again, forget the Table Talk and address the (uncontroversial) evidence.
Posted by: Owlmirror
|
September 17, 2010 11:19 AM
And so many Protestants and Catholics in Germany and surrounding areas -- indeed, even the very Catholic Church itself -- FELL for it!
Just. Like. Jesus!
Catholics worship an atheist!
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
September 17, 2010 11:24 AM
meh.
You know who else liked to argue with use of long lists of context-free quotations?
Pol Pot.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:26 AM
Aaron Baker, I contend that Adolf Hitler had a very eccentric view of christianity, one that he used to justify his antisemiticism. And though we cannot know if his antisemiticism or his warped take of religion came first, his antisemiticism is rooted in traditional christianity.
All you are doing is try to twisted his twisted views into an argument that Hitler was really an atheist. This is a game that I so want nto play.
Now please excuse me. I have to flounce off and get to my job.
Posted by: Captain Black
|
September 17, 2010 11:28 AM
There is bulletproof glass in the popemobile. Which shows how much trust the pope puts in his diety. If he has no faith, and he was a member of the Hitler youth, pope Rat must be an atheist!
Thats CatherineCredophiles's doofus logic for you!
Posted by: Krystalline Apostate
|
September 17, 2010 11:31 AM
Someone needs to explain to me how anyone can be indifferent to religion & yet use it to manipulate the masses.
That sounds like it violates the law of non-contradiction.
Posted by: alex.besogonov
|
September 17, 2010 11:33 AM
"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
WTF? He's describing the program of the modern Republican party.
Posted by: Volizden
|
September 17, 2010 11:36 AM
Aaron Baker Said:
This is called hearsay and therefore inadmissible as solid evidence. Especially in the Light of Hitler's self proclamations of being a christian... Afraid at this points, there would need to be a lot more evidence than this to be able to declare him a non-christian.
Either way the entire situation still shows the conformity of christians to follow the "religious leadership" in spite of the immorality of the acts to do what the leadership declares as the right, or christian, thing to do. AKA Religious Justification..
This also reinforces the sheeple mentality of the right or religious minded, to follow and not question.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:36 AM
Yawn, still no smoking gun Hitler was an atheist. Being antagonist toward certain religious practices is not a sign of atheism. After all, most religions are contemptuous of those other religions who deviate significantly from their standard practices/rites. And if Hitler had certain Germanic pagan beliefs on top of his xianity, he would certainly be contemptuous of certain standard religious practices, even in his catholic church. A smoking gun is a speech/paper where he disavows both god and all religion. Now, where is that evidence folks??? Until then, he called himself a Xian, he was an Xian. Occam's Razor.
Posted by: Tim Harris
|
September 17, 2010 11:37 AM
These arguments as to whether or not Hitler was a true Catholic or a true atheist strike me as sterile. He was obviously profoundly cynical, as many politicians are, where the gaining and holding of power were concerned, which meant that he was willing to make nice to cringing bishops, and even cringing Bishops of Rome, if necessary (for he had no doubt as to who should be boss), but coupled with this cynicism was a fervency of belief in that what he was doing was right. Note his appeals to Wagner, whose music I both love and mistrust and who was really the prophet of a narcissistic religiosity that may have been un-Christian, and even anti-Christian, but which owed a great deal to Christianity; Hitler's compelling fervency owed a great deal to Christianity, as did its political success, and, whatever he may have said in his table-talk, that relationship to Christianity is there; rather as the founder of the murderous Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, saw himself, in his arrogance, as a kind of new Buddha, so Hitler seems to have seen himself as a new Messiah, bringing a new dispensation (though one that in many ways - its anti-Semitism, for example - was a taking of the old dispensation to its logical conclusions). The nature of Hitler's relationship with established religion is ambiguous and it seems to me to be foolish and ignorant to assert either that he was properly Catholic or that he was a convinced atheist who only cynically exploited religion.
Posted by: Paul
|
September 17, 2010 11:39 AM
This is just silly. Plenty of Christians are contemptuous of other Christians, much like plenty of atheists are contemptuous of other atheists (Mooney or Piglucci anyone?). That's hardly evidence that they are not Christians or atheists, respectively. Christianity simply requires belief in Christ (please, find a quote where Hitler badmouths Christ), and atheism requires lack of belief in god(s).
Posted by: DLC
|
September 17, 2010 11:39 AM
and in a not-quite-related item: Holocaust denier extraordinaire David Irving will be conducting tours of former nazi death camp sites.
in an unrelated matter:
you ever seen a Christian Evangelical rally ?
they look quite a bit like Nazi rallies.
Oh, I'm sure nobody is stuffing people's heads with repulsive ideas about how they are morally superior to those who're not a part of the group.
Are they ?
I mean, shouting "Jesus is Lord!" really is different from shouting "Sieg Heil!" , isn't it ?
Posted by: Paul
|
September 17, 2010 11:44 AM
@53, I see what you did there.
@my 61, I should add that Christians are generally Christians by their belief in the Divinity of Christ. Obviously Muslims believe he was a prophet without being Christian, and some Jews consider him a rabbi but not divine. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Posted by: mikeyB
|
September 17, 2010 11:49 AM
The "Hitler was an atheist" meme is in reality a subterfuge for an attack on athiesm in general.
If I can dissect the logic, it is something like the following
1. If God is dead (doesn't exist), then everything is permitted (Dostoyevsky)
2. If everything is permitted, the only natural values which arise are might makes right or the ends justify the means
3. These are the only consistent values an athiest can exposit
4. There can be nice athiests, but if the do, they are unintentionally adopted
from wider cultural values inherited from religious sources
5. Therefore, brutal dictators (eg Hitler, Stalin, Mao etc.) naturally follow from adopting athiestic might makes right or ends justify the means values, and the brutal consequences of athiestic regimes follows
Flaw 1 - In many cases historically, the corollary dictum if God allows it, everything is permitted. Witness 9/11, biblical stories like Abraham and Isaac, genocide in the book of Joshua, or the long sordid history pogroms, witch burnings, protestant/Catholic wars done in the name of religion.
Flaw 2 - Its not clear that the lack of a belief in god has any clear implications on morality.
Clearly if we're all scared to death that god is going to send lightning bolts down and smite us
everytime we have an evil thought or do something wrong, it can have implications on our behavior.
But even if it were the case that God legislates morality, exactly what morals are those, given that at the same time parts of the Bible endorses good values like turn the other cheek or charity towards the poor, but at other times promotes genocide against people who worship the wrong god or stoning to death of disobedient children. Which ones should we adopt. We see this clearly in many modern believers who don't promote antequatede biblical values like slavery or polygamy, but clearly do draw the line with some
biblical injunctions against homosexuality or abortion. Where does one draw the line as to which biblical beliefs to adopt or not.
Flaw 3 - It is clearly true that one can be an amoral obnoxious bully whether one is religious or not. But with a Hitler or Stalin, clearly psychopathology has to be at work with some type of fervent ideology (national socialism or marxist/leninism) for it to work. Clearly it's extreme ideologies which drive people to think it's permissible to lie, cheat, kill and steal because the ends justify the means. Its true
that a component of Marxism is atheism. His athiesm was influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach (though its not clear how much Hegel was an atheist). Marx was an atheist but so what. What drove Marx and later Lenin/Stalin was violent socialistic beliefs in which he thought he was bringing about through historical dialectic materialism natural historical forces to bring about a utopia. Athiesm isn't what drove Marxism any more that it drives Any Rand or Rand Paul fascistic libertarianism.
So even if it could be proven that "Hitler was an atheist" (which I don't think can be shown) it is completely beside the point. As usual it was extreme ideology plus pathology that leads to these monstrosities. Prior to the 1830's all of these extreme ideologies were religious. Another sad point, with a few exceptions like Bonhoeffer, the vast majoritity of Catholics and Protestants were either complicit with or explicitly went along with Hitler. This is the bigger point. The other bigger point is to always remember that the "hitler was an atheist" meme like "Darwin was a racist" meme is a pernicious attempt to discredit athiesm mascaraded as a serious argument.
Posted by: nejishiki
|
September 17, 2010 11:49 AM
#51
Here is a translation of the Hossbach Memorandum. Where does it show his hatred of christianity?
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/document/hossbach.htm
Posted by: Volizden
|
September 17, 2010 11:50 AM
Aaron Baker Said:
Also in that book your quoting it clearly says:
Hitler and the Nazis tried to establish their own form of Christianity... Clearly Richards, who is a leading authority on the subject, or else you wouldn't have felt safe to quote him, says Hitler WAS a christian as well...
But I suppose you will try to discredit that as well
Posted by: LeAnne
|
September 17, 2010 11:55 AM
http://i.imgur.com/qrLD5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/a6UPU.jpg
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
|
September 17, 2010 11:55 AM
HERESY I TELL YA! HERESY!
THOSE GODLESS HEATHEN FABRICATED THESE FALSEHOOD TO HIDE THEIR HAND IN THE MURDER OF JEWS!
Is it strange that I am expecting this kind of response to it?
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 17, 2010 12:01 PM
And of course religion has such an impressive historical record for stopping these kinds of proclamations.
Not that such is even necessary. Let the self-deluded proclaim away. What matters is how other people respond.
And the proper response is to fall down laughing and walk away.
Which mode of thought is most likely to encourage that, hmm?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:05 PM
Where does [the Hossbach Memorandum] show his hatred of christianity?
From the translation you linked to:
"It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans."
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:09 PM
Also in that book your quoting it clearly says:
Hitler and the Nazis tried to establish their own form of Christianity.
As Evans describes in great detail, Hitler established an Aryanized "German Christianity" in effort to gain control of the Protestant churches in Germany. It had no popular appeal, at which point he lost all interest in it. You have to bear in mind that Hitler, whatever his actual beliefs, was always and everywhere a consummate manipulator. This is why I put a lot of weight on his utterances to his closest associates (though, of course, manipulation can't be excluded even there). I think it safe to say that Goebbels was the closest thing to a genuine friend that Hitler had.
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
|
September 17, 2010 12:12 PM
Bravo, P.Z., thanks for doing all that work looking these up and publishing them for us.
Posted by: David Marjanović
|
September 17, 2010 12:12 PM
"Authority"?
If you want to call reality an "authority"...
If I proclaimed myself a god, I'd be considered insane, simply for the reason that I am so obviously not one. Has this really not occurred to you?
Erm... Hut means "hat". (The word shares a common ancestor with English hood.) In various parts of the Middle Ages, Jews had to wear a tall, pointed, yellow hat, and that hat is called Judenhut, "Jew hat", in German.
Quoted for truth.
Posted by: nejishiki
|
September 17, 2010 12:14 PM
#70
That's it? That's his 'hatred of christianity'?
He's basically paraphrasing Edward Gibbon. That's not some far-out conspiracy theory. I'd wager a lot of Christians believe that as well.
Sorry, you'll have to do better than that, especially given the quotes PZ and others provide.
Posted by: derekvneal
|
September 17, 2010 12:17 PM
If it says it's a Christian, goes to Church like a Christian, and quotes from the Bible like a Christian...it's probably a Christian.
Posted by: mischi
|
September 17, 2010 12:18 PM
One thing nobody has mentioned so far are the ratlines that were established among others by high ranking priests from the vatican. It might even be possible that the pop knew about them. Those lines helped for example Adolf Eichmann, the "constructor" of the Holocaust, to escape to south america where he was later captured by the mossad. So not only did the nothing to prevent the Holocaust, they actively supported the escape of war criminals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
Posted by: Aquaria
|
September 17, 2010 12:25 PM
It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans."
Is there something wrong with you?
He's only saying that the rise of Christianity was the end of the Roman empire, which is a rather simplistic and naive confusion of historical correllation and causation, but not disparaging in and of itself. He's making a larger point as well, if you read the entire passage, about the differences in Britain and Germany, what their strengths and weaknesses were.
Here's the entire paragraph, dimwit:
It had fuck-all to do with Hitler's views of Christianity, and it's not even a direct quote from Hitler, you deluded little fraud.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:27 PM
Yawn, still no smoking gun Hitler was an atheist. Being antagonist toward certain religious practices is not a sign of atheism. After all, most religions are contemptuous of those other religions who deviate significantly from their standard practices/rites.
Sorry Nerd, you haven't been paying attention. I've never claimed Hitler was an atheist--quite the contrary--merely that he was anti-Christian.
Here's Goebbels:
Here's Speer:
This is just silly. Plenty of Christians are contemptuous of other Christians, much like plenty of atheists are contemptuous of other atheists (Mooney or Piglucci anyone?). That's hardly evidence that they are not Christians or atheists, respectively.
True enough, Paul; but these quotations I've reproduced are excellent evidence of Hitler's hostility to Christianity.
Posted by: gussnarp
|
September 17, 2010 12:28 PM
Another great take on Ratzi's speech.
Posted by: CunningLingus
|
September 17, 2010 12:32 PM
Shorter Aaron Baker
I'm going to ignore the fifty or so quotes actually ascribed to Hitler, that PZ put up there, which point to Hitler being without doubt a xian, and obfuscate about an unproven table conversation, that I can skew indirectly, maybe, possibly, to ever so slightly prove those direct quotes of Hitler above inaccurate, therefor he was an atheist ... so there !
Outstanding logic there.
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 12:32 PM
Aaron Baker,
That's an incredibly weak support for your claim of a "hatred of Christianity". It would be quite consistent to be a Christian, and believe that Christianity had a "disintegrating effect" on the Roman Empire. Moreover, this would be quite consistent with Hitler believing that for Germany, Christianity had the opposite effect. I'm not suggesting Hitler was a Christian - I think as far as it can be determined, while in power he was a theist but not a Christian - but the quoted phrase is certainly nota an expression of hatred. Are your other sources any more impressive?
Incidentally I have recently acquired an interesting book: Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism, by Derek Hastings. This is a detailed study of the early years of Nazism - up to shortly after the Beerhall Putsch of 1923. Hastings shows with detailed documentation that the early Nazi movement was almost entirely Catholic, and grew out of the more extreme forms of Catholic nationalism: Hitler changed direction to broaden its appeal in the course of the 1920s.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/3pzhpak.ouNzLX5MUxlPUOeqCqdRloa9Hfvt4tOVoUDfmSsecFI-#f83ab
|
September 17, 2010 12:38 PM
PZ has some difficulty keeping his story straight about Hitler, so it seems to me.
August 23, 2006: "List of Hitler quotes — he was quite the vocal Catholic"
Sept. 1, 2010: "You've had this explained to you often enough, that Hitler was if anything nominally Catholic, bizarrely pagan, and his ideas had nothing to do with science or with atheism, but you don't care, I know."
Sept. 8, 2010: "Good grief, please. Hitler was a nominal Catholic with an extremist pseudo-scientific philosophy that excluded Darwin and evolution, and found justification in religious dogma."
Sept. 17, 2010: reprints the piece from 2006, "in honor of the papal visit to the UK," thereby reinforcing the original implication that Hitler was (more than nominally) Catholic.
So, which is it PZ? Nominally Catholic, or really, really Catholic?
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 12:41 PM
Aaron Baker,
Your other quotations are from practised, professional liars: Speer and Goebbels. The Goebbels quote might be worth something, as it's from a private diary, but it's a single recollection of a conversation by a man himself known to be deeply anti-Christian, who might well (consciously or unconsciously) attribute his own views to his beloved Fuehrer. The postwar Speer would say whatever he thought would ingratiate him with an interviewer, and is thus completely worthless.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 12:41 PM
Considering that the topic was Hitler was an atheist, you missed that point entirely. He was still a theist, still nominally catholic. He may have held the churches in private compempt, but he never repudiated god and all religion. So you are just a side show distraction to the main event. Even if you are right, which I'm still skeptical of.Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:43 PM
Aquaria wrote:
Is there something wrong with you? . . . Here's the entire paragraph, dimwit . . .It had fuck-all to do with Hitler's views of Christianity, and it's not even a direct quote from Hitler, you deluded little fraud.
Ignoring for a moment the manner in which you've expressed yourself, I'll address the substance:
1) "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity . . . .", like the rest of the Hossbach memorandum, is a paraphrase of Hitler's remarks at a meeting with his generals. This reference to Xnity & its "disintegrating effect" wouldn't have been included if Hitler hadn't said it.
2) The context of the remarks have no bearing at all on whether or not "the disintegrating effect of Christianity" conveys a judgment of Christianity.
3) Rather than having "fuck-all to do with Hitler's views of Christianity," "the disintegrating effect of Christianity" obviously (if not to you) does express a judgment about Christianity--and a negative one.
4) Combined with the remark preserved by Goebbels: "Christianity had corrupted and infected the entire world of antiquity," this statement in the Memorandum gives us a good idea of Hitler's view that Christianity corrupted, infected, and disintegrated the Roman Empire. Not a sentiment usually expressed by people friendly to Christianiy.
So, no fraud, no delusion--but some very real questions about your reading comprehension.
Posted by: nejishiki
|
September 17, 2010 12:43 PM
#78
OK, I'm willing to accept that Hitler wasn't a Christian. The Hossbach Memorandum evidence is pretty weak; you really shouldn't even bother with it if those two sources you give are actually trustworthy. So my conclusion is now: Hitler was not a Christian, though likely religious in some vague way, and not hostile to the idea of religion - and he manipulated a nation full of Christians by using religious language and centuries of persecution by Christian Churches as his stepping stones. Thus the Nazi movement can be called vaguely Christian, even if the leadership wasn't. However, neither can be called atheistic.
Posted by: David Marjanović
|
September 17, 2010 12:47 PM
What about Albert Speer?
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
|
September 17, 2010 12:48 PM
You make that sound like a chore.Posted by: stuartvo
|
September 17, 2010 12:48 PM
Single-minded bunch of trolls and Liars-for-Jesus you have here tonight.
They insist dogmatically that Hitler was an atheist, as if this proves some point, yet utterly ignore all the arguments to the effect that, even if this was true:
1) It does not reflect in any way on actual atheist "beliefs" or practices
2) Christian morality is clearly a myth, as millions of Christian Germans supported his actions.
Several people have raised these points and I have yet to see as much as an acknowledgement that they were made, much less any counter-argument.
Don't the sniny-pelted ones ever get tired of being so rudely ignored? If I had been in this fight for as long as you have I'd be itching to shove my hands down the InnerToobs and throttle one of these slimy, dishonest, evasive little shits!
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:48 PM
Nejishiki:
I'd agree that the Hossbach Memorandum by itself isn't super-strong, but it has the merit of having been produced by a functionary with (so far as we know) no religious or anti-religious ax to grind. It does add a bit, I think, to other testimonies from folks close to Hitler--which is why I cited it, rather than because I'm a delusional little fraud.
I agree that Hitler wasn't an atheist (and I always have agreed).
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
|
September 17, 2010 12:49 PM
The pope says that he knows Nazi motives because he was a Hitler Youth. Logically, he should agree that atheists know atheist motives because they are, well, atheists.
And if atheists, the experts on atheism, say that Hitler wasn't an atheist, who else is qualified to know atheism better? Surely not the least-atheistic person in the frikkin' world, the frikkin' pope?
And if atheists won't claim Hitler, why not? Why will those godless bastards not latch on to the man who tried to wipe out a religion? Are they not hate-filled? Are they not evil?
Where can the spirit of Hitler find a home, then?
Where is a world-domination cult with a male hierarchy, funky uniforms and a penchant for art, gold and recruiting children, run by a former Hitler Youth who knows the Nazi mind? Where?
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
|
September 17, 2010 12:52 PM
We just don't want to tip our hand. Not yet.Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 12:55 PM
googlemess@82,
Try reading for comprehension. There is nothing inconsistent in Hitler being both vocally and nominally Catholic: his views probably changed over time - most likely he was a sincere Catholic at the start of his political career but not later - but he certainly found it politically useful to remain nominally, and sometimes vocally, Catholic. He found it politically useful, of course, because he needed Catholic, and more generally Christian, support. And he got it: the vast majority of those carrying out his plans for conquest and genocide were undoubtedly sincere Christians. The Catholic Church, of course, never excommunicated him, or the other Catholics (in the sense of publicly-known members of the Church, whatever their private beliefs) among the Nazi hierarchy, who included Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Rudolf Hoess.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 12:58 PM
Nerd, you were making the issue of whether Hitler was a Christian front and center:
Hitler called himself a Xian. Therefore, he was an Xian, until a direct and conclusive smoking gun is shown, which CC has not shown, ergo she is nothing but a liar, bullshitter, and obfuscator. Also, she doesn't get to make the decision on whether Hitler was an Xian or not. That is for true historians, not pathetic and inane internet trolls.
So maybe we're both sideshow events.
Posted by: Randomfactor
|
September 17, 2010 1:00 PM
So, which is it PZ? Nominally Catholic, or really, really Catholic?
Both. If your god can be three-faced, certainly his faithful servant Adolf can have two.
He sure as hell is nonexistent wasn't any flavor of atheist.
Posted by: Captain Black
|
September 17, 2010 1:00 PM
The next thing that will happen is pope Palpatine whining on about how aggressive atheists have infiltrated the catholic clergy and turned them into kiddy fiddling paedophiles. If scapegoating worked for Hitler, its good enough for the pope.
Posted by: David Marjanović
|
September 17, 2010 1:00 PM
Sorry, I hadn't refreshed before submitting.
Please. It's a direct reaction to Popatine's remarkably ignorant claim that Hitler was motivated by atheism.
Posted by: Matt "Nora" Penfold
|
September 17, 2010 1:00 PM
Doctors who perform an abortion on a nine-year old, raped by her step-father, get ex-communicated.
Start several wars of aggression, detain your political opponents in concentration camps and gas six million people and nothing is said. Indeed the RCC helps Nazi war criminals escape justice.
Now what was it the Pope has been saying about moral relativity ?
Posted by: aveworld
|
September 17, 2010 1:04 PM
At the end of his life Hitler was no longer a Christian because he was convinced (rightfully) that Christianity was a Jewish invention. But even then he believed in a something like a god, rumour goes that he wanted the old German God Wodan reinstated. So yes maybe he wanted to eliminate Christianity but he was never an atheist.
Posted by: nejishiki
|
September 17, 2010 1:07 PM
#90
It seemed to me that the Hossbach Memorandum line was just, perhaps, the conventional wisdom at the time. I'm still not sure it's anything more than that. Edward Gibbon was extremely influential.
The vile accusations of the pope have got a lot of us upset; to be accused of participating in Nazi-like activities by a person who participated in actual Nazi activities offends my sense of irony, and my sense of justice. No doubt we can trust you to be just as active on other internet forums, where you'll rebut the pope's arguments - which you admit are worthless - that Nazism was an atheist movement.
Posted by: Matt "Nora" Penfold
|
September 17, 2010 1:07 PM
To add to what KG has said, about Hitler changing his views on Catholicism, Christianity and religion, Ian Kershaw certainly makes that point in his biography of Hitler.
Posted by: lhikanliveson
|
September 17, 2010 1:12 PM
OBJECTION!
...I was hoping to think of an objection while I was objecting, Your Honor.
I didn't.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 1:16 PM
KG,
No one's suggesting that Nazis are among the more reliable of narrators; but historians have to deal with the evidence they have, and in response they've elaborated methods for sifting the more likely from the less likely.
That Goebbels confided the remarks he reports to a private diary counts, I think, in favor of its credibility--as does the very similar remark preserved by Hossbach. As for Speer, what he had to say about the Third Reich has been minutely combed by historians. Some of it's questionable and self-serving; some of it's quite accurate. I'm not sure what he had to gain by picturing Hitler as hostile Xnty; but I'm not an expert on Speer, either--so I'll happily consider evidence that emerges to that effect.
So far, then, I'm anything but convinced this evidence is worthless.
Posted by: mischi
|
September 17, 2010 1:20 PM
Oh, and by the way, there also was the "Deutsche Christen" (german christians), a movement formed by protestants who supported Hitler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Christians
By 1934 there were over 30 evangelical religious groups supporting Hitler.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 1:25 PM
Nejishiki:
I don't frequent Christian (or Catholic)-wingnut websites. I'm an atheist wingnut and it's you guys I love. But I agree, arguments of that kind from the current Godbotherer-in-Chief are remarkablyoffensive.
Volizden:
Historians have to use hearsay all the time. Incientally, the law doesn't regard hearsay as "not-evidence." Its use is restricted (not banned entirely) because the other party can't probe it with cross-examination.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 1:26 PM
AB, I am using Occam's Razor to say as long as anyone, be it Hitler or Obama, calls themselves Xian, I will go with their self designation. It is simpler, in that it avoids the "true Xian" arguments, like you are engaged in, and those arguments tend to bore me to tears. If a true smoking gun actually appears, I can change my mind. But I haven't seen that smoking gun for Hitler. Just vague second-hand references, which aren't worth the paper they are written on for solid conclusive evidence. Remember, I'm a scientist, so my idea of solid evidence might be more conclusive than what the legal profession might find persuasive.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 1:27 PM
I completely agree with this. I think on the basis of what I've read about Hitler (which includes Kershaw's excellent biography) that he started out as a conventional Catholic and gradually moved away from that.
Posted by: kirbywarp
|
September 17, 2010 1:28 PM
.. Is it too late or inappropriate to bring up Gowin's law? Just saying...
I agree with a couple others who find the whole debate about Hitler tiresome. If Hitler is proven to be an atheist, what does that prove? That atheists are Hitler? And if Hitler turned out to be a true-blood Christian, are Christians now Hitler?
I've heard it said that religion may not be immoral, but it very nicely allows evil people to justify their evil, and that may be the only point to be had here. Doesn't matter if Hitler was Christian or not, he used Christianity (as a tool or as a true belief) to gain the support of other Christians in his tirade against Jews. It shows religion's utter lack of checks and balances; if God tells you to do something, it becomes morally acceptable.
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 1:31 PM
Aaron Baker,
This is quite obvious: the Christian establishment was desperate to "prove" that Hitler was anti-Christian. You are far too credulous with regard to Speer. For a more sceptical view (with nothing to do with Christianity) see Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.
The Hossbach memorandum, as I've already pointed out, does not demonstrate hostility to, let alone hatred of, Christianity. It would be quite compatible with Hitler's view of history to believe that Christianity had a "disintegrating effect" on the Roman Empire, but an "integrating effect" on Germany - and this effect, not its theology, would be what interested him. He was certainly a great admirer of the Catholic Church as an institution, and of Martin Luther, whom he regarded as the greatest pre-Nazi antisemite. I've noted myself that the fact that the Goebbels quote was from a private diary probably indicates it was what Goebbels thought - but as I also noted, he would tend to interpret Hitler's views through his own - so he might, as you are doing, interpret a remark about Christianity's effect on the Roman Empire as a more general hostility.
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
|
September 17, 2010 1:34 PM
Adolf was sent by God, he says. How is that atheistic? Consolidating all denominations to set yourself up as the pope/jesus of a new, unified world religion is not atheism, it is, by definition, catholicism. "Catholic" means "all-encompassing".
Posted by: Marco
|
September 17, 2010 1:41 PM
Hitler was just a very cunning atheist, see, so cunning that he fooled everyone into believing he was godly (ha!).
Or something like that.
Anyway, all atheists are baby-eating Darwinian Nazi monsters who worship Hitler and dream of becoming like Pol Pot one day. Got it? Who needs proof for that?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 1:43 PM
KG,
Provide some actual evidence, pls, that Speer was trying to pander to this Christian establishment.
I'll add that there's nothing in the context of that Hossbach paragraph to suggest that Hitler regarded Xnty as having an "integrating effect" on Germany, or any other country or state. You're giving weight here to an unfounded speculation.
Posted by: Paul
|
September 17, 2010 1:48 PM
You're shifting the goalposts. KG was replying to:
KG's response points out that he could have intended to curry favor with a Christian establishment that was eager to distance themselves from Hitler's professed Christianity. That is something to gain.
Posted by: Bob L
|
September 17, 2010 1:55 PM
You know who else proved his point by quoting Hitler?
HITLER!
Thus Reductio ad Hitlerum ab Hitlerum
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
|
September 17, 2010 2:06 PM
Even if that were true (it probably isn't as you can't seem to understand that athiesm only means a lack of religion you lying dipshit), it still means that Christianity had a roll in Nazism and it doesn't speak well for it's supposed moral high ground. Congratulations on making yourself look like blinded followers.
Posted by: mikerattlesnake
|
September 17, 2010 2:06 PM
@82
Yesterday PZ said the sky was blue, but today he says it was light blue. Which is it, PZ?
Posted by: mikerattlesnake
|
September 17, 2010 2:10 PM
"You're giving weight here to an unfounded speculation."
The irony of this coming from someone who is a) making the same exact speculation (just the opposite conclusion) and b) thoroughly convinced by three secondhand documents of varying credibility and motive in the face of a mountain of documented statements of the man's christianity is almost too much to take.
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood
|
September 17, 2010 2:15 PM
@ CatherineCanny and Aaron Baker;
This endless argument about the beliefs of Hitler is fruitless. There are any number of quotes that seem to support Hitlers theism. There are other sources (that many historians consider questionable, but lets put that to one side for the moment) that seem to cast doubt on Hitler's commitment to christianity, and that is all they do. They cast doubt on the degree to which Nazism was religiously inspired, as opposed to being a purely fascist-nationalist, ethno-supremacist project.
You cannot go from "there may be doubts about the significance of Christinity to Hitler" to "Hitler was an atheist" on such scant evidence.
Even if you could establish that Hitler was an atheist, you cannot make the leap from "Hitler was an atheist" to "atheists are Nazis-in-waiting", which is prety much a shorter version of the Pope's claim that the blame for Nazism can be laid at the feet of Secularism, and thus imply that atheism leads inevitably to genocidal fascism.
The conclusion in no way follows from the premise.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 17, 2010 2:16 PM
This would make Hitler an apostate, but definitely NOT an atheist.
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
|
September 17, 2010 2:21 PM
The "Hitler was an atheist and therefore atheists are evil" example is stupid.
Hitler had a moustache! Therefore, PZ Myers is evil!
Hitler loved dogs! Therefore, Ben Affleck is evil!
Hitler was fond of children! Therefore Christian Kane is evil!
Posted by: max29
|
September 17, 2010 2:36 PM
http://www.verhoevenmarc.be/PDF/nazis-kerk.pdf
Translate with google o.a.
There is a lot of information and pictures hidden in europe.
Because of the Catholic Church supporting the deportation and elimination of jews not a lot will show up.
The properties of the jews where going to the traditional Catholic partie members CDU CDA
Many became millionairs for free. Jewish bankaccounts, houses, companies, shops where divided among the Catholic partiemembers.
They have to keep all covered and closed.
in Holland the CDA party is still leading
The church used deportation and elimination of the Jews at their sunday sermons ..
Give to the church and the Pope in Rome because we have been good to you.
So Hitler knew he had the Pope behind him and thats why in 1945 400-900 nazis where given false identity and free transport to South America.
Many of them still live there today
They where all shipped and transferred through the Vatican in Rome .
Posted by: Steven Mading
|
September 17, 2010 2:38 PM
When you learn that "is contemptuous of a religion" is not the same thing as "is an atheist", get back to us. Actually, no, I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're spewing shit out of mere ignorance. You know perfectly well they're not the same thing, but aren't honest enough to let that sort of thing bother you - when it comes to defending a religion, honesty doesn't matter to most of the assholes who defend religion.
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 2:46 PM
I don't need to. That Speer was a shameless and accomplished liar, and that there is a plausible motive for him to lie in this case - a motive you have not disputed - is enough to make his "evidence" worthless.
Posted by: Steven Mading
|
September 17, 2010 2:50 PM
Sorry, Aaron: Just saw the the end of the thread and noticed your more recent post where you say you don't think Hitler was an atheist, so I retract what I said about you lying and apologise for saying it. I still think you're still wrong about how he can't have been a Christian, since his comments were about church organizations and Christianity has a history of small cults that buck the trend and believe themselves to be the only true Christians and so they rail against the more common versions of Christianity. Was Hitler a devout Catholic like he was brought up to be? No, certainly not. But that doesn't exclude the possibility of him from being a fringe cult-y Christian like a David Koresh or Jim Jones - one who has bought into a lot of what the bible claims but believes himself to be the only one who gets the message right and the churches have got it all wrong. Actually, given a lot of what he did, that sort of scenario seems likely to me.
But at least that is the sort of wrong that is still within the realm of possible honest mistaken-ness rather than deliberate lying, so I apologise for the accusation of lying.
Posted by: ThirdMonkey
|
September 17, 2010 2:59 PM
CatherineCanny,
Athiest. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Posted by: Daz
|
September 17, 2010 3:01 PM
@82
I believe it might be called modifying one's stance in light of newly acquired information or ideas. As opposed to, well ... dogma.
Posted by: Bronze Dog
|
September 17, 2010 3:18 PM
Finally got through all those quotes and the comments.
I also see a lot of disturbing similarities between Hitler's words and a large chunk of the Religious Right.
Posted by: Marco
|
September 17, 2010 3:18 PM
In post # 18, dime-a-dozen "philosopher CatherineCanny gave us this turd of wisdom:
Right, Cathy dear.
And you know what? Like you, I read minds too, and don't need evidence to say the stupidest shit.
So, here goes:
The pope is actually an eebil Darwinist communist nazi who, oh-so-very-cunningly, has fooled everyone into believing that he is a godly man.
Prove me wrong, darling, please. Good luck with that, you idjit.
Posted by: No One
|
September 17, 2010 3:22 PM
The pope IS "the god" of the catholic church. The god-king if you will. Just as Hitler was a god-king. The beauty of this setup is that one can pass off moral authority (and responsibility) to a higher power. Who conveniently can't be accessed by normal folk… It's the difference between authoritarianism and leadership.
Posted by: Kai
|
September 17, 2010 3:27 PM
Ooookay, it's an academic's blog, so I can accept that quite a few gave in to the temptation to further an academic debate on side issues springing from Aaron Baker's comments.
Still, as many have pointed out: He's not addressing the core of the atheism-Hitler-morals fallacy. So on top of being academic, please try to be more scientific, specifically reductionist. Concentrate on the effect under investigation, not air friction.
Two observations:
1) I am not calling names, so I will not accuse Aaron Baker of trolling. Instaed - by discussing his comments at length and with agitation, everyone so responding contributes to one marked effect of trolling: to distract. It takes two ...
2) I find Joseph Ratzingers speech doubly annoying for the obvious suck-up to the British sentiments for standing up against Hitler in the war. To use that actually well-earned pride as a hook to sell a rotten point with a non-sequitur - blargh!
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 17, 2010 3:30 PM
a.thi.est; adj: The most athi.
Posted by: Jaycubed
|
September 17, 2010 3:41 PM
I didn't see this site mentioned, but it lists these
& further quotes.
http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/AdolfHitlerQuotesGodReligion.htm
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/KL4Pn1FkxYQ.rsFw7wk766O3#33f94
|
September 17, 2010 3:47 PM
Re: #37, Aaron says: The "direct and conclusive smoking gun[s]" are: the Hossbach Memorandum, Speer's postwar memoir, and Goebbels's diary, all of which show Hitler to have been privately contemptuous of Christianity. (I've given specific quotations from all three in earlier postings on this site; look them up sometime.) ... Come up with some rebuttal to Hossbach, Goebbels, and Speer, or give it up.
Challenge accepted. I looked it up. Here is a rebuttal to Hossbach:
Within the Hossbach Memorandum, the *only* mention of religion, God, church, or Christianity is this single sentence (which you quoted):
"It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans."
Hitler said that Christianity had a disintegrating effect on ancient Rome. Of course it did. I'll bet the Pope would agree to this. Is the Pope contemptuous of Christianity too?
Honestly, I think that you just really want your pre-conceived notion to be true. Somewhere along the line, you saw a sentence mentioning this authoritative document and you hoped that you could use it to prove your point.
Maybe your other sources help your thesis--I have not looked--but the Hossbach Memorandum entirely fails.
Posted by: natural cynic
|
September 17, 2010 3:57 PM
From Hossbach>
Just a thought here. Instead of denigrating Christianity, the important phrase may be the emphasis on the power of the Germanic tribes. As in "Heh, heh, we were the ones that had the strength to overcome the world's greatest empire. Now, if we get our shit together, who knows...?" Hitler was often looking for examples of the historical power of the "Aryan" past, so why not use this as an example?
Another thing to consider was that Hitler and the Nazis considered certain aspects of Christianity to have signs of weakness. See the references to Jesus as a "fighter, not as a sufferer". As has been mentioned previously, we have the correct interpretation of the Bible - all others are mistaken.
BTW. An interesting discussion, Pharyngulites.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 4:27 PM
mikerattlesnake wrote:
A few points here:
1) The grabbag list that you're putting so much weight on is drawn in part from worthless sources like Rauschning (Kershaw's judgment, not mine). It does cite public professions of Xnity (from Mein Kampf and some speeches; but I've consistently drawn a distinction (which I think, rightly or wrongly, is significant) between Hitler's public and private utterances.
2) there's no speculation at all in concluding that the sentiments attributed to Hitler by Goebbels and Speer are hostile sentiments. You may think Hitler didn't make those statements if you like, but they incontestably express a hostile attitude toward Xnty. Taken by itself, the statement in Hossbach's memorandum, can, on the basis of entirely hypothetical facts that certainly aren't in evidence on the face of the document, be taken as a value-neutral statement about Xnty--as, for example, if Hitler somewhere else, at some other time, said: "Xnity caused the Roman Empire to disintegrate; but it only makes the German Reich stronger." The problem with KG's suggestion here is that there's nothing in the document itself (or elsewhere, so far as I know) to warrant that (or a similar) interpretation--and when people speak of some ideology or religion as disintegrative, it's at least plausible to infer (absent other evidence) that they're NOT speaking in praise of said ideology or religion.
If you're going to bash the evidence I've adduced, go ahead, but you don't really advance the discussion with "this might mean" or "or that might mean" in the absence of actual evidence that the statement in question actually means what you're suggesting. (Nor, in response to someone else, am I moving goalposts when I ask someone to provide evidence.)
3) As for your perception of near-intolerable irony, we've had these discussions on this site before, & in them (in addition to the passages discussed above) I have cited at some length:
the Nazi-forced dissolution of the Catholic Zentrum party;
the Nazi abolition of all parochial schools in Germany;
the ongoing conflict between the Party and the churches (such that Hitler resolved to settle decisively and finally with certain church leaders once victory freed his hands);
Hitler's explicit rejection of religious grounds for his antisemitism (see the cite in that list you like so much);
his lack of any expressed objection to Alfred Rosenberg's atheism and Himmler's revived paganism;
his espousal (and practice) of Social Darwinism (note that I've said "Social") and euthanasia--both doctrines condemned by the Catholic Church of the day;
the dissemination of anti-Christian propaganda by the SS to police battalions in Poland (see Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men.).
4) I would add here that the phrase Table Talk covers documents of very different date and provenance, and I've seen few historians who reject this material in its entirety--and Hitler seems to be consistently anti-Xn in the Table Talk. Kershaw, Evans, & others use some of this material--so I'd like to hear specifics on why it should always be rejected.
(I note, a propos of nothing, that a number of posters here cite passages from the Table Talk for Hitler's views on evolution. Consistency (or the statement of some heuristic for separating gold from dross) would be appreciated.)
I would also add the complete absence of any churches or other religious architecture in Hitler's detailed plans for a rebuilt Linz and a rebuilt Berlin (as pointed out by Gerhard Weinberg in A World at Arms.
So there is, in fact, as you might put it, a mountain of evidence for Nazism as a predominantly secular phenomenon, and for Hitler as, at most, a nominal Catholic.
Please excuse me if I don't cite every jot of evidence every time this discussion comes up--but I have cited a ton of it at one time or another--and it's not that hard to find.
Posted by: No One
|
September 17, 2010 4:28 PM
Yes beacause the left-wing, athiest Jews who where members would really appreciate the fine distinction. Particularly those who where executed.
Get a clue... Hitler was an delusional asshole. Stop trying to pin his shit on us. It reeks of cheap perfume.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 17, 2010 4:30 PM
Quadruply so when coming from a former member of the Hitler Youth, even granting the possibility that said participation was in complete innocence, or compelled.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 4:33 PM
Gregory Greenwood wrote:
Once again, I've never argued Hitler was an atheist.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 4:35 PM
Steve Mading:
Apology accepted. I've gotten too overheated in some of these discussions to take much umbrage when I piss someone else off.
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood
|
September 17, 2010 4:41 PM
Aaron Baker @ 138;
That particular sentence was more of a reference to the position put forward by CatherineCanny then to your own posts.
And I noticed I had missed out the 'a'... just after I pressed submit.
*grumble*
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 4:46 PM
I'm accused of going off-topic enough times that I think there must be something to it. So, let me add that Yes, it's especially odious for Ratzinger to play the Nazi=Atheist card.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
September 17, 2010 4:47 PM
Jebus, Baker, you're still a deluded fuckwit*
Let's just look at the first few of your "anti-Christian" Hitlerite actions:
Every non-Nazi party, with zero exceptions, was abolished in 1934.
Every other non-public school was abolished.
Hitler wanted to set up an Aryan church to replace the others. This was anti-Christian, as well as being anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Shinto, etc., etc., etc. He wanted to get rid of ALL the rivals to his proposed church. The Christians were by far the largest group but not the only ones.
Come back when you've got some actual anti-Christian, and specifically anti-Christian, actions. Until then, you're still a deluded fuckwit.
*And no, asshole, you still don't won't get the apology you think I should give you. I don't care how butthurt you are. Learn to play with the big boys and girls.
Posted by: Stephen Wells
|
September 17, 2010 4:55 PM
Reichskonkordat, anyone?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 4:56 PM
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 5:06 PM
Nonsense: look at the last two quotes from Hitler given by PZ. Now these are public statements; they do, nonetheless, warrant the interpretation I suggested.
Note, BTW, that I'm not saying Hitler was Christian or pro-Christian. I doubt he had a consistent view of Christianity at all: ideological consistency simply wasn't of any interest to him.
Posted by: notesprof
|
September 17, 2010 5:07 PM
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."
So Christian warriors are really Nazis in disguise, Who's going to tell them?
Posted by: hopscotchblog
|
September 17, 2010 5:12 PM
Thank you for putting this together. Very, very handy.
Posted by: KG
|
September 17, 2010 5:13 PM
Aaron Baker,
You talk of consistency - and yet you dismiss Hitler's immediate suppression of freethought movements on gaining power (as well as numerous public statements) as indicating hostility to atheism, while claiming the suppression of a rival political party as evidence of hostility to Christianity. That's just absurd.
Posted by: MetzO'Magic
|
September 17, 2010 5:17 PM
We all like it when issues can be tidily pigeon-holed - when they are black and white. It makes it easier to pitch in for one side or the other. I have no doubt at all that Hitler was Christian, at least in the early stages of his 'career'. All by themselves, the quotes from Mein Kampf above, ca. 1925, demonstrate that quite clearly.
But having read Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians (that link is to a free, on-line .pdf of his book) just a while ago, it strikes me that Hitler fits the profile of a right-wing authoritarian leader pretty closely. In fact, he might even be the fucking template. That means that he started out as a 'believer', a follower. But later on he figured out that he could use religion to control people. And then it all changes.
People like Hitler are rarely atheists, but religion does become secondary to them over time. Once they realise that it can be used (as just about the most effective tool we know of!) to control others, the power-grabbing aspect of it subsumes the mere adherence aspect.
And Christians, especially the more fervent ones, are especially susceptible to becoming right-wing authoritarian *followers*. They will unquestionably believe almost *anything* an authoritarian leader says, and carry out any instructions given by such a person. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Oh shit. And what does that say about Pope Panzerfaust? And... as it has proven time and again over the ages to be such an effective tool for controlling people, is it any wonder that rational people are stating the obvious - that mankind would be far better off if we could divest ourselves of this malaise called religion?
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/zzCLYtIFkcpxeUh7DVWFXdP.EhgbfT75_Q--#9dbe0
|
September 17, 2010 5:26 PM
Objection! Hitler was no true Christian.
Reply: None of them are.
Untrue to my knowledge. I know a number of people who are indeed truly Christian. Objection stands.
Objection! Christians don't commit genocide.
Reply: Look up the Albigensians, review your history of the Crusades, and what about the Jews of Spain? Did Darwin coin the word "pogrom"?
Objection falls, but I can't imagine anyone rationally advancing it anyway. We all know (or should know) that evil things have been done in the name of Christianity, and we all know (or should know) that no genocide has ever been committed in the name of evolution.
Objection! Hitler was merely cynically manipulating the German people by using their beliefs in God.
Reply: I'd say something similar of his misuse of scientific theory.
In other words, yes he was. Objection stands.
Objection! You're doing the same thing we are, only instead of blaming Darwinism, you're blaming Christianity.
Reply: No, I think humans have done evil throughout their history, and are always willing to grab any convenient rationalization for their behavior, whether it's science or religion or twinkies. Science doesn't dictate morality, and it's also rather clear that religion does a piss-poor job of it, too.
So neither is to blame. Objection stands.
Objection! But evolution is a scientific theory that has more rhetorical and philosophical power than mere religion, and therefore must bear a greater weight of responsibility.
Reply: I don't think the kind of people who blame mass murder on evolution will actually make this argument. Still, I'd just say what is, is. Science describes it and explains it, but doesn't tell us what we should do with it.
Objection falls. Evolution is not in any measure to blame for Hitler's deeds, and neither is Christianity. The quotes clearly show that what he believed was nothing to do with Christianity as it is understood by any Christian today, with the possible exception of the Pope and Fred Phelps. I do not agree with anyone who would try to maintain that atheism would prompt someone to do such things, but I will always argue with anyone who tries to maintain that the teachings of Christ do so.
Disclaimer: I am not a Christian, nor do I profess any religion. I just don't like bad reasoning, and I see far too much of it on the side that claims to be rational. And I've posted here rather than argue yet again with my atheist friend who linked to this post, because it only upsets us both.
Right, carry on.
Posted by: PZ Myers
|
September 17, 2010 5:37 PM
Define "truly Christian." You can't. It's not something that has ever existed.
Yes, Hitler was a manipulative bastard. The objection fails because that does not mean he wasn't a Christian.
"With the possible exception of the Pope"? So now you want to argue that the Pope isn't Christian?
Speaking of irrationality, you don't seem to understand the point. This is not an argument that Hitler was a good, traditional, orthodox Christian like the average American -- quite the contrary, Hitler was a freak. But we have far better cause to call him a Christian than an atheist, and his beliefs did fall within the range of other professed Christians.
It's not my fault that Christianity is such an amorphous glop of delusions.
Posted by: Paul
|
September 17, 2010 5:40 PM
That was the point sailing over your head. "True Christian" according to whom? Pick a sect, and there is at least one other sect that considers them not a true Christian.
Really, didn't bother reading the rest of the post. Doesn't seem worth it if this is the level of comprehension you operate on.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 5:42 PM
Wiki:Something for everyone. Except atheists, Jews, Moslims...Posted by: MetzO'Magic
|
September 17, 2010 5:44 PM
WTF?! Can you read for comprehension, or is some twisted ideology getting in your way?
Posted by: Paul
|
September 17, 2010 5:44 PM
That's not true. There's Jews for Jesus. And in my experience most Christian churches have at least a few atheists...they just go through the motions so they don't lose child visitation rights. Muslims, you have a point.
Posted by: ryedo40
|
September 17, 2010 5:45 PM
"Another thing to consider was that Hitler and the Nazis considered certain aspects of Christianity to have signs of weakness. See the references to Jesus as a "fighter, not as a sufferer"." - #134 natural cynic
Because of the "threat" of communism - and Europe becoming more liberal(moving away from traditional, dogmatic, orthodox Christian attitudes), Hitler believed Christianity was becoming increasingly weak. He feared that secular and liberal attitudes were undermining "true Christianity"; so much so that it would lead to its collapse. Taking steps to counter the death of Christianity, he attempted to unite the many different churches under one, unified, Reich Church. He believed this would prevent sectarian violence and provide a solid foundation for the revival of "true-Christianity".
The weakness of Christianity doesn't rest on Jesus being a sufferer or a fighter - it rests on Christianity not being able to withstand secular, liberal and rational scrutiny.
A few Quotes:
"Without clearly delimited faith, religiosity with its unclarity and multiplicity of form would not only be worthless for human life, but would probably contribute to general disintegration." - Hitler.
"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty." - Hitler.
"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine" - Hitler.
"So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich.... And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther] with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany." - Hitler, in his Proclamation at the Parteitag at Nuremberg on 5 Sept. 1934
And an interesting one from his Mrs:
"These are my last lines, and therefore, the
last sign of life from me… I can’t understand how all of this can have happened, its enough to
make one lose one’s faith in God." - Eva Braun, before her suicide.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 5:55 PM
[pushed the button too soon]
I'm still waiting for evidence that "German Christianity" expressed Hitler's heartfelt sentiments.
'Tis Himself goes on:
"Every non-Nazi party, with zero exceptions, was abolished in 1934."
Hitler has been alleged by some here to have had strong Catholic sympathies. His suppression of Zentrum, together with frequent Nazi violations of their Reichskonkordat with the Pope, and together with Nazi legal harassment of both priests and monks, suggests otherwise. (As to the last: the Nazis instigated criminal prosecutions of Catholic clergy for, among other things, sexual irregularities [insert joke here]. Whatever the factual basis for these prosecutions, the motive was anti-Clerical.) Hitler's ongoing strife with both Protestant and Catholic churches is well-narrated by Evans; read him sometime.
"Every other non-public school was abolished."
Yes, and the vast majority of these were church-run schools! Again, read Evans for the specifically anti-church animus here. (Incidentally, one Gauleiter tried (unsuccessfully because of popular uproar) to have Xn crosses removed from schools under his jurisdiction; Hitler, as usual, was quite tolerant of anti-Xn activity by his underlings.)
Since you haven't responded to the other evidence I've brought up, I'll assume it's because you have nothing by way of rebuttal there.
On another subject, 'Tis:
As usually happens with your attacks, you impugn my intelligence. You do this repeatedly, though you never show any evidence of that quality yourself. Whenever you hold forth on history, philosophy, or the law, you come off as a loudly arrogant clown and under-informed fool. You claim to be an economist--but aren't economists pretty bright? At any event, you've never presented evidence that you are what you say you are--and your statements alone incline me to doubt that you have any formal education past, say, the 12th grade.
Or, to use your 12-grade vocabulary: you're an asstard, a shit-for-brains, a raging dumbass, and a total fuckwad.
Is that big-boy enough for you, you pissant cocksucker?
Posted by: kirbywarp
|
September 17, 2010 5:56 PM
@PZ
That's what is so great about Christianity right? Do you like your God vengeful, spiteful, and homophobic? Look to the old testament. Like your God righteous, merciful, and peaceful? Just look to Jesus. Honestly you could justify just about any belief you want and its opposite and still consider yourself a "true Christian." Hitler could be considered as much a Christian as any Fred Phelps or gentle-Jesus worshiper, he just took away different bits.
Posted by: Brian
|
September 17, 2010 5:59 PM
We've all seen this one about Hitler atheist/Catholic ad infinitum. Here's a pretty balanced run down of the whole issue:
link
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
|
September 17, 2010 6:09 PM
Well, maybe not rationally, but the position is advanced all the time. Bring up Christian atrocities and you'll frequently get a No True Scotsman.
What? Seriously? No Christian, except the leader of the largest domination, that makes up almost one half of all Christians. Oh, and its believers also think he has Papal infallibility?
Putting that aside, as noted, PZ is note saying Hitler was a typical Christian.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 6:10 PM
KG wrote:
"Nonsense: look at the last two quotes from Hitler given by PZ. Now these are public statements; they do, nonetheless, warrant the interpretation I suggested."
Not at all. Both statements are statements in praise of Christianity, but neither says that Xnty is "disintegrative." "Disintegrative" (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) plausibly interpreted as pejorative. (Incidentally, at least one of those quotations is taken from Norman Baynes's inaccurate edition of Hitler's speeches--another reason why I don't like this grabbag of a list.)
"You talk of consistency - and yet you dismiss Hitler's immediate suppression of freethought movements on gaining power (as well as numerous public statements) as indicating hostility to atheism, while claiming the suppression of a rival political party as evidence of hostility to Christianity. That's just absurd."
See my remarks above about the ongoing conflict between the Nazis and the Catholic church and its relevance to Hitler's alleged friendliness to Catholicism. I take your point: I'd agree that the motive for shutting down Zentrum was primarily power-political--but an odd move from a dictator who saw himself as a Catholic dictator. (It would be like Franco suppressing the Carlists.) I wasn't being very clear there.
Posted by: Brain Hertz
|
September 17, 2010 6:11 PM
CatherineCanny the cut & paste troll dribbled:
(cut and paste from a translation in a 1992 Chalcedon report snipped).
First, Wilfried Daim is a psychologist, not a historian. Oh, and he's Austrian, not German. Not that it really matters here, but Austrians tend to get pissy about that sort of thing.
Second, you might consider including the book from which the quote was translated:
"The man who gave Hitler ideas. The sectarian basis of National Socialism"
http://tinyurl.com/37krlvh
(tinyurl to prevent bollocksing up the formatting. It's a google translate pointer to the book page on amazon.de).
Odd that you didn't mention it, really. The central thesis of the book is that Hitler got his ideas from Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels.
This guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanz_von_Liebenfels
(short version: not an atheist).
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 6:12 PM
That should have been "is plausibly interpreted as pejorative."
Posted by: Joffan
|
September 17, 2010 6:26 PM
The closing thoughts on Brian @159's Straight Dope link are probably the most relevant. It really doesn't mattter what Hitler believed, and it's an utterly obvious fallacy that saying "Hitler was an atheist" means that all atheists are like Hitler, just as saying "Hitler was a Christian" says nothing about other Christians.
The Pope was presumably being deliberately offensive. I'm surprised (but not very) that there's been very little indignation expressed about this from Christians.
Posted by: Brain Hertz
|
September 17, 2010 6:29 PM
Aaron Baker #42:
Gosh, do you mean that the German Freethinkers' League was hostile to the Nazis? How could that be?
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
|
September 17, 2010 6:33 PM
Hitler was as Christian as anybody else has ever been. Nothing he said or did disqualifies him from being a Christian--killing, pogroms, raping, lying, war and torture are all perfectly Christian behavior.
You might not want him in your church, but some Christian churches would welcome him in, and throw you the hell out. There is no disqualification for Christianity (except, apparently, for being Christlike). Hitler was raised Catholic, and unless he and the pope arranged something, he was still a Catholic when he met his well-deserved end. He might be sent to Hell for committing suicide, but he was nominally Christian, he never said he wasn't, and never did anything to disqualify himself (except, possibly, burning people that were dead instead of alive).
If the pope were to excommunicate Herr Hitler, retroactively and from birth, Catholics could believe he was not a Christian. The pope is the authority on Catholicism. If the pope says Hitler wasn't Catholic, then Hitler wasn't Catholic.
Now, I am not saying that PZ is the pope of atheism, but this blog probably has as tight a cluster of atheists as you'd ever be afraid to find. And we are saying, loudly and repeatedly, with good evidence, that Hitler was not an atheist.
Who else are you going to ask? What else do you want?
Regardless of whatever went on in Hitler's twisted head, Herr Ratzinger gratuitously dealt out a dreadful and dishonest insult to atheists. The Pope may be Catholic, but he sure isn't acting like a Christian.
Except, of course, he totally is.
Posted by: Nick
|
September 17, 2010 6:35 PM
Given that Hitler was something of a crazed megalomaniac, isn't it possible that he privately viewed the Church as potentially a rival in terms of it's influence over people, but, whilst consolidating power, he used it where he could to increase his grip. It would then be consistent that he should, earlier in his career, tend towards giving the impression he believed the church was a good thing, and yet, later, as he believed his ultimate victory in conquering Europe was close at hand, he should make plans subvert the church for his use.
If this is the case, it makes no difference wether he has a personal belief in god, just that he was prepared to use the institution of the church for his own ends.
The point then is that the church can be used for evil.
The current pope may or may not believe in god. The point is that he presides over an institution that does such a lot of harm, manipulating individual's own belief in god, by claiming exclusive rights over the interpretation of 'gods will' as written in the bible.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 6:37 PM
Aaron Baker is reminding me of an old thread about bigfoot. Mythusmage (Alan Kellogg) was going on and on about how a given film was conclusive evidence for bigfoot, never mind that one of the witnesses admitted it was faked, it also had other problems with veracity, and no other alleged evidence came up to the level of proof required to convince real scientists that bigfoot existed. Repeating the same low level "evidence" over and over wasn't convincing. Mythusmage needed to step outside of his presuppositions, and directly address the question, "is the evidence sufficient to convince a skeptic". If the answer was no (as it is in AB's case too), time to fade into the bandwidth for that thread.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
|
September 17, 2010 6:52 PM
Aaron Baker, why do you assume Hitler considered disintegrative to have a negative connotation?
For example, if I state water has a disintegrative effect on paper (which it does) am I using the term in a pejorative sense, or am I simply using an accurate and appropriate word to describe the relationship?
Posted by: mischi
|
September 17, 2010 6:53 PM
@Aaron Baker:
So what do you have to say about my comments #76 and #104? Because in both cases the church (catholic or evangelical) was involved. How do you explain that away? The two major churches in germany were involved when it came to the nazis. Clearly you wouldn't support them if they were attacking you. We here in germany learn that in school, in fact, we learn it in religious education.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
September 17, 2010 6:59 PM
Aaron Baker #157
What intelligence? When you display some, I might not impugn it. Since you apparently lack intellgence, there's nothing to impugn.
This is known as projection.
Funny, I was thinking similar things about you. For instance, you claim to be a lawyer yet you didn't know the legal definition of assault. That's covered in Lawyering 101.
Some economists are, some aren't.
You don't like me for some reason* and you apparently figure you can insult me by casting aspersions on my education and professional knowledge. I'd be dismayed if these comments came from someone whose opinion I respect. Since you don't meet that qualification, I'm not in the least annoyed by your slurs.
Oh, is Little Aaron trying to use naughty words? Does he know what they mean or is he just copying what others say? It really doesn't matter. Little Aaron still isn't ready to play with the big boys and girls yet.
Aaron, you're quite obviously angry with me. I, on the other hand, am not angry with you. I think you're a not very bright man with a chip on your shoulder. There are ways to get me angry but I don't think you're quite smart enough to find them.
*Supposedly I insulted you because I disagreed with you about Webster Cook. You're even more upset because you demand an apology and I won't be bothered to soothe your fractured ego.
Posted by: raven
|
September 17, 2010 7:06 PM
Join the crowd. Aaron Baker doesn't seem to like very many people on Pharyngula.
One would think he would find a more congenial crowd somewhere else. But maybe he is too strange for most groups of people.
Glad I skipped this thread. Trolls can be Internet Vampires sucking hours of life out of people.
Posted by: Joe Miller
|
September 17, 2010 8:00 PM
@nathaniel.tagg: Why not hang the pope instead? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79_xwxrjoCw
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
|
September 17, 2010 8:30 PM
It just occurs that the pope may have a very twisted kernel of putative truth at the center of his Hitler = atheism slur. Nothing valid, really, but something that a Jesuit could claim in court as a cover-up.
Here's the thought: Hitler's war was not a war of religion. Therefore, it was not a theistic endeavor. So it was a-theist, in that it was not about God. So it was an atheist war.
Or so the pope could say he meant. He implied, strongly, that it was a crusade by atheists to wipe out true religion--and that's what he damned well intended--but technically, all he said was that it wasn't a religious war. Or so he will claim.
And from his pope of view, any war that isn't religious is a fricking waste of people.
I am shocked at what he said, and horrified that nobody has called him on it, but I bet the old weasel has a way out if he gets cornered.
Posted by: travcollier
|
September 17, 2010 8:34 PM
Oooh, ooh... I have an idea ;)
Someone should print up signs with a bunch of excerpts like:
"As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."
(there are even better ones in there I suspect)
Then hand out those signs (t-shirts, whatever) at places like Tea-Party rallies and creation museums.
Have to be careful not to tell anyone where the quote comes from for a while. Then when we have lots and lots of idiots waving them around, mention to the press that they are Hitler quotes.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 8:35 PM
It had nothing to do with Webster Cook, you worthless sack of 12th-grade shit. I dislike you because, in a completely different context, you libeled me: you accused me of trying to excuse mass murder. You're so stupid, and maybe drink- or drug-addled, you can't even remember from one day to the next the stupid things you've said.
Your opinion of my intellect is worth as much as your opinion of what "assault" or "battery" means.
I'll remind you (because your memory doesn't seem to be very good) that you quite spontaneously attacked me on this thread. Just what chip is on your shoulder, asshole?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 9:34 PM
Nerd of Redhead wrote:
I've discovered on atheist and freethought blogs that certain ideas have the quality of articles of faith. By that I mean that challenging them tends to provoke a response longer on angry rhetoric than on fact or reasoned argument. One of these articles of faith, for some, though of course not all, atheists, is that Hitler was in some practically relevant sense a Christian, and Nazism a Christian movement.
I've presented a variety of independent pieces of evidence that, instead, Nazism is best seen as a secular movement, and Hitler's theism (or belief in destiny; he seems to have used "God" and "destiny" interchangeably) retained little if any specific Christian content by the time he'd taken power.
I've pointed out that the ongoing strife between the Nazis and the churches, though doubtless a power struggle, had elements of anti-clerical ideology about it (spelled out in a comment above, and a feature of secular, not religious, political parties):
that Hitler, though the most vicious of antisemites, explicitly disavowed religious motivations for antisemitism in favor of alleged racial knowledge or racial science;
that the other important component of Hitler's ideology, unlimited conquest, was justified first and foremost on secular rather than religious grounds: the seizing of necessary Lebensraum
that Hitler had no objection to Nazis being atheists, deists, or neo-pagans (e.g. a small number of Nazis listed their religious allegiance as "Gottglaubig--"deist"; they suffered no adverse consequences for doing so; also, the SS distributed anti-Xn propaganda without arousing Hitler's wrath);
that Hitler espoused doctrines, like euthanasia and Social Darwinism, that were condemned by the Catholic Church and by other Christian churches, and that his T-4 Program (mass murder of the physically and mentally disabled) was a natural next step in the Nazi ideology of euthanasia, but quite antithetical to the teaching of the Catholic and other churches (and kept secret because Hitler knew it would rouse a storm of outrage);
that although most historians DO NOT reject the Table Talk (which is chock-full of anti-Xn statements) in its entirety, you can ignore it and still find independent but congruent testimonies to Hitler uttering anti-Christian sentiments to his inner circle;
that Hitler's architectural fantasies of a future Linz and future had no place for religious structures.
If, considering these lines of evidence, you elect to give different weights to them, that's one thing. But if you conclude that they're comparable to the evidence for Bigfoot, you're either not paying attention or you have an antecedent commitment that's getting in the way of your addressing the issue as a skeptic should.
Posted by: Olav
|
September 17, 2010 9:41 PM
What Hitler really believed or said he believed does not even matter. The man probably didn't ever kill anyone, except perhaps his young niece with whom he had a weird and almost certainly "inappropriate" relationship. But the large scale atrocities were committed by normal people who were usually Christians, at least by tradition.
If being a Christian and following that tradition helps someone be a better person, why didn't it help those millions of Germans who joined the Nazis and murdered in the name of that terrible regime?
Posted by: Brain Hertz
|
September 17, 2010 9:55 PM
What about this one?
Your position does seem to be a gigantic stretch: there are a large number of documented instances of him publicly tying antisemitism to Christianity. That doesn't preclude his having used other rationalizations in front of different audiences if he thought it might be effective. I don't see how that helps you disentangle Christianity from Nazism.
But why would he care?
Posted by: beetle, licensed porpupine breeder
|
September 17, 2010 9:55 PM
So am I the only one who sent this to Glenn Beck?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 10:07 PM
Wowbagger wrote:
"Aaron Baker, why do you assume Hitler considered disintegrative to have a negative connotation?"
Well, Wowbagger, look at the statement: "It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans."
He seems to be comparing Christianity to old age--and then suggesting that it was both (and only) these (Xnty and old age) that caused ancient Rome to succumb to the Germans. I would say then that he's seeing Xnty as a bad thing for ancient Rome, and so that "disintegrative" or "disintegrating" has a negative connotation here--whatever else it might have meant for Hitler in other contexts.
Further, if we go back to the previous sentence, he's comparing Rome to Great Britain on the issue of longevity, and saying (I think) that, in contrast to Britain, Rome "was not confronted by any powerful political rival of a serious order after the Punic Wars." Thus, he goes on to say, it was only Xnty and old age (not something else bad for Rome, like the Carthaginians) that made Rome succumb to the Germans.
By implication he's also saying, I think, that it was the lengthy absence of bad things for Rome (powerful rivals, Xnty, and old age) that make it unjustifiable for us to expect the British Empire to have comparable longevity to Rome's.
I think, therefore, that seeing this disintegrating effect in a negative light is the most plausible, unforced reading of the sentence.
Something at least as important: the apparent thought behind the sentence is very similar to that in the passage from Goebbels' diary: "Christianity had corrupted and infected the entire world of antiquity." (The complaint in the Speer passage--"It's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion," "meek" and "flabby" Christianity--is less similar, but not exactly remote in sentiment from the first two statements.) So there are three independent sources (the first two very close to each other) imputing similar sentiments to Hitler. Because of the similarity, I believe that together, they have significantly more weight any of them would alone.
Does that clarify my comment?
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 10:19 PM
Mischi:
I did talk about the Deutsche Christen a couple of times further back.
That some Catholic clerics helped Nazis to escape is undisputed--all I can say is that the relationship between Nazism and the churches was complex (I've never said it wasn't)--and plenty of Christians were avid Nazis. Whatever conflicts the Catholic hierarchy had had with the Nazis (and there were a lot), quite a few priests evidently preferred them to communists.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 10:22 PM
I've discovered on atheist and freethought blogs that certain ideas have the quality of articles of faith. By that I mean that challenging them tends to provoke a response longer on angry rhetoric than on fact or reasoned argument.
Insisting we stay on FACT is not an faith based insistence. People respond to you with counter points and you insist on calling Nazism secular to slander us. Seriously? the Xian/Pagen bullshit of nazism is in no way "secular"
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 10:23 PM
Brain Hertz @ 179:
Well, you have a point. I'll have to give some thought to this, too.
Posted by: Brain Hertz
|
September 17, 2010 10:24 PM
Aaron,
I think you're reading into the one sentence in the memo meaning that just isn't there. A statement of purported fact about the fall of Rome doesn't tell you anything about the purported authors religious views.
As for the Goebbels diary, why shouldn't that be interpreted as him embellishing with his own thoughts in line with his own disdain for Christianity? I don't see how you work backwards from that to infer what Hitler's own sentiments were.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 10:25 PM
Yawn, still nothing concrete from AB. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You don't even have ordinary evidence. But you can't shut the fuck up. What is your real agenda????
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 10:28 PM
@NoR
Meh be easier on him. I think he's genuine instead of dickish trolling. Saying Nazism is secular is still contrary to reality and dumb though
Posted by: No One
|
September 17, 2010 10:29 PM
Actually it's the other way around. Atheism is is held as the root cause of Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. Ever watched "Expelled"?
It's like getting punched in the face and having the the guy who hit you complain about his knuckles.
On a lighter note I had some twit explain his proof that god exists to the other day:
"If there is no god then that means Hitler won't go to hell, and and would have gotten away with it..."
I swear on a stack of dirty socks it's true.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 10:37 PM
@188
If Xianity is right, Hitler could be in heaven and Anne Frank in hell.
Posted by: KayArr
|
September 17, 2010 10:43 PM
Umm...are you sure you understand the question?
I'm an athiest. Why would I want to give that up to proclaim myself a god?
FYI...
Athiests would be more likely to perceive themselves as a small part of a greater universe and would, therefore, eschew the idea of humans having nothing higher than the self. The real narcisstic view is that of the religious who view themselves as beings which were "made in the image of god".
Yes. I believe I've been converted now. With such a meglaomaniacal, punitive, jealous, evil, cynical, bigotted god, I can totally see that man was created in his image.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 10:46 PM
@190
I agree...Hitler was very much in the Bible God's image
Posted by: ryedo40
|
September 17, 2010 11:04 PM
"I'm still waiting for evidence that "German Christianity" expressed Hitler's heartfelt sentiments..." - Aaron Baker #157
Bit broad this question. "German Christianity" (in some circles) wouldn't have expressed Hitler's heartfelt sentiments. This is probably one of the reasons why he attempted to reform and revive what he, and others, viewed as true-Christianity -while, as Luther and other reformers have done, adding their own sentiments.
"Hitler has been alleged by some here to have had strong Catholic sympathies. His suppression of Zentrum, together with frequent Nazi violations of their Reichskonkordat with the Pope, and together with Nazi legal harassment of both priests and monks, suggests otherwise."
If he didn't have strong Catholic sympathies, why would he say to one of his Generals "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He obviously considered himself Catholic. Maybe you mean he wasn't in full agreement with certain Catholic policies and openly condemned the corruption in the Church(read Mein Kampf vol 1, Chapter 10; Vol 2, Chapter 2). But what's new here? Nothing. Countless Christians - past and present - openly condemn the church and traditionally held beliefs. Catholic Hitler was no different.
You mentioned Reichskonkordat - and how Hitler violated certain agreements with the pope. You also mentioned how priest suffered legal harassment for not conforming. In the Reichskonkordat, article 16, it clearly states Bishops must swear loyalty to the Reich governor of the state. Now, if Hitler was intent on eradicating the corruption within the Church, while trying to unify various flavours of Christianity under one Reich church, it seems quite plausible that some Bishops and priests would have come under the firing line. Again, nothing new here. The religious - politicians or not - have, throughout history, thought nothing of harassing, punishing or killing those who show no loyalty. It's quite possible the Bishops and priests were also violating the concordat, therefore, the harassments were legally justified.
"...Hitler's ongoing strife with both Protestant and Catholic churches is well-narrated by Evans; read him sometime."
Martin Luther - and countless other Christians - also had an on going strife with various denominations. You're not going to suggest they weren't Christian too, are you?
"Since you haven't responded to the other evidence I've brought up..."
It seems to me that the evidence you've provided proves very little.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:04 PM
all of which show Hitler to have been privately contemptuous of Christianity
I don't know if someone has pointed out the obvious response to that yet, but if not, here 'tis:
it doesn't matter if Hitler was contemptuous of xianity as a whole.
so was Luther.
so were MANY MANY xians.
that's why there are 40K sects of xianity.
which one of those sects, calling themselves xian, and many that call the others "false", ISN'T xian?
come on now, you "hitler is an atheist" morons...
will the REAL xian please stand up?
bunch of demented fuckwits.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:06 PM
Ing @183:
"Insisting we stay on FACT is not an faith based insistence. People respond to you with counter points and you insist on calling Nazism secular to slander us."
I've consistently relied on facts--and independent lines of fact--to support my position. When people here have made fact-based counterpoints (as opposed to, say, calling me a fuckwit or a deluded little fraud), I've relied on facts in my responses. I also conceded that some counterpoints had merit. I don't put a huge amount of weight on appeals to authority--but given that my position has been compared here to belief in Bigfoot, I will add that what I've concluded is well within the range of views held by actual, credentialed historians of the Third Reich.
I fail to understand how I'm "slandering" you by thinking that the facts best support a secular view of Nazism. Racism, imperialism, mistreatment of the poor--these are often carried out for purely or mostly secular reasons. No one is slandering freethinkers or atheists by saying as much. So I'm frankly puzzled as to why this should rub you the wrong way.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:07 PM
doh! and now i note the post just before mine said:
Martin Luther - and countless other Christians - also had an on going strife with various denominations. You're not going to suggest they weren't Christian too, are you?
well, great minds and all.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:10 PM
calling me a fuckwit or a deluded little fraud
if you insist.
So I'm frankly puzzled as to why this should rub you the wrong way.
it's your blatant intellecutal dishonesty that's rubbing people here the wrong way; some of them just displace their disgust as you attempting to slander them.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:12 PM
Nerd: "Yawn, still nothing concrete from AB. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The claim isn't extraordinary at all; it's quite commonplace among historians of the Third Reich.
Your endless efforts to evade evidence you don't like is starting to bore me; why don't you shut the fuck up?
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 11:16 PM
You are historically illiterate.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:17 PM
The claim isn't extraordinary at all; it's quite commonplace among historians of the Third Reich.
aside from the other historians who say the exact opposite, of course, which I'm sure have already been pointed out to you.
or, if you were ACTUALLY concerned with historical research, you'd know that already.
but you're not.
bye.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:24 PM
summary:
contemptuous of any flavor of xianity /= atheist.
EOS
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:24 PM
Ichthyic @ 193 & 196:
Would I be wrong in assuming that Luther's contempt didn't extend to Lutheranism? Or that Aquinas's contempt didn't extend to the Catholic Church? Neither had a blanket contempt for Christianity; the passages cited indicate that Hitler did.
With that and your missing my oft-repeated assertion that I don't think Hitler was an atheist, I'd say you're a better candidate for fuckwit.
Also, if you'd care to explain how you think I'm being blatantly intellectually dishonest--no, actually, on second thought I don't really give a shit.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 11:25 PM
I have not seen a single non insane historian who hasn't pointed out the strong link between Luther's antisemitism rants and Hitler'...
Maybe its because Hitler credits Luther and all.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 17, 2010 11:25 PM
Yawn, still not solid conclusive evidence up to the standards of science, more like wishful thinking on your part. No smoking gun. As I have said all along. What is your real agenda???Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 17, 2010 11:26 PM
Also, if you'd care to explain how you think I'm being blatantly intellectually dishonest--no, actually, on second thought I don't really give a shit.
that would be two of us, since your entire contention amounts to:
"he wasn't MY kind of xian."
and you fucking know it.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 11:28 PM
Remember, any criticism against Christianity means that they can't be christian...
Any nod to atheism or science==TOTALLY SECULAR.
Oh and dumb ass, Luther didn't protest Lutherism because that is the branch of Christianity MADE from his criticisms. It didn't EXIST when he was bitching.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:31 PM
And with that I'm off to bed. Thanks to everyone who made substantive responses, and to the others: "If there were a Hell, I wish you'd go there".
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 17, 2010 11:31 PM
Ever notice how Newton despite his criticisms of the limits of his contemporary physics and math never criticized calculus!?
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
September 17, 2010 11:53 PM
uhh...Luther criticized the WHOLE of Christianity (which at that point was the RCC), and founded his own version precisely because there wasn't a version already in existence that he liked.
Same for Aquinas. He criticized the RCC, if only because that was (officially) the only Christianity at that time; all other Christian sects at that time had a habit of forcefully dying out.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 17, 2010 11:58 PM
Garb, I almost escaped, and then I saw this comment.
So, you're not a fuckwit; you're clairoyant. You've seen what I really think behind this elaborate, fraudulent facade.
I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. "Not MY kind of xian." What does that mean?
All I can guess is that this is some more than ordinarily stupid effort to acccuse me of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
My response:
1) I'm not a Christian.
2) I haven't decided ad hoc that any and every unpleasant characteristic of Hitler is inconsistent with being a true Christian. Note that I've nowhere said that antisemitism, or mass murder, or warmongering are inconsistent with being a Xn, because I'm well aware they're not;
3) But I have, on the basis of evidence of hostility to Christianiy, and anti-clericalism, and tolerance for non-Xnty or even anti-Xnty on the part of his minions, concluded that Hitler had probably shed his Xnty by the time he came to power. (I also think that his embrace of some ideas explicitly condemned by the church he grew up in is further evidence, when combined with the other evidence, that he had shed his childhood faith--though I agree this wouldn't be enough by itself to make him a non-Xn.)
Read 2 and 3 carefully until you understand the difference--or don't; again, I don't really give a shit.
Ta.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 12:07 AM
Jadehawk:
Did Luther and Aquinas have a blanket contempt for Christianity, or didn't they? I think it's obvious they didn't. Luther initally approved of any number of earlier churchmen, and I assume he approved of his followers (eventually known as Lutherans--I've telescoped things a bit) as soon as he had some. Aquinas, too, cannot, I think, be accused of an all-encompassing contempt for Christianity.
If the statements attributed by Goebbels and Speer to Hitler are accurate, they suggest that Hitler had a contempt for Christianity tout court. There's no exception made for Catholicism, or Pietism, or the Deutsche Christen, or what have you.
Posted by: MCullen NE
|
September 18, 2010 12:15 AM
The list of quotes is very scary to this lay person. Not to far off from some of the vitriol coming out of Newt or Beck as far as I am concerned.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 18, 2010 12:20 AM
@211
Good thing Newt and Beck are such secularists...
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 18, 2010 12:23 AM
tolerance for non-Xnty
yeah, that's why he banned atheist groups in 1933.
fuck me, but your obtuse.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
|
September 18, 2010 12:26 AM
Aaron has made up his mind. Any discussion is apparently over.
The fact is Hitler's relationship with Christianity is an odd one...its all over the map, but form his admiration of Luther and rolling up Nazism in that weird mix of paganism and Christianity, I don't think secular is a proper statement...like at all.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
September 18, 2010 12:27 AM
right... and this is different from Hitler... how? there's no exception in the critiques of Luther, either. Except for those who followed the Luther-created not-christian (according to the "officials") religion that was kinda like christianity. Which is precisely what was going on in Hitler's Germany: he despised Christians and Christianity for being weak (which, incidentally, is something you hear in the more strident expressions of fatwa-envy from fundie christians, too), and wanted something stronger. If he'd succeeded, we'd now have yet another version of christianity called Hitlerism.So are all the founders of brand-new christian sects not christian in your opinion, as well?
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
September 18, 2010 12:30 AM
ok, that sound stupid. What I meant was that Luther criticized the Christian Church as a whole. He didn't try to fix things withing the church, he went and created his own christian-like religion. of course he wasn't going to criticize those who accepted this fabrication of his, but this is not the same as an "exception" for some version of christianity.Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 12:30 AM
Aaron Baker @209: "on the basis of evidence of hostility to Christianity"
Notably Albert Speer's Table Talk.
But Speer himself was not a reliable reporter, and seems in this case to have played Plato, with Hitler as his Socratic mouthpiece -- that is, Speer attributed his own anti-Christian opinions upwards to give them more weight.
Hitler in his own writings did not express these same opinions.
Posted by: jschmeau
|
September 18, 2010 1:02 AM
Aaron,
After carefully reading your arguments, I conclude:
1. Your arguments hold as much weight as the rumor that Hitler had but one testicle
2. and your arguments are equally as germane to his motivations.
Hitler was batshit crazy first and foremost. Whether or not he was an atheist, a vegetarian, a christian, or an ear of corn seems to me to have little or no connection to what present day atheists, vegetarians, christians, and ears of corn do or believe.
I'm not saying this definitively, in fact I'm probably wrong, I'm just sayin'... (did I spell germane right?)
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 1:36 AM
jschmeau @218: Yes, you spelled "germane" right.
Posted by: Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right
|
September 18, 2010 2:16 AM
There's a link to Nazi imagery, laced with crosses and references to God, and if you scroll down to the Martin Luther Memorial Church, you'll find an Iron Cross candelabrum, a carving of a Nazi solder (and Aryan mother & children) with Jesus, and a baptismal font with an image of Hitler with a Storm Trooper hat. Hitler may not have been satisfied with the church: he tried to remake it. He aspired to use the *unquestioning* mental habit of Christians and direct it. Hitler tried to unify the churches, or at least the Protestant churches, into the Reich Church. He sounded like a believer and his anti-Semitism came at least partly from Christian readings. He called on God and glorified his name. He certainly passed for a Christian in his time and to the public, credited Christianity with creating morality, and "wrapped himself in the cross."
Wagner wrote reams of anti-Jewish hatred under a pseudonym and was another "inspiration" for Hitler.
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 3:00 AM
And then there was the motto "Gott mit uns" (God with us) on the Nazi belt-buckle.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 18, 2010 3:05 AM
Notably Albert Speer's Table Talk.
thankyou for noting that, for the life of me I was blanking on the name of that thing.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
September 18, 2010 3:07 AM
...not like there isn't even a wiki taking the thing apart, or anything...
Posted by: Aquaria
|
September 18, 2010 3:48 AM
He seems to be comparing Christianity to old age--and then suggesting that it was both (and only) these (Xnty and old age) that caused ancient Rome to succumb to the Germans. I would say then that he's seeing Xnty as a bad thing for ancient Rome, and so that "disintegrative" or "disintegrating" has a negative connotation here--whatever else it might have meant for Hitler in other contexts.
OMFG
You cannot read. You can't.
Hitler was not comparing xtianity to old age. He was saying that xtianity in addition to the age of the Empire itself caused the downfall of the Roman Empire.
You are putting the interpretation on it that a moron with an agenda would. You want to see something bad about xianity there, and it isn't fucking there! But can you have even one smidgeon of humility and say, "You know, maybe I'm wrong, I read that all wrong"?
Nope. You have to insult everyone else's intelligence, little realizing how idiotic you look for making a reading comprehension error that an 11 year old would have caught.
And you're a lawyer? Seriously?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Don't practice it in my state. Please. We have enough incompetent lawyers.
Posted by: Rik G
|
September 18, 2010 4:58 AM
I've only skimmed the comments, so this may have been covered, but here is a link to notes that Hitler made before he became a public figure, and that predate the quotes in this post. They show that he rooted his racism in the bible. Not necessarily that his biblical scholarship was accurate, but that it was something he drew from for his world view. What makes these notes interesting is that they represented his private thoughts.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerBible.htm
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 18, 2010 10:33 AM
Aaron Baker (#135):
Actually, there is a heuristic: What personal or political advantage does Hitler gain by being insincere? What political or personal advantage does the source reporting his views have for mispresenting or distorting them?
Hitler's public professions of Christian (and specifically Catholic) faith can quite reasonably be treated as dubious on these grounds, given what else we know about his capacity for self-serving lies. And we might be cautious about accepting some of the anti-Christian sentiments attributed to him, since we know that some are fabrications, and that others were filtered through anti-clerical Nazis like Bormann.
But Hitler's apparent thoughts on evolution, whether expressed in Mein Kampf and recorded in the Hitler's Table Talk don't obviously fall foul of this filter. Expressing skeptism about evolution (i.e., common descent or the transmutation of species) doesn't seem to have any obvious political benefit, nor is there any obvious motive for someone like Bormann to doctor the record. By this criterion, there's a prima facie case for accepting them as genuine, even while many of his comments regarding religion (pro- or anti-) are more problematic.
On the other hand, Hitler's views on evolution were (somewhat typically) inconsistent. Sometimes he seems to accept the general idea, at other times he doesn't.
For example, during a rant about vegetarianism, he says: "The monkeys, our ancestors of prehistoric times, are strictly vegetarian." - Hitler's Table Talk, p231
And when musing about science and religion, he declaims: "For a world population of two thousand two hundred and fifty millions, one can count on the earth a hundred and seventy religions of a certain importance - each of them claiming, of course, to be the repository of the truth. At least a hundred and sixty-nine of them, therefore, are mistaken! Amongst the religions practised to-day, there is none that goes back further than two thousand five hundred years. But there have been human beings, in the baboon category, for at least three hundred thousand years. There is less distance between the man-ape and the ordinary modern man than there is between the ordinary modern man and a man like Schopenhauer. In comparison with this millenary past, what does a period of two thousand years signify?" - Hitler's Table Talk, p86
(Although interestingly, he follows this up with: "The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It's a fact that we're feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it's better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all. Who's that little Bolshevik professor who claims to triumph over creation? People like that, we'll break them. Whether we rely on the catechism or on philosophy, we have possibilities in reserve, whilst they, with their purely materialistic conceptions, can only devour one another. - Hitler's Table Talk, p87)
At other times, however, Hitler baulks at the idea of common descent, especially for humans: "Where do we acquire the right to believe that man has not always been what he is now? The study of nature teaches us that, in the animal kingdom just as much as in the vegetable kingdom, variations have occurred. They've occurred within the species, but none of these variations has an importance comparable with that which separates man from the monkey — assuming that this transformation really took place." - Hitler's Table Talk, p248
So the problem is perhaps less a matter of both citing and and at the same time being sceptical of a particular source, since consistent standards for appraisal can be provided that will allow one to do both. The real problem is that within the source, Hitler's views are an inconsistent muddle. He comes across not as a straightforward creationist of the biblical literalist-type, but more like a cdesign proponentsist - accepting some elements of evolution (sometimes), while mired in an essentialist (and thoroughly un-Darwinian) view of species, insisting on a creator, critical of materialistic world-views, and contradicting himself all the while.
So was Hitler an "evolutionist"? Hardly, although he seems to have taken on board some elements of a distorted, pop version of the theory. Was he a creationist? He seems to have been more creationist than not, but that needs a certain amount of qualification too.
In short, Hitler: not a straightforward person given to easy summings-up. One of the few things one can say with any confidence is that a lot of the time, he doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about.
RationalWiki has a nicely balanced article on Hitler's confused ramblings on evolution.
(Disclaimer: the above quotations are from the Hugh Trevor-Roper translation of Table Talk, which is considered one of the less reliable versions, so some caution is advisable.)
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 11:10 AM
Aquaria at 224:
Well, what did I write?
I think now I could have put it more elegantly, but I make clear enough here that what I mean by "old age" is the old age of the Roman Empire.
Moreover, Hitler is obviously comparing the two: both (Xnty and age) are laid side-by-side as, together, the sole cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire.
(From an online definition: "compare: to examine (two or more objects, ideas, people, etc.) in order to note similarities and differences.")
So, Christianity was, for Hitler, one of the only two causes (together with age, not usually regarded as a good thing for organisms and states experiencing it) for the fall of the Roman Empire.
Its seems our only disagreement on the meaning of this sentence is as to whether Christianity is regarded here as a bad thing. Well, why is it unreasonable to infer that Hitler is regarding Christianity as a bad thing, at least so far as empires are concerned, when he compares it to age and gives it partial respsonsibility for the collapse of a given empire? A further reasonable inference would be that he regarded Chistianity as a bad thing for his empire (Reich means
"empire").
(I'll add here that as a Social Darwinian crackpot, Hitler was in the habit of comparing states and peoples to organisms. So "age" when applied to a state was especially likely to have for him connotations of decrepitude.)
If you want to charge me with poor reading comprehension (not to mention impugn my professional skills), you need to do a lot better than this. I'm pretty good at admitting where I'm in error; but this is obviously not one of those occasions.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 11:20 AM
Jadehawk wrote:
"So are all the founders of brand-new christian sects not christian in your opinion, as well?"
You're begging the most important question here: whether Nazism should be regarded as a Christian sect. I've given reasons for thinking that it shouldn't. If you disagree, you disagree. Thank you at least for not calling me a fuckwit.
Posted by: Petzl
|
September 18, 2010 11:45 AM
#1 hit it right on the head.
Hitler wasn't and couldn't have been a believer.
No true believer would have committed those acts.
But an atheist would.
And an atheist would deceitfully claim to be a Christian while doing it to cover his tracks.
Pretty obvious, actually.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 11:46 AM
Iain Walker:
I largely agree with what you wrote;
though as for portions of the Table Talk that aren't regarded as outright forgery, there might well have been a distortion of Hitler's statements on evolution by going through Bormann's filter. A thorough-going anti-clericalist could have had strong, non-church-sanctioned opinions on biology. (complete speculation, I know; I don't know a lot about Bormann.)
Posted by: Owlmirror
|
September 18, 2010 12:02 PM
Nit: Comparing states and peoples to organisms long pre-dates Social Darwinism, and Charles Darwin himself. The use of the term "body politic" in English, for example, is cited in the OED from the 1500s, and I'm sure it goes back even further.
[1532-3 Act 24 Henry VIII, xii, This Realm of England is an Empire..governed by one supreme Head and King..unto whom a Body politick, compact of all Sorts and Degrees of People..been bounden and owen to bear a natural and humble Obedience. ]
There's also a Latin phrase: totum corpus reipublicæ.
Heck, the idea goes back to at least Plato and his Republic.
Here's the Analogy of the Body Politic in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 12:07 PM
Pyre & Ichthyic:
There's some confusion here. Speer's memoirs and Hitler's Table Talk are two different things.
Ichthyic quotes this wiki summary of Steigmann-Gall's views:
without noting that 1) Steigmann-Gall isn't denying anti-Christian attitudes on Hitler's part, but arguing for a relatively late date for their appearance; and 2) the wiki also makes clear there's scholarly disagreement on the extent and nature of Hitler's religiosity (with Alan Bullock at something like the opposite pole from Steigmann-Gall (roughly formulated: Hitler believed in nothing but his destiny--which was a form of self-projection).
The wiki also cites Goebbels' assessment of Hitler as "deeply religious," but "profoundly anti-Christian." (This, by the way, comes pretty close to my view of Hitler).
Maybe I'm missing something; but I'm not seeing any of this as a decisive take-down of my possession.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 12:10 PM
"of my position," i should have said.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 12:14 PM
Owlmirror @231:
Nit noted.
Posted by: Paul
|
September 18, 2010 12:45 PM
At this point, it's dickish trolling. He's done this several times. Aaron Baker mostly only shows up in pharyngula comment threads to demonstrate how Hitler couldn't have been even nominally Christian. It's old and tired.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 1:40 PM
Paul:
I've shown up in Pharyngula to discuss poetry, philosophy, particularly as it relates to science, Webster Cook, the Gregory Koger prosecution, democratic politics, the Qur'an, assorted Republican malfeasance.
Since there's nothing "dumb" about seeing Nazism as a primarily seculAr movement (also, I've never said that Hitler couldn't have been nominally Christian), and since I have the same compulsive SIWOTI complex that a lot of other people here have, I'll admit I've harped on this more than I should have.
Part of it is the unreasoning violence of some the reactions. Or do you never give in to the temptation to respond to people who are attacking you personally (e.g. by imputing imagined evil motives to you)?
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 18, 2010 2:09 PM
Aaron Baker (#177):
Hmm. Yes, in a technical and not insignificant sense, but in a broader, and no less insignificant sense, not so much.
The policies and practices of the Nazi movement were certainly secular in the sense that one didn't require and particular religious background or beliefs to sign up to them. There were Protestant Nazis, Catholic Nazis, atheist Nazis, weird pagan pantheist Nazis ... Nazism was (as it were) a broad church. And I don't think anyone would claim that many of the various influences on Nazism weren't also secular in that regard (e.g., the Volkische offshoots of German Romantism or late 19th-early 20th century "race science").
But describing Nazism as a secular movement, while true in the above sense, is also misleading in another sense. It overlooks the faith-based nature of the ideology, the emphasis on belief as a virtue in and of itself ("... it's better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all." - Table Talk, p87). It overlooks the teleological elements of Hitler's thinking, the emphasis on destiny and providence. It overlooks the emphasis on spirituality and the mystical element of the Nazis' racial and nationalistic ideas. There's a reason (several in fact) why Nazism is sometimes described as a political religion. It contains many of the structural and ideological elements that many secularists tend to find intellectually and/or morally objectionable in religion.
So, just as it is unhelpful and misleading to call Nazism a Christian movement (even though many Nazis were Christians and the movement did have some Christian roots and influences, such a designation completely fails to capture the essense of the movement's doctrines and policies), I can't help thinking that calling it a "secular" movement falls into a similar trap, even if in one sense it is true. Quite apart from anything else, the terms "Christian" and "secular" have a variety of possible connotations, and so simplistic (or at least unqualified) labelling is liable to mislead.
To be honest, I'm a little surprised that you seemed surprised that Ing thought you were having a go at secularists. I think Ing misunderstood you, but I could see how the misunderstanding arose.
BTW, if we're playing the "quote Albert Speer on Hitler game", the religious (albeit not specifically Christian) flavour of Hitler's thinking comes across here:
"I often feel that we will have to undergo all the trials the devil and hell can devise before we achieve Final Victory. ... I may be no pious churchgoer, but deep within me I am nevertheless a devout man. That is to say, I believe that he who fights valiantly obeying the laws which a god has established and who never capitulates but instead gathers his forces time after time and always pushes forward—such a man will not be abandoned by the Lawgiver. Rather he will ultimately receive the blessing of Providence. And that blessing has been imparted to all great spirits in history." - quoted in Speer, "Inside the Third Reich"
I know this doesn't contradict anything you've said, but I thought I'd add it as a counter-balance to the anti-Christian Speer-sourced quotations. Like all sources re Hitler's thinking, it's important to get the fullest possible flavour of what it actually says (selective quotation is nobody's friend).
Although it was from a public speech in 1944 to a bunch of industrialists, so the propaganda worry raises its head again. Sigh ...
(#230):
Possibly, although one would expect that if anything, the overall effect of such a filter might be to make Hitler look like less of a creationist than he actually was. On the other hand, while Bormann might well tinker with some of Hitler's comments about the Church, it seems very odd to think of him (for example) carefully rejigging a rambling and rather bizarre passage about vegetarianism just to make it look as if Hitler accepted a simian ancestry for human beings.
The seemingly positive endorsements of common descent are often throwaway lines in the middle of rants on some other general topic, a context which to me suggests that they probably wouldn't be seen as important enough to tinker with. So to me the idea that Hitler was a convinced creationist misrepresented by evilutionist Bormann seems less credible than the idea that Hitler was a muddle-headed ignoramus with creationist leanings whose ramblings on the topic are more or less accurately recorded, and that Bormann had more important things on his mind.
But like you, I don't know enough about Bormann to be sure. He's supposed to have been rather keen on putting Nazi racial policies on a "scientific" footing, but to a totalitarian, "scientific" usually means "something technical sounding that supports my preconceived position".
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 2:23 PM
Aaron, I'd suggest you read Jim Walker's "Hitler's table talk and other extraneous sources".
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 2:39 PM
Now for an admission of error.
Nerd of Redhead had this to say, about the question of whether Hitler was a Christian or not:
Provoked, as I often am by Nerd's penchant for disegarding evidence that doesn't suit him, I responded:
These statements are certainly smoking guns, as each is evidence of anti-Christian sentiment (including Hossbach; see #227 above); but I shouldn't have said they were conclusive. Historical investigation only rarely comes up with conclusive evidence--and other posters immediately and correctly brought up legitimate questions about Goebbels' and Speer's reliability.
But that doesn't mean this evidence is weak. I made the point before (which I think has been missed) that these three testimonies are completely independent of each other (Goebbels' diary wasn't unearthed until the 90s, and there's no reason to think Speer read it while Goebbels was writing it). Moreover, they all impute similar sentiments to Hitler (the Goebbels & Hossbach statements are particularly alike).
So we have: 1) a military functionary, trying to paraphrase accurately the statements at an important meeting of generals; 2) a consistently loyal creature of Hitler confiding observations about Hitler to his diary (evidently with a view to posterity; see the Goebbels Diaries Wiki); and 3)the often self-serving but also often-accurate Speer, independently imputing similar sentiments to Hitler (with Hossbach and Goebbels--the two more reliable sources, given these facts--being especially close).
As independent sources, these reports together have an evidentiary weight that each one would not have by itself.
Now, Nerd, while falsely accusing me of pushing a No True Scotsman argument (see #209 above), you've insisted that you're simply using Occam's Razor: he said he was a Christian, and so, like Obama, he was a Christian until I see something better than second-hand evidence to the contrary. This is followed by a sneer at the legal profession; but that profession is irrelevant here. What matters here is historians, and how they handle evidence. Historians often have to contend with reports that are second- or third-hand, or self-serving, or both. Instead of giving up, they've elaborated a set of techniques for weighing these materials--with a fair degree of success.
You say it's Occam's Razor that leads you to disregard this kind of evidence. But, as many other people than I have pointed out, there was, with Hitler, unlike Obama, a sharp disjunction between public pro-Xn statements and reported private statements knocking Xnty. Faced with evidence of this public/private disjunction (particularly in the case of a politician), it isn't adhering to Occam's Razor to refuse to consider the reported statements--it's just setting an arbitrary bar to any evidence that challenges your precommitment.
You make several insulting characterizations of this evidence (e.g. "low level 'evidence'"), but you never state a reason why it's unfit for consideration of a historical issue (again: historians do not, and cannot, reject evidence simply because it's secondhand).
You think that I have an ulterior agenda (I'll guess it's that I'm a crypto-Xn, trying to no-true-scotsman Hitler out of Xnty). If that's what you're thinking, as I've pointed out above (#209 again), it's based on no evidence at all. Not very consistent with your professed high standards, I'd say.
My agenda is nothing more or less than an obsessive-compulsive penchant for SIWOTI. That's it. I'm sorry it's bored some people. I'll try to avoid it in the future.
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 2:44 PM
@238:
Thanks, Pyre, I will read it.
Posted by: Sastra
|
September 18, 2010 3:00 PM
I haven't read through all (or even most) of the comments, but I want to suggest the possible relevance here of a distinction Bruce Hood (and others) have made between "religious" supernatural beliefs and "secular" supernatural beliefs. Both of them involve aspects of anthropomorphising nature, promiscuous teleology, mind-body substance duality, and the sense that the physical world is inhabited by, or formed by, invisible "essences" which make things what they are. God and miracles are common examples of religious supernaturalism.
Examples of so-called secular supernaturalism though would be ESP, destiny, a power in the blood, nature striving for perfection, and inherent racial divides. Basic Nazi ideology clearly drew heavily upon this second sort of supernaturalism. In fact, a lot of pseudoscience deals with it too. It's why people can advocate "woo" and insist they see nothing religious in it. They're being what they think is scientific.
Since secular humanists consider the distinction between naturalism and supernaturalism the most significant distinction between deciding what's religion, and what's not, there can be a lot of confusion. "Secular supernaturalism" sounds like a contradiction in terms.
Posted by: Sastra
|
September 18, 2010 3:13 PM
Aaron Baker #239 wrote:
In addition to the problem of deciding how to weigh the validity of pro-Christian statements against anti-Christian ones, there is the problem of an inherent ambiguity in religious belief itself. Because religion is so reliant on interpretation and divine inspiration, it's not only possible but common for people to both embrace and reject a religion, depending on what aspect of the religion they think they're dealing with. A single person can be both pro and anti Christian, and not feel any cognitive dissonance. They hate the Christianity that rejects Jesus.
For a confusing recent example, look at Ann Rice's "renunciation" of Christianity. She is no longer a Christian. Oh, she still loves and follows Christ, mind you -- but she doesn't want anything to do with Christianity anymore.
I can't bring them to mind right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read things from Hitler and other Nazi writers which similarly implied that Jesus had been "misunderstood" by almost all His followers -- but now the pure form of God's true message was being revealed, and implemented.
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 18, 2010 3:14 PM
There's only one thing worse than reading through a thread, composing a comment in your head, and then finding that Sastra's already nailed the point far more pertinently than you would have done. And that's struggling to make a point in a post, only for Sastra to come along afterwards and nail it far more pertinently than you actually did.
[Grumble]
Posted by: Sastra
|
September 18, 2010 3:19 PM
Oh, Iain had already been there. I should have known to read all the comments...
I steal from you, Iain. ;)
Posted by: Aaron Baker
|
September 18, 2010 3:34 PM
Iain,
I missed your previous, very thoughtful statement until now. I'll respond (much more briefly than it merits) and I'm afraid that'll have to be it--after this I'm swearing off Hitler for a while:
Reacting against the (to me) obviously false notion of Nazism as a Christian movement (though I wouldn't rule out Xn influences), I may well have fallen into the opposite trap. You bring up a lot of reasons why I have.
I'm particularly interested in Hitler's frequent references to destiny--especially his destiny. Is this a mere rhetorical trope (which I think Alan Bullock believed for a while), or did Hitler really believe in a supernatural force that had chosen him to save Germany? It may surprise you that I tend to believe the latter (I've never denied that Hitler had religious beliefs).
This belief in destiny--especially after his survival of the Generals' plot in 1944, may have contributed in some degree to that appalling monomania and megalomania that dragged Germany down with him. But I think the mono-megalomanic disorder already existed, and so I haven't made up my mind about the causal importance of the appeals to a supernatural destiny.
On another matter: I've thought and said that the two most important components of Nazism, because of their effects on non-Nazis, were its antisemitism and its aggressive imperialism. I've pointed out that both were justified most often by appeals to "scientific" racism and Social Darwinism (and thus Lebensraum), rather than by appeals to religion. (In response, someone reasonably pointed out Hitler's statement that he was doing "the Lord's work" in fighting the Jews. One can also find references to "Godless communism" in Nazi anti-Soviet propaganda--but again, I think the pseudo-scientific justifications mattered more to Hitler. So that's partly what I've been getting at by hammering on the word "secular."
Yes, I should have been less surprised, and less stung, by Ing's comment. My fail.
And that will really have to be all. Thanks for commenting.
Posted by: Zetetic
|
September 18, 2010 4:19 PM
Arron Baker @ #245
Respectfully, one can find similar "pseudo-scientific" justifications among Young Earth Creationists and new-agers as well. Religions (and other superstitions) in general frequently employ pseudo-scientific justifications for their beliefs. That doesn't make any of them secular either, even though they frequently try to "sound" secular.
As was already pointed out, Hitler's beliefs seem to be a mess, but there is zero evidence that he was ever an atheist. The most that can be claimed is that he was critical of some aspects of Christianity and that he wasn't very dedicated to any one brand of religion. It certainly doesn't make him (and the Nazis) atheists as originally claimed by Benny the Rat, and it wouldn't be relevant even if it was true.
That is why people are getting upset at what looks like attempts to justify (or at least make look plausible) the Rat's dishonest attempts at guilt by association.
Posted by: Stewart
|
September 18, 2010 6:23 PM
Something that belongs on a similar list - this is what Goering said while he was getting the Nuremberg Laws passed in the Reichstag "God created the races. He did not want equality, and we therefore emphatically reject any attempt to use any means in order to adulterate the purity of the races and to turn it into equality."
Posted by: musty
|
September 18, 2010 6:38 PM
Trakya Üniversitesi greats, thank you post travesti
Posted by: tatarize
|
September 18, 2010 8:55 PM
While the Table Talks aren't a complete forgery. There really are some things Hitler said there, most of the Anti-Christian comments come via an extremely fraudulent French version. The authoritative bits do say some interesting things.
http://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php
"I have never found pleasure in maltreating others, even if I know it isn't possible to maintain oneself in the world without force. Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself!
The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea. It can still take 100 or 200 years. I am sorry that, like Moses, I can only see the Promised Land from a distance. "
He compares himself to Moses and says that his Nazi utopia will be like the Promised Land but he will not himself make it there. It's a pretty clear religious point and gets to the English version via the French and says:
"Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."
So when scholars says that the Table Talks are bunk hoaxy crap, they aren't joking. There's some fairly real notes of the Table Talks that weren't butchered so badly. So it's not really proper to say that the Table Talks are a fraud, but rather than the commonly cited English version of the Table Talks are a fraud. The Table Talks themselves actually happened and you need to go back to the much more authoritative German version that didn't go through a French con-artist.
Posted by: tatarize
|
September 18, 2010 9:02 PM
And even the German version of the Table Talks is filtered through another guy with an anti-Catholic agenda. So when the text says:
"Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind"
it is likely not Hitler's words but rather his anti-Catholic editor. This ofcourse gets converted by our Genoud into:
"But Christianity is an invention of sick brains"
So it's really hard to salvage much from the Table Talks unless somebody can uncover some of Picker's unedited notes.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
September 18, 2010 9:30 PM
wtf?"Nazism" is a political party affiliation. The political system is fascism. Both have, generically speaking, fuck-all to do with the beliefs nor the religion (official or otherwise) of Hitler and other Nazis. What I'm talking about was specifically 1)Hitler's motivation and self-understanding as a warrior for the (Christian) god; and 2)your fucked up insistence that criticising Christianity, even all of it, somehow renders one non-Christian.
Nazism is not a religion, but Hitler was a Christian, and a version of Christianity (with (newer) pagan influences) was being created within and for the Nazis. There's a difference here.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
September 18, 2010 9:37 PM
or, to put it differently, saying that "Nazism" is a religion is like saying "Republicanism" is a religion. It's a bit of a straw-man, the refutation of which doesn't 1)prove that Republicanism/Nazism is secular; and 2)doesn't prove that religion (and specifically Christianity) isn't a major aspect of its politics and a major influence on its members.
Posted by: nakkinyan
|
September 18, 2010 10:19 PM
#131
Try again, you are not using the right one. Many words have multiple meanings and you intentionally chose the wrong one.
a.thi.est; a disbelief in the existence of deity
Greek - atheos; a(without) theos(god)
Posted by: nakkinyan
|
September 18, 2010 10:22 PM
merriam-webster dicctionary if you don't believe me.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 18, 2010 10:28 PM
nakkinyan, #253, #254;
The particular word in question most certainly does NOT have multiple meanings.
Go read your own link again.
Are you dyslexic, by chance, or just playing one on the internet?
Posted by: Timaahy
|
September 18, 2010 10:36 PM
Poor Eva Braun... she had to have sex with the little fucker.
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 10:58 PM
nakkinyan: You missed the <sarcasm> tags.
"atheist" means godless (non-theist).
"athiest" means most-athi (athi-est).
There was a teeny tiny spelling flame involved.
Posted by: edhensley
|
September 18, 2010 11:01 PM
Let's not forget that in 1935 Hitler banned books dealing with the false science of Darwinismus from German libraries. The ban is shown in German and English here:
http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm
6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufkl�rung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (H�ckel).
6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (H�ckel).
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 18, 2010 11:14 PM
Aaron Baker @245: Reacting against the (to me) obviously false notion of Nazism as a Christian movement....
Quoting from the 24th Point of the official Nazi Party Platform:
"The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination."
Posted by: mousomer
|
September 18, 2010 11:15 PM
My 2 cents:
1. Aaron Baker is no idiot. The Nazi movement certainly had anti-cristian features. Any history of the 3rd Riech shows it clearly. It was a movement which used what it could - so they used many Christian motiffs, and they borrowed traditional Christian anti-sematism, and turned them into something completely different. But they also had distinct religious charachteristics.
2. At the end, I think that the most concise explanation of the Nazi movement was given by Friedrich Nietzsche half a century prior to Hitler. "God is dead, beware of his shadows" - religion is almost dead, but it will have dangerous substitutes.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
|
September 18, 2010 11:54 PM
re #257;
The actual number of real definitions for the English-language word "athiest" is somewhere between zero and the square root of negative one.
Posted by: Pyre
|
September 19, 2010 12:16 AM
mousomer @260: ... religion is almost dead...
Nietzsche's vision seems still not to have come true.
Unless what we have now is just not the TRUE Scotsm-, uh, religion.
Posted by: Leah Jaclyn
|
September 19, 2010 3:18 AM
I think the problem that lies within saying Hitler was an EVIL ATHEIST or that Hitler was TRUE BELIEVER GUYS, is that hitler was demonstrably neither of these things, and so any discussion of this argument becomes an incredibly simplistic he said this, he said that quote off. What Hitler professed to believe or not as far as a higher power goes is largely irrelevant, as Hitlers main belief was in himself as the saviour of Germany and of Germany as the Best and Fairest nation.
On another note, to say that Hitlers hate of the Jews was based in the church is again simplistic, the Jews as an ethno-religous grouping, are discriminated against throughout history, and while the Church certainly did nothing to stem the tide, and can be seen to actively aid the cause of antisemitism I would suggest that is because the Jews were and easy target. If you look back to early modern Europe and the Plague, you can find numerous accounts of suspicion of the Jews, not because they didn't believe in jesus but because they did things differently, such as not drinking from wells, and this caused the people of the time to believe that they were poisoning the water to give people the plague. Now this is before the Church became the behemoth of later years so the Mistrust of Jews was borne out more by the fact that they were visibly different and acted, by the standards of the people that they lived around, a little weird. So to say that people inherited antisemitism from the Church I think has it backwards, although the church definitely helped to legitimise antisemitism.
Basically what I'm saying here is that context matters.
Posted by: shonny
|
September 19, 2010 7:59 AM
You'd think that a not-so-young HitlerYouth
would have pulled his head in when it comes to the system he was a member of, and obviously never really left, just changed badges.
But no, Ratzi the Nazi seems to think that nobody was aware that the RCC and the Nazi party were two sides of the same coin.
What a pathetic leader of a pathetic organisation when it comes to morality and ethics, although not very pathetic when it comes to business. In the latter they compete very successfully with the Mafia, and even milk them.
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 19, 2010 12:00 PM
Aaron Baker (#245):
It doesn't surprise me, since I think it's the most plausible (if by necessity provisional) reading of Hitler's recorded words once one's done one's best to allow for biases and distortions in the sources available. The main complication that I can see is that the kind of teleological thinking that Hitler seems to indulge in also has echoes of the notion ofthe purposeful unfolding of history that one finds in the German Idealist tradition (add to that the German Idealist emphasis on the Will with a capital "W").
If one grants this, then the question then is whether one considers these elements of German Idealism to be essentially religious or secular, or as belonging to some third category that isn't really either. My own view (which I still insist was articulated better by Sastra) is that they fall into the same general category as religious thinking (mystical, teleological, transcendental etc), but that within that category one can still distinguish between mystical ways of thinking which are traditionally religious and those which are not (and which could even be described as "secular", in the technical sense noted in #237).
So even if we were to take the alternative position that the mystical or teleological elements within Hitler's thinking ultimately owe more to Hegel than to traditional theism, the case can still be made that such views are alien to the kind of naturalism typical of modern atheists and secularists, and hence even on this non-theistic reading of Hitler and his views, Ratzinger's comments about atheism and Nazism are still woefully ignorant and unhistorical.
Then again, there's no reason why Hitler's thinking can't have been influenced by both theism and the Idealist tradition. The intellectual genealogy of Nazism is something of a tangle.
I don't dispute this, but again I think there are additional complications which need to be spelt out in order to understand Hitler and the Nazis fully. The influence of the Volkisch movement (especially the idea of a mystical connection between blood and soil) and Pan-Germanism (a secular nationalistic motivator largely independent of pseudo-scientific rationales and pre-dating the concept of Lebensraum) are also relevant to understanding the form taken by Nazi imperialism.
Also, the scientific racism of the late 19th and early 20th century isn't exactly untainted by the Idealist tradition (especially via 19th century Naturphilosophie or transcendental biology) and by Volkish ideas.
One final point regarding the relationship between science and ideology, which is that it's often a two-way process. Ideology influences science (sometimes constructively, but often to science's detriment in terms of rigour and integrity), and science is used as a rationale or inspiration for ideological goals. So we have a chicken and egg situation - racial "science" was influenced by the ideological assumptions and requirements of racist imperialism, and the "science" in turn provided a justification for the assumptions which influence it. The relationship between racial "science" and 19th-20th century racist ideologies seems to me to be more symbiotic than one of unidirectional inspiration.
BTW, it's worth reading The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by Casper Erichsen & David Olusoga, about the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia in 1904-07. Erichsen and Olusoga make a good case for a link between colonial genocide in Wilhelmite Germany and the development of Nazi annihilationist policies. Thus, for example, a number of prominent early Nazis were veterans of the Namibian killing fields, and Eugen Fischer, later the doyen of Nazi race science, prefigured his student Josef Mengele by conducting experiments on Herero and Nama concentration camp inmates.
Posted by: John Roberts
|
September 19, 2010 7:23 PM
Were atheist not also responsible for the Spanish Inquisition?
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
|
September 19, 2010 8:05 PM
Iain Walker, thank you for recommending The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism, it sounds like a very interesting and informative book. The only problem I see is that it has not been published in the US. I tried looking online but I cannot find any information about it being released in the US.
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 20, 2010 1:26 PM
Janine:
You seem to be right - it's available in Canada, though (see amazon.ca). I imagine shipping rates from north of the Niagra Falls would be more affordable than those from across the Atlantic.
Posted by: God
|
September 21, 2010 10:16 AM
Hitler was doing My work.
Posted by: Organizing_Self
|
September 24, 2010 2:57 PM
I'm not sure if any of us here are Nazi historians or World War II historians who have studied the correlations between the Nazi regime and Darwinist thought. I'm not sure what Hitler precisely believed. If he truly believed in God and what attributes this particular God had in his mind or if it was used ultimately as propaganda. It's difficult to gage this but it seems as though he carried forth a view as though either no God(s) existed or as if they perhaps were of an evil nature. Let's try a little thought experiment. Just for the sake of argument, let's say atheism, a pure naturalism too, so no soul, no afterlife is true and evolution took place through the conjoint of both natural selection and random mutation (the neo-Darwinian model). What would be wrong in exerting force over weaker groups of people and individuals? What would be wrong with applying certain principles such as survival of the fittest into human society (becoming artificial selection – if we have pigeon and dog breeding, why not human breeding?)? If human society is an extension of what we see in the wild since we are all part of nature then why not apply artificial selection to aid the production of a stronger human race. In a sense wasn't this the point of eugenics which was originally practiced in the US and then later adopted in Germany? What is really wrong with eradicating the weak given this view, do they not create a burden on the rest of society? Of course, you can envision many reasons as to why you can sustain the weak and aid them. Darwin envisioned these scenarios in his Descent of Man. Given the aforementioned ontological reality of the thought experiment I'm describing, how can one condemn a ruthless regime such as the Nazis? On what basis would we do so? I just don't see what grounds our moral behaviour in the absence of a good God or an afterlife - if there isn't ultimate meaning or ultimate consequence how do we prevent these atrocities from occurring again? Those in history who have committed such atrocities may or may not have believed in a good God or an afterlife but it seems they carried out their ruthlessness as though none of those were true. It seems to me that once we give up the view of anything non-natural (after life, God(s), soul etc..) and see that all things evolved naturally via selection/mutation through antecedent more primitive organisms - what makes us think we are any more special than the 99.9% of other species that have gone extinct? Are we to become “speciests”?
This seems to lead us to some kind of relativism. Inevitably there seems to be connection between moral relativism and Darwinian Theory since Darwin in Descent of man discusses the implication that if human society were to mimic bee society you would have mothers killing fertile daughters all for the sake of increasing their chances of passing on their genes as much as possible. Would we interfere in such a process? Religious and moral conscience upon such realizations can start to give way because of the way evolution took shape that led to such and such behaviours that are condoned in order to pass on one’s genes without much consideration of whether something is ultimately good or bad (such questions have no place in such a world) but solely based on the good of society in order to proliferate it through individuals seeking to carry on their legacy. It’s hard to distinguish what is ultimately good or bad and it can only be decided by a set of criteria that benefits the society as a whole which that in itself seems to be a blurry muddled notion.
Like I said, this is just a thought experiment but we can see all the sorts of problems we run into given such a world view. This doesn't settle the issue of whether it is true or not, we must rely on other arguments to settle that issue. Do we want to accept the potential implications of our philosophical outlooks or do we want to delude us ourselves?
Posted by: Iain Walker
|
September 25, 2010 1:00 PM
Organizing_Self (#271):
Oh, for fuck's sake.
(a) If metaphysical naturalism and evolution as currently understood are true, then nothing moral follows from it, one way or another. You can't derive an "ought" (a prescriptive statement or value judgement) from an "is" (a descriptive statement). Facts of nature can tell us what kinds of creatures we are and how we got that way, but they can't tell us how we ought to behave. Trying to derive moral imperatives from the facts of nature - and in particular arguing that if something occurs in nature it must be the right thing to do - is a logical fallacy. See the Appeal to Nature Fallacy and the Naturalistic Fallacy.
(b) If we're going to commit said fallacies and derive moral imperatives from a Darwinian understanding of nature, then we can justify pretty much anything. Co-operation, altruism, racial interbreeding, environmentalism - all of these can be given a Darwinian moral imprimatur by exactly the same flawed reasoning as used by the Nazis.
On the basis that the policies you describe would constitute a systematic violation of human rights, of the Golden Rule, of the principles of reciprocation and mutual trust and respect that we need in order to co-exist. Period. No external or "higher" justification is necessary, and this is the case whether "the aforementioned ontological reality" is true or not.
And what makes you think that a God provides any kind of grounds for morality either? The same counter-arguments apply to a God-based morality as to the discredited nature-based claims of the so-called "Social Darwinists" or the Nazis. Just because some supernatural authority proclaims that something is good does not make it so. You can't derive moral values from facts about God any more than you can derive them from facts about nature.
And are you seriously saying that you only behave morally because of an expectation of post-mortem reward or punishment? Or are you saying that you're too good to need such blandishments but the rest of humanity do? Because either way, you come across as pretty contemptible - a sociopath on the one hand, or a cynical hypocrite on the other.
If we want the atrocities of Nazism not to happen again, then what we need to do is learn and remember. We need to study Nazism properly, to understand its real causes and motivations, to understand the historical and psychological conditions that allowed it to flourish, and how to prevent their recurrence. What we don't need is the kind of poisonous historical revisionism of Ratzinger and his ilk (and I include simplistic "let's blame Nazism entirely on Christianity" arguments in the same revisionist category). Nor do we need ignorant, fallacy-riddled burblings about the alleged moral "consequences" atheism and evolution from know-nothings like you, because the best way to ensure that we will fail to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of the past is to misunderstand and misrepresent them.
And what the hell does "ultimate meaning" mean, anyway? Meaning and purpose are things that are assigned by agents in their interactions with the rest of the world. They're irreducibly subjective (or inter-subjective, given that they can be, and frequently are, shared between individuals). Any meaning or purpose assigned by a supernatural authority is no more valid or "ultimate" than any we assign ourselves.
Bollocks. The concept of an afterlife can just as easily encourage atrocities. Think of Arnaud Amalric's advice at the siege of Béziers in 1209 - "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ("Kill them all. For the Lord knows them that are His"). If there's an afterlife, then it doesn't matter if you kill Catholics as well as Cathars, since the Catholics still get to go to Heaven (which is of course the important thing to this way of thinking ). And as long as you think you're going to be rewarded in the afterlife for persecuting or killing heretics, infidels, sinners etc, then that belief is a powerful inducement to murder and meyhem. Islamicist suicide bombers are only a modern manifestation of this.
And as has often been observed, it's funny how God's values almost always reflect the values of the believer. Belief in a "good" God is no defence against committing atrocities, if you can convince yourself that your own hatreds and bigotries reflect God's moral commandments.
Objectively speaking, we're not. As a species we're unique, but then so is every other species, as an inevitable consequence of our divergent histories. But in the only sense that really matters, we are special. We're a self-aware species, and that means that we tend to be special to us. We don't need to matter in any ultimate way, or to anyone or anything else. We matter to ourselves and to each other because that's the kind of creatures we are. Again, no external justification is necessary.
Except we're not bees. We're an entirely different kind of social animal. Our range of social behaviours is much more complex, many of those behaviours are learned from experience rather than being genetically hardwired, we're self-aware, and we relate to one another as individuals, whose thoughts and feelings we can understand and identify with (i.e., we have an evolved capacity for empathy). As Darwin himself points out: "... however great weight we may attribute to public opinion, our regard for the approbation and disapprobation of our fellows depends on sympathy, which, as we shall see, forms an essential part of the social instinct, and is indeed its foundation-stone." (The Descent of Man, Ch4)
Darwin's point is not that, given the kind of animals we are, that we would be no better or worse if we behaved like bees. His point is that while our social instincts lie on a continuum with those of other species, there will nevertheless be differences between species in those instincts and the specific behaviours they give rise to, differences appropriate to the different faculties, lifestyles and social organisation of each species. At most, what he is saying is that bee "morality" for bees is no better or worse in any "ultimate" sense, than human morality for humans.
So if this is moral relativism, then it is moral relativism between species. It says nothing about the possibility of accepting or justifying moral relativism within a particular species. Or are you so wedded to the idea of "ultimate" morality that you think we should judge bees by the same standards as humans? Because that's ... just insane.
And frankly, if you want true moral relativism taken to an Orwellian extreme, try looking at the Christian doctrine of Divine Command Theory.
The only problem with such a world view is that there are always going to be people like you and Ratzinger to misrepresent it, whether through ignorance or malice.
Since neither atheism and Darwinian evolution have any of the implications that you claim, we are under no obligation to accept them. The only self-delusion going on here is you deluding yourself that you have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Can I suggest that you do yourself a favour and acquire some familiarity with moral philosophy (particularly meta-ethics), plus basic logic? Some familiarity with the complexities of evolution beyond the simplistic "nature red in tooth and claw" stereotype would also probably help.
Posted by: b.v.lilly
|
February 16, 2011 1:12 AM
"I'm going to kill millions of Jews because I'm a Christian!"
"I'm going to kill millions of Jews because I'm an Atheist!"
"I'm going to kill millions of Jews because I'm a poached egg!"
When coming from someone as insane as this man-- all three quotes have equal validity in my book.
SEY
Posted by: jr73340
|
February 7, 2012 1:56 AM
Following the end of World War II, the World Jewish Congress donated a great deal of money to the Vatican in gratitude for saving so many Jews during the war. In 1945 prominent Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem thanked Pope Pius "for his life saving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy by Hitler." He continued, "The people of Israel will never forget what his Holiness and his delegates did ...for our brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history."
After hearing the Pope's Christmas address in 1941, the Times wrote, "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas...in calling for a "real new order" based on liberty and love, the Pope put himself squarely against Hitler."
Einstein said, "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught."
Pope Pius XI, in 1937, wrote an entire encyclical outlining the dangers and horrors of Nazi ideology. The accepted political view at the time was the the Church was to anti-Nazi.
In 1943 when Hitler entered Rome he ordered his general to kidnap the Pope, primarily because Hitler considered the Catholic Church one of his most dangerous ideological opponents.