Nice photo


i-90614e02cd1053a8f3ab97f69e415df4-hitlerloveschristians.jpg
“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” (‘My New Order’, Adolf Hitler, Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)

Funny…those words could be taken straight from just about any American religious right web site in 2008, and they’d fit right in.

Comments

  1. says

    Aahhh, history… doomed to repeat itself over and over as long as those who think they KNOW the truth keep themselves from learning from it, or just plain ignore the past as long as it fits their agenda and delusions. This is one pic I’m going to keep on my desktop, ready to employ when the old and stale arguments about Hitler and atheism show their ugly little heads.

  2. Tristan says

    Don’t forget to mention that pro-Darwinian books were BURNED by the Nazis.

  3. Gary says

    That’s not fair, P.Z. You’re fighting those ID’ers with the TRUTH. How dare you!

  4. says

    I assume those guys in the black coats are biologists.

    Yeah, the jewelry in the shape of laminin is a dead giveaway.

  5. Leigh Shryock says

    I don’t understand why the IDiots cannot see why the ToE had nothing to do with Hitler. You do not derive an ought from an is, and on top of that, Hitler was a creationist.

    The ideas of eliminating other races, because you feel they’re inferior, predate Darwin by a longshot.

  6. says

    a nice reminder. Theists are always holding up Bonhoeffer, the heroic priest who was executed after deciding (after a great moral struggle) to join a plot to assassinate Hitler, but those same theists like to ignore the hundreds or thousands of other priests and prelates who happily tolerated or colluded with the Nazis.

  7. Thomas S. Howard says

    Wow, that’s kind of a low blow. Full-on ad hominem, if you ask me.

    Posted by: John | May 5, 2008 9:44 AM

    If by “low-blow” you mean “truthful” and by “ad hominem” you mean “accurate historical depiction of Hitler”, then yes, I agree wholeheartedly. PZ, knock it off! By which I of course mean “keep doing that.”

  8. C.W. says

    Don’t forget to mention that pro-Darwinian books were BURNED by the Nazis.

    Link please.

  9. AllanW says

    John in #11

    An ad-hom against who? Hitler for associating him with the church? The church for showing their actual relationship with Hitler? Please be more clear.

  10. John says

    I’m not saying it’s not historically accurate (I’m assuming it’s an undoctored scan). But I was talking about this part:

    Funny…those words could be taken straight from just about any American religious right web site in 2008, and they’d fit right in.

    The clear implication is that the religious right is Hitleresque, without making any substantive claims to that effect. It’s no better than when IDers quote-mine Darwin or other scientists to make them appear evil.

    I’d rather appeal to people’s sense of reason, rather than making vindictive statements.

  11. AllanW says

    Ah! John at #16, I see now; you’re a concern troll. Thanks for clearing that up.

    Addressing the point; you cannot see the substantive claims? Read the words on the caption above then visit the sites to appreciate how substantive and clear that point is. PZ just assumes the people who read his site have already done that; come on back when you’re done. We’ll be waiting for ya!

  12. Schmeer says

    John,
    I’m sure if you listen to any of the “This is a Christian Nation” crowd, which includes wing-nuts as well as senators and representatives (see House Resolution 888), you could find some similarity to what Hitler is quoted as saying in that caption. So if Hitler said that, and we can find Christian Nationalists saying much of the same, you don’t have to call them Hitlerian. It’s obvious to anyone who is not an idiot. Ad Hominem is not the issue here. You just don’t like this true statement.

  13. says

    John – I don’t agree. I read that statement as mostly an afterthought on PZ’s part. If you ignore the picture and the slightly antiquated phrasing, the identical ideas are expressed in today’s politics.

  14. AllanW says

    BTW PZ, I love that you use the ‘argumentum ad Hitlerum’ as the start of a thread. Bravo!

  15. Matt Penfold says

    “The clear implication is that the religious right is Hitleresque, without making any substantive claims to that effect. It’s no better than when IDers quote-mine Darwin or other scientists to make them appear evil.”

    The clear implication is that the words used by Hitler in that quote are also used by right-wing Christians in the US (and elsewhere) today. Unless you can offer evidence that either that quote is wrong, or that there are no right-wing Christians who have the same sentiment then I fail to see what your point is.

  16. raven says

    Wow, that’s kind of a low blow. Full-on ad hominem, if you ask me.

    Yes, of course. It is rather insulting to call Hitler a Nazi.

  17. says

    Are you suggesting that the American religious right does not make family and religion central icons of their ideology? Of course they do. Kinder, Küche, Kirche would make a perfectly appropriate motto for organizations like Dobson’s Focus on the Family (note that it’s right there in the name: family. And Dobson also likes to claim that we are a Christian nation.)

    And no, I’m not claiming that Dobson is Hitler. Family and religion are strong motivators, so both good and wicked people will latch on to them as ways to manipulate the masses. Darwin, science, biology, physics, chemistry…mmmm, not so much.

  18. clinteas says

    Welcome to reality,John…Ad Hominem and all
    No quote-mining here,just a look at what was and what will be….
    I reckon thats a great picture,and a great analogy…

  19. Mike Visser says

    Did some quick checking. From all appearance from several sources the text is accurate for that speech.

    In the process I also stumbled upon this bit as well:

    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), pp. 871-872.

    I think PZ’s “Funny…those words could be taken straight from just about any American religious right web site in 2008, and they’d fit right in.” is scarily accurate.

  20. John says

    Raven – That’s not at all what I was claiming. I’m sure that sounded very funny in your head, though.

    PZ – Fair enough. I probably just read into it too much.

  21. raven says

    John the Hitleresque moron:

    The clear implication is that the religious right is Hitleresque, without making any substantive claims to that effect.

    Actually, the Death Cultist fundies make Hitler look like an unimaginative amateur.

    1. The rapture monkey losers fondest dream is for god to show up, kill 6.7 billion people and destroy the earth. Even Hitler only wanted to kill nonAryans and rule the world.

    2. The Xian Dominionists say often they want to destroy the USA, set up a theocracy, and head on back to the Dark Ages.

    In the meantime they while away their time publishing To Kill lists. So John who is on your To Kill list? In the likely event you are too stupid to make one, just take Rushdooneys. He was an equal opportunity mass murder wannabe who had 297 million US citizens on his list. He was also the founder of Xian Dominionism and Pat Robertson’s mentor.

    And, oh, the evidence is below in their own words. They not only list who is to be killed, they occasionally kill them.

    While the ignorance, lie, violence, and murder cultists are waiting for their theocratic hell on earth, they have a few hobbies. One is publishing lists of people they would like to kill. Another is killing them. The record is Rushdooney. By one reckoning, he would end up killing 99% of the US population. And this was one of their main theologians and leaders.

    How to identify fundie xian cultists. It is easy. They lie constantly. They are very, very good at hating. Dumb. They and their leaders frequently publish lists of groups they want to kill. They occasionally kill them.

    Pat Robertson: wikipedia
    Hugo Chávez” I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.

    We will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it.
    [Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, at the Aug 8, 1995 U.S. Taxpayers Alliance Banquet in Washington DC, talking about doctors who perform abortions and volunteer escorts My note. Terry’s sympathizers have, in fact, murdered more than a few health care workers.

    “Pastor Jerry Gibson spoke at Doug Whites New Day Covenant Church in Boulder.

    He said that every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.

    bcseweb.org Rushdooney:
    Our list may not be perfect but it seems to cover those “crimes” against the family that are inferred by Rushdoony’s statement to Moyers. The real frightening side of it is the interpretation of heresy, apostasy and idolatry. Rushdoony’s position seems to suggest that he would have anyone killed who disagreed with his religious opinions. That represents all but a tiny minority of people. Add to that death penalties for what is quite legal, blasphemy, not getting on with parents and working on a Sunday means that it the fantasy ideal world of Rushdoony and his pals, there will be an awful lot of mass murderers and amongst a tiny population.

    We have done figures for the UK which suggest that around 99% of the population would end up dead and the remainder would have each, on average, killed 500 fellow citizens.

    Chalcedon foundation bsceweb.org. Stoning disobedient children to death.Contempt for Parental Authority: Those who consider death as a horrible punishment here must realise that in such a case as
    ….cut for length
    Rev. William Einwechter, “Modern Issues in Biblical Perspective: Stoning Disobedient Children”, The Chalcedon Report, January 1999

    When The Hate Comes From ‘Churches’
    ASHLAND, Ore. – A recent spate of crimes points up a growing connection between hateful actions and organizations calling themselves churches.
    Two brothers from northern California reportedly linked to such a group were charged this week with the killing of two gay men near Redding. Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams also are suspects in the firebombing of three synagogues in the Sacramento area last month.

    According to personal acquaintances as well as law enforcement officials, the Williams brothers were involved in Christian Identity, a religion that holds Jews and nonwhites to be subhuman and is closely tied to the Aryan Nations white-supremacist group based in northern Idaho.

    Meanwhile, officials are investigating the links between Benjamin Smith and the World Church of the Creator. Over Independence Day weekend in Illinois and Indiana, Smith shot Asians, Jews, and an African-American (killing two and injuring nine) before killing himself.

    Fundie cultists frequently publish lists of groups they plan to or would like to kill. From above quotes, we have MDs, “enemies of christian society” (whoever they are), heresy etc., disobedient children but only by stoning, gays, Jews, nonwhites, the topic of this thread-scientists and others.

    If the truth is ugly, way it goes. By their words, ye shall know them, The Book.

    To make things worse, they occasionally do murder people.

    This doesn’t happen with mainstream christian denominations that I know of. Our church always talked about world peace and eliminating poverty. If you would have suggested drawing up a list of groups to hate and kill and arms and ammmunition to buy, well, it would be inconceivable.

  22. SteveN says

    A little digging around found this article at panda’s thumb which contains extracts of the list linked to by Tristan. Of particular interest of books banned by the Nazis are:

    “Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).”

    and

    “All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk.”

    Strange that Ben Stein neglected to mention this, eh?

  23. cptchaos says

    “Yes, of course. It is rather insulting to call Hitler a Nazi.”

    Indeed, he made Germany lose the war! How could he have been a Nazi? …

    /sarcasm

    History makes me sick sometimes.

    best regards
    cptchaos

  24. David Marjanović, OM says

    John, you don’t seem to know what “ad hominem” means. “X is such a great scientist, therefore what he says must be true” is an ad hominem argument. Any attempt to evaluate an idea by evaluating who came up with it is an ad hominem argument. This is completely orthogonal to concepts like “insult”.

  25. says

    Hitler believed in the creationist theory of “kinds”:

    From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today. (Hitler’s Table Talk)

    Common descent and evolution leads you to a glorious place. Kinds leads to killing people. /sarcasm

  26. says

    The Catholic church has a sordid history of sharing beds with fascist regimes: Spain, Italy, Germany, and all over Latin America. However, the willingness of the Catholic Church hierarchy to support right wing regimes probably has more to do with the ‘conservative’ values of the hierarchy than it does with theology. To be sure, the state-church relationship has always been symbiotic and corrosive in totalitarian regimes. (And it was for this reason that Thomas Jefferson and like-minded thinkers pushed for religious freedom in the United States.)

  27. says

    It was Sinclair Lewis in the 1930s who said:

    “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

    People have been able to connect these dots for a long time. This is not to say that all Christians are fascists, only that dictatorial, totalitarian personalities will happily take advantage of existing modes of groupthink to accomplish their aims. The best way to defend against a wolf in sheep’s clothing is don’t be a sheep.

  28. Pierce R. Butler says

    … how much worse things were under ‘Bolshevism.’ And this was the theme of a three-hour private conversation between Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich and Adolf Hitler at the Führer’s mountain retreat at Obersalzburg in November [1936]. Hitler harped continually on the dangers of communism, imploring the cardinal to persevere with efforts toward conciliation with the Reich. In a memorandum of the meeting, Faulhaber observed:

    The Führer commands the diplomatic and social forms better than a born sovereign…. Without doubt the chancellor lives in faith in God. He recognizes Christianity as the foundation of Western culture…

    — John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, pp 180-181

  29. says

    More of Hitler on the theory of “kinds” and macro vs micro evolution:

    The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. (Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi)

  30. Richard Harris says

    leigh @ # 10, The ideas of eliminating other races, because you feel they’re inferior, predate Darwin by a longshot.

    It sure does. Genocide. There’s plenty of instances of that in the feckin’ bible book. It even advocated killing all the animals too.

    Non biblical sources of the history of Mesopotamia & surrounding regions also demonstrate that the rulers were sadistic, ruthless, jealous, & thoroughly nasty. Their gods, (Ea, Enlil, Marduk, etc), were just like themselves, but even more so. And the god of Abraham, (& of the bible), evolved out of these gods, influenced by the Hebrews’ often unpleasant experiences roaming around that region & also Egypt.

    Ohhhhh, how can anyone nowadays be so stupid as to believe in all that Jewish, Christian, Moslem crap?

  31. Kermit says

    David @30: A nitpick. Ad hominem is a fallacy (a persuasive but invalid argument) based on *irrelevant* characteristics of the person making the argument. We all necessarily are ignorant in most areas, and it is appropriate to accept (at least provisionally) authorities in the field under discussion.

    PZ is qualified to make statements about biology, altho he should not be considered the last word. He is not more qualified to discuss, say, the history of Gaelic than most of us are. Science ultimately depends on facts, after all, and while facts are verifiable, most of us will not reproduce 150 years of biology – or even a few weeks – just to confirm a claim.

    It can be argued that even philosophers are only more qualified to explain technical arguments and the history of various opinions of ethics. Perhaps some day soon evolutionary biologist *will be more qualified to explain the origins of human ethics; I suspect so. We’ll see if that leads to insights about proper behavior for humans.

    “Ad hominem abusive” uses an irrelevant and insulting argument to attempt to refute an argument. E.g. “Einstein is Jewish, therefore his theory of relativity is wrong”. (“Jewish” is of course an insult only for anti-Semites.) For John I would suggest that pointing out that the Hitler rejected evolutionary science and the Nazis had strong ties to Christianity is an appropriate response to Stein’s charges that “Darwinism” was a necessary precursor to Nazism.

    Besides, it’s amusing to point this out. But I doubt if anyone here suggests that genocide couldn’t occur without Christianity, or that the latter inevitably leads to the former :

  32. Pablo says

    And remember anti-semitism in Germany goes back a long way…

    What did Luther ever propose as a solution to the “Jews and Their Lies”?

  33. says

    Just curious…
    Are there any good links on the Vatican and Hitler?…
    As far as I knew, they never excommunicated him…

  34. Xuul says

    Hitler had a dog, therefore all dog owners are Hitleresque.

    But seriously, the evangelical Christian community appears to be great friends with Jews and Israel. I have not heard evangelicals calling for ovens to be built. Lots of Blacks and other minorities singing the gospel. In fact, it seems a lot more diverse than many segments of society.

    Stop being disingenuous, folks. Why even mention right wing Christians in the article unless it was intended to take the analogy all the way to Godwinland? It’s meaningless otherwise.

    And this is from a hard core atheist. You’re stooping to the Ben Stein level, and looking like utter hypocritical tools. Stop embarassing yourselves.

  35. Richard Harris says

    Ha, I just saw this on another thread:

    Random Quote(Complete listing)

    Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man … , keep alive for yourselves.

    [Moses, relaying God’s orders to his people, Numbers 31:17-18

    That kind of shit should majke anyone with a properly functioning brain abandon crap like Judaism, Christianity, & Islam. Feckin’ edjits!

  36. Quiet_Desperation says

    Oh, good! Use the Ben Stein approach we just spent weeks criticizing!

    Yeah, that’ll work!

    (rolls eyes and clicks out to cuteoverload.com)

  37. Colugo says

    These human practices predate Darwin by centuries:

    Genocide, comparing other groups to apes and other nonhuman animals, social body metaphors that label certain groups as disease, scapegoating minority groups and outsiders for misfortune, forced sterilization of men belonging to stigmatized groups, infanticide of handicapped newborns.

    They also predate Christianity by centuries.

    Of course, none of this means that there were not more specific and proximate ideological currents leading up to the Holocaust. In addition, Nazi beliefs regarding Christianity and biology were complex (and multiple), and do not easily fit into America’s current culture wars. While the Nazis were certainly not “liberal fascist” atheists, nor were they fundies on steroids.

    It is true that appeals to family, faith, and culture are important tools for all kinds of elites. But appeals to science, while rarer, are not unknown. Marxist-Leninism constantly insisted that it was a science. (As it turned out, it was more a form of Gnostic millenarianism than a science.) Objectivists claim to be all about reason and science rather than Rush albums. (Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter – ‘Priests of Syrinx’ kicks ass.)

  38. says

    John, you don’t seem to know what “ad hominem” means. “X is such a great scientist, therefore what he says must be true” is an ad hominem argument. Any attempt to evaluate an idea by evaluating who came up with it is an ad hominem argument. This is completely orthogonal to concepts like “insult”.

    Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 5, 2008 10:38 AM

    I believe that’s an appeal to authority. An ad hominum is when you attack the person, not the argument, to make the argument false. For example: PZ Myers has a beard, men with beards are hiding something, therefore his arguments about evolution are false.

    By the way, an “appeal to authority” is not, per se, a logical fallacy. The fallacy should be best expressed as “Appeal to an Inappropriate Authority.” For example: Dr. Dembski has a PhD in math. Therefore, what he says about evolution (something pretty much unrelated to his alleged expertise) is true.

    In real life Dembski may know something about math (though seeing his fallacies illustrated, I have my doubts to the quality of his knowledge) but he is a layman when it comes to an expert opinion evolution. And, considering what he’s said, he’s not even demonstrated a reasonable understanding I would expect a layman to have.

  39. allkom says

    Ah, a picture tells a thousand words. How would B.S. explain this?
    Then again, facts are not a determinative part of their agenda.

  40. Colugo says

    Moses: “PZ Myers has a beard, men with beards are hiding something”

    He’s hiding another fist! No, wait, that’s Chuck Norris.

  41. says

    @#42 Xuul —

    But seriously, the evangelical Christian community appears to be great friends with Jews and Israel. I have not heard evangelicals calling for ovens to be built

    A lot of the pro-Israel sentiment is coming from dispensational premillenialists (2nd coming/rapture obsessed Xians). See this video about our favorite pastor John Hagee’s Washington-Israel Summit and the rapture-obsessed beliefs of many of the Xians there…the weirdest part is how willing the Jewish people are willing to accept this false support — Joseph Lieberman calls Hagee a “man of God.”

  42. raven says

    But seriously, the evangelical Christian community appears to be great friends with Jews and Israel. I have not heard evangelicals calling for ovens to be built.

    You are missing the point. Most of the Death Cultists don’t trouble themselves a lot about the Jews. They have much, much bigger plans. See those plans in #26.

    They all want to destroy the USA, set up a theocracy, and head on back to the Dark Ages. They say so often.

    The numbers they want to kill or hope die vary with cult.

    1. The Rapture Monkeys want everyone to die. When that happy day comes when god shows up, kills 6.7 billion people and destroys the earth. This is why they are nice to the Jews these days. According to various interpretations of Revelations, the Jews and Israel are involved in the last days. Some of them even try to assist the coming of the Rapture in various ways that make sense to them.

    2. The rest of the cults vary in their To Kill lists. Many of them look at the Catholic church, for example, as the church of satan. That is a billion Fake Xians right there. Toss in the Moslems and Hindus, all the violators of the 400 different commandments of the OT and you end up with a Rushdooney class list of 99% of the population or so.

    If the Xian Doms ever took power, the least would be the USA becoming a banana republic theocratic hellhole. At worst, the bodies would be piled into mountains. These are evil people of the sort we’ve seen throughout history.

  43. Steve_C says

    Hey xuul,

    His point is SPOT ON. The christian right sounds exactly like fascists.

    It also lays to rest the “Hitler was an atheist” claims that Stein makes.

  44. Aquaria says

    The Religious Right isn’t trying the argument of a Christian nation? Really?

    Well, here’s some more of what Randall Terry (operation rescue) had to say about that at an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, IN:

    “Our goal is a Christian nation. … We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism. … Theocracy means God rules.”

    –Fort Wayne News Sentinel August 16, 1993

    And here’s what Focus on the Family has to say:

    Since Focus on the Family’s primary reason for existence is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a practical outreach to homes, we have firm beliefs about both the Christian faith and the importance of the family.

    We believe that God has ordained the social institutions of family, church, and government for the benefit of mankind and as a reflection of His divine nature. Therefore, Christians are called to support these institutions, according to God’s design and purpose, and to protect them against destructive social influences. Such involvement is in obedience to Christ’s lordship over all creation and is required by His command to care for the well-being of all people.

    Kennedy over at Coral Ridge Ministries goes into exhaustive detail about the matter(if you can stomach it).

    Those things are nothing like the picture’s caption. Nope. Nosirreebob! /sarcasm

    And it didn’t take but a few minutes to find just those examples. There are more. Many, many more.

  45. Dianne says

    Kinder, Küche, Kirche

    They were going to make the slogan Kinder, Kueche, Naturwissenshaftslabor to show their dedication to “darwinism”, but it didn’t alliterate, so the church got stuck in instead.

    One could argue that by putting Kirche in with the the “womanly pursuits” of Kinder and Kueche, the Nazis were demoting it from an important masculine thing to a less important feminine thing, but that’s about as far as one can reasonably go toward claiming that the Nazis were anti-Christian.

  46. Quiet Desperation says

    @raven: I think your nightmare scenario is self defeating. How does a group which, by your own definition of the Death Lists, is 1% of the population (probably less), take over power and maintain a hold on it? Also, I’m not going to lie awake worrying about the Rapture.

    You might as well present a “What if Scientologists take over” scenario. :-)

    Or “What if the Santeria Cult takes over”. Keep your chickens in at night, I guess.

    On the other hand, threats like the one you detail are why I’m a gun owner and strong supporter of gun owning rights. :-)

  47. says

    Maybe someone else can provide an English source, but here’s one of Luther’s most condensed and relentless takes on Jews in facsimile:
    http://www.sgipt.org/sonstig/metaph/luther/lvdjuil.htm

    Burning their synagogues, taking away their belongings, destroying their houses, burning their holy scripts, barring them from teaching, withdrawing protection from Jewish travelers, putting “arbeitsscheue” Jewish boys and girls in concentration camps, it’s all in there. Hitler, or anyone else, didn’t exactly have to make that stuff up.

    And here’s some topping:

    Darum kann man hie keine Barmherzigkeit üben, sie in ihrem Wesen zu stärken. Will das nicht helfen, so müssen wir sie wie die tollen Hunde ausjagen, damit wir nicht, ihrer greulichen Lästerung und aller Laster theilhaftig, mit ihnen Gottes Zorn verdienen und verdammt werden. Ich habe das Meine gethan; ein jeglicher sehe, wie er das Seine tue. Ich bin entschuldigt.”

    Which, roughly, translates to: “Therefore one should show no mercy, to not encourage them in their nature. And if that does not help, we have to drive them away like mad dogs, lest we take part in their horrid sacrilege and their vice and earn, like them, God’s wrath and be damned. I did what I could; and everyone should strive to do his share. I am excused [meaning, no one can accuse him of having not done his share].

    Nice guy, huh. Fits right in in the long line from the “hysterical salesman from Tarsus” (as Onfray puts it) to our contemporary salespeople of doom.

    ^_^J.

  48. Tulse says

    the evangelical Christian community appears to be great friends with Jews and Israel. […] Why even mention right wing Christians in the article unless it was intended to take the analogy all the way to Godwinland?

    The Hitler quote refers to the state imposing Christian values — I don’t see anything there about Jews. The similarity drawn is between the religious right and fascism, not anti-Semitism. Would you argue that evangelicals have not expressed a similar desire for the government to establish Christianity as the basis of governance and social values?

    In any case, like Etha points out, most fundamentalist Christians are only “friends” with Israel because they see it as ground zero for the Apocalypse. These are not ecumenical friends of Judaism, or of the Jewish people — they are instead enamored of the notion of hastening the Second Coming by realizing prophecies centred in Israel. The sentiment is rather repulsive, but Israel and the fundies seem to both get something out of the relationship, even if both thinks the other is insane and/or going to hell.

  49. Tom Marking says

    I find it interesting that the photo was taken on February 1, 1933 just two days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. So what happened in the next 12 years? Did the Nazi government maintain Christianity as the foundation of its national morality? Well, actually, No.

    Here is what the United States OSS (Office of Strategic Services) had to say about the matter. They produced this document in preparation for the Nuremburg Trials of 1946:

    http://www.lawandreligion.com/nurinst1.shtml

    http://www.lawandreligion.com/publications/nazimasterplan01.pdf

    “THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

    1. THE NATURE OF THE PERSECUTION

    Throughout the period of National Socialist rule, religious liberties in Germany and in the occupied areas were seriously impaired. The various Christian Churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people. …

    III. THE BASIC NATIONAL SOCIALIST ATTITUDE TOWARD CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

    National Socialism by its very nature was hostile to Christianity and the Christian churches. The purpose of the National Socialist movement was to convert the German people into a homogeneous racial group united in all its energies for prosecution of aggressive warfare…

    Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked to meet this situation by a complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion tailored to fit the needs of National Socialist policy…

    So far as this sector of the National Socialist party is concerned, the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement…”

    So, nice try P.Z. in linking Nazism and Christianity using one photograph. I suggest you do more historical research on the subject before you make more comments which make you look foolish.

  50. says

    @#54 Quiet Desperation —

    @raven: I think your nightmare scenario is self defeating. How does a group which, by your own definition of the Death Lists, is 1% of the population (probably less), take over power and maintain a hold on it? Also, I’m not going to lie awake worrying about the Rapture.

    You might as well present a “What if Scientologists take over” scenario. :-)

    Or “What if the Santeria Cult takes over”. Keep your chickens in at night, I guess.

    Though I wouldn’t say it’s extremely likely, the takeover of Rapture-obsessed Xians is actually somewhat more dangerous because these are people in very high positions of power. If you check out the Washington-Israel summit video (which I highly recommend, btw…it’s rather revealing of this whole movement), you will see that a lot of very powerful people are involved in the movement — Tom DeLay, Tom Hagee, and even Joe Lieberman and various jewish leaders (who believe “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). They’re talking about being very pro-Israel and attacking Iran — sound like anything that’s being talked about in government? I think the influence of these wackos is not being over-exaggerated by any means.

  51. says

    One of the ironies of history, largely forgotten in the West as far as I can tell, is that Hitler was elected in an anti-feminist backlash and his motto was “Church, Children, Kitchen*”–a woman’s proper concerns.

    * I forget in what order.

  52. Pierce R. Butler says

    Tom Marking: Here is what the United States OSS (Office of Strategic Services) had to say … in preparation for the Nuremburg Trials …

    No bias or political agenda to be found there, no way!

  53. raven says

    raven: I think your nightmare scenario is self defeating. How does a group which, by your own definition of the Death Lists, is 1% of the population (probably less), take over power and maintain a hold on it? Also, I’m not going to lie awake worrying about the Rapture.

    You need to read the newspaper more. The xian Doms own president moron Bush, controlled the US congress from 2000 to 2006 and have taken over the republican party and Texas. Huckabee who could be our next president in a plausible scenario, is one. He only got about 10% of the total vote, but really, 10% of the electorate wants to destroy the US by electing another xian extremist.

    It won’t happen in one day. Hitler took power in the early 30’s. Then things just went downhill gradually until in 1945, Europe was in ruins and most European Jews were dead.

    Same thing happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. Things built up, events happened, a tipping point was reached, and…a sudden collapse.

    It could take the Xian doms a few decades to destroy the USA. So far, they’ve made a good start.

  54. raven says

    Did the Nazi government maintain Christianity as the foundation of its national morality? Well, actually, No.

    Actually yes. German variant Xianity was always incredibly antisemitic. Martin Luther, a vicious antisemite, devised the Final Solution 400 years ago in his tract, On the Jews and their lies. At Nuremberg, many Nazis said they were just carrying out Luther’s plan.

    Hitler had millions of Xian followers, admirers, and helpers. Without them, he would have just been another loon, sitting in a bar, ranting and raving, and waiting for the internet to be invented so he could reach an audience of dozens.

  55. aiabx says

    I think it’s hilarious when Evolutionist Professsors dress up like bishops for laughs. Clearly, Hitler is enjoying the joke too.
    PZ, do you have a mitre and cope for when parties just get too crazy?

  56. Schmeer says

    Tom Marking,
    I read through much of the report at your link. I have several observations.
    1. No where in the article is any evidence of “complete extirpation” of Christianity given. It is alleged several times, but never supported. The closest that the author comes to supporting that claim is to say that the larger churches receive state support that smaller ones do not. I believe this is actually evidence of state support of Christianity.
    2. The author begins with his definition of what Christianity must be, continuing on to say National Socialism does not fit this definition. Therefore, “that’s not my religion”.
    3. The link is to Rutgers’ Law and Religion student organization whose mission statement begins:
    “The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, founded in 1999, is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship with a focus on religion.”
    I wonder what possible bias could that group have?

  57. raven says

    No where in the article is any evidence of “complete extirpation” of Christianity given. It is alleged several times, but never supported. The closest that the author comes to supporting that claim is to say that the larger churches receive state support that smaller ones do not. I believe this is actually evidence of state support of Christianity.
    2. The author begins with his definition of what Christianity must be, continuing on to say National Socialism does not fit this definition. Therefore, “that’s not my religion”.

    Part of the xian coverup after the war. The fact is, the German Xian churches were in up to their neck with the Nazis. After the war, other xians, who were understandably appalled, tried to rewrite history. They even went so far as to forge Hitler documents implying he was an atheist.

    To be fair, not all xians get to be Nazi supporters. The Xians of the west and the atheistic commies of the east defeated the Nazis and rescued what remained of the Jews.

  58. RAM says

    “They even went so far as to forge Hitler documents implying he was an atheist.”
    Raven, I’d love to read about that if you knew where it was cited………..

  59. jeff says

    I’m currently reading Evans’ “The Coming of the Third Reich”. The Catholic church had a policy of establishing alliances with right-wing regimes as a strategic means of self-preservation. Even so, they were reluctant to back Hitler, due to the extremism of his speeches. It wasn’t until 1933, when they saw how effortlessly he destroyed the three majority parties (Communist, Social Democrat, Nationalist) that they decided it would be best to ally with Hitler.

    But before 1933, where did the support for Nazis come from ? Given that Hitler was a Catholic, and many/most of his key people were Catholic/southern, it was suprising even to them when floods of support came from northern Protestant regions. They even adapted their campaign/propaganda efforts to further bolster this un-sought-after Protestant support.

    Another thing that suprised me was that the early growth of the Nazi party was not due entirely, or even primarily, to its policy of anti-semitism. (All the other parties and the public at large were already anti-semitic.) Where they really churned up the support was in their opposition to “Godless” Communism, Modernism, and secularism of all kinds (due, of course to the pernicious influence of Jews…).

    As soon as they snuffed out their chief political rivals, the Nazis set about ridding Germany of anyone behind the Modernist movement or any sort of innovative or permissive trends in art, music, cinema, theater, etc., whether they were Jewish or not. The idea was to get “back to” a pure German culture, which like the “Christian America” fantasy we hear about today, never really existed in reality.

  60. jeff says

    Tom @ 60 :

    Your point is well taken.

    The overall history of Hitler and the Nazi party is not one which reflects the desires of Christians, by and large. But OTOH, that’s not really the point.

    The point, IMO, is the way he came to power. How does a democracy crumble and become taken over by a strongman ? For that, it’s best to look at the 1920’s and early 30’s. Who helped this guy on his quest for power ? Hint : it was NOT biologists.

    I think that the concerns that any educated, thoughtful person in America should have about the religious right and their activities do merit comparison with early Naziism. Lots of people with “good” intentions are following and enabling people whose stated goals are to undermine and replace our secular Constitution and government. Just because the the masses don’t intend for it to have negative consequences doesn’t mean it isn’t a cause for alarm.

  61. says

    There was an old saying…The Pope and the clergy are hand in hand with the regime. Moreover, there is never an important Fascist ceremony at which the clergy are not in the place of honour.”

    Hitler had a connection with Catholicism, but it’s influence wasn’t believing in the elimination of a “weaker race”. Rather, it’s influence spread across other areas including conquering various countries. Catholicism always wanted to regain that power it had during the middle ages before the Reformation…

    One thing to note, Hitler wasn’t a Christian, nor was he following Christianity, the slaughtering of many Jews was one of many indications that He wasn’t following the Bible. The Bible clearly states not to murder anyone, and an unrepented murder doesn’t go to Heaven.

  62. jeff says

    The Bible clearly states not to murder anyone, and an unrepented murder doesn’t go to Heaven.

    Oh, so that’s why the past twenty centuries of Christian history are so “blood-free” ? (ROTFL)

  63. Colugo says

    It wasn’t just Christians…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Handschar_(1st_Croatian)

    “The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was one of the thirty-eight divisions fielded as part of the Waffen-SS during World War II. It was the largest of the SS divisions … composed almost entirely of non-German Muslim and Catholic recruits drawn from Bosnia. Handschar (Bosnian/Croatian: Handžar) was the local word for the Turkish scimitar … a historical symbol of Bosnia and Islam. An image of the Handschar adorned the division’s flag and coat of arms. …

    In Spring of 1943, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, (aka Amin al-Husseini), was recruited by the Nazis to assist in the organization and recruitment of Bosniaks into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units in Yugoslavia.”

  64. Donnie B. says

    Those who protest that Hitler’s regime wasn’t really Christian are missing the point.

    Yes, that’s a “No True Scotsman” fallacy, and no one can know whether old Adolph was a believer in his heart of hearts. But whether he was or not, he came to power and instituted the policies of his government in the name of Christ.

    If Hitler wasn’t a Christian, he managed to make the “true” Christians think he was, at least long enough to achieve his aims. And if he was, well, so much for the idea that a just and compassionate government will result from Christian leadership.

    If Hitler wasn’t a real Christian (even though he publicly claimed to be), who’s to say whether those on the religious right today are or are not? And who’s to say what their true aims will be, once they achieve power?

  65. Tom Marking says

    “The link is to Rutgers’ Law and Religion student organization whose mission statement begins:
    “The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, founded in 1999, is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship with a focus on religion.”
    I wonder what possible bias could that group have?”

    The URL contains several PDF files which contain Xeroxes of paper documents prepared by the OSS in 1945. Unless you are suggesting that people at Rutgers produced a forgery the association of Rutgers with anything is completely irrelevant.

  66. Helio says

    Well just to add a little more confusion to the thread….Hitler was neither Christian nor Atheist. I need to search again for the relevant reference links but will post them later. He could probably best be described as a pagan. Hitler did not trust the power of the Church and there was no way in Hell he would truly respect a religion which says the son of God walked the earth as a Jew……please!

  67. Helio says

    In Spring of 1943, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, (aka Amin al-Husseini), was recruited by the Nazis to assist in the organization and recruitment of Bosniaks into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units in Yugoslavia. From #78

    That’s true, but as perhaps an interesting side-note, the reason they had to appeal to the Mufti was because the Croat Muslim leaders had issued fatwas forbidding Muslims to cooperate with the Nazis.

  68. Schmeer says

    Tom Marking,
    It is not irrelevant. I think you can agree that it is entirely possible to have bias in selecting evidence to make a case for your argument. In most trials, both the prosecution and the defense present evidence. Yet, in the end both sides cannot be right.

    Regardless of the bias that Rutgers’ student religious organizations have, the paper does not support it’s own claims. That is a much bigger problem. The author must have been thinking something to the effect of “Ah well, no one’s going to read this anyway, they’ll just read the title and outline.”

  69. raven says

    They even went so far as to forge Hitler documents implying he was an atheist.”
    Raven, I’d love to read about that if you knew where it was cited………..

    There are many sources. Wikipedia will work.

    http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

    Stevens and Cameron are certainly guilty of some shameful incompetence, if not outright dishonesty. Nor does Trevor-Roper have much of an excuse. But the real culprit is François Genoud. David Irving tells how Genoud attempted to hoax him in the 1970s with a forgery of “Hitler’s Last Testament.”7 Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, “But it’s just what Hitler would have said, isn’t it?” He was evidently willing to perpetrate a hoax, thinking it permissible to fabricate the words of Hitler if it was what he believed Hitler “would have said.” His motives for doctoring the Table Talk may be unfathomable. Genoud was a very strange man with a colorful history: a Swiss banker and Nazi spy who laundered money for the Third Reich, a self-professed neo-Nazi even up to his suicide in 1996 (though, stranger still, he never supported the holocaust), a voracious purchaser and profiteer of Nazi archives, and an admitted financer of terrorists.8

  70. Pablo says

    Helio

    Aside from the fact that what you say is pretty much BS (just talk to Christians and you see a whole range of nonsensical opinions, but still Christian), it doesn’t matter. Read what Donnie wrote right above your post:

    Yes, that’s a “No True Scotsman” fallacy, and no one can know whether old Adolph was a believer in his heart of hearts. But whether he was or not, he came to power and instituted the policies of his government in the name of Christ.

    If Hitler wasn’t a Christian, he managed to make the “true” Christians think he was, at least long enough to achieve his aims.

    You can play all the games you want, but it was still Christianity behind the whole mess. Whether Hitler was Christian or not is irrelevant – everyone in Germany thought he was Christian, and he still used Christianity to achieve his goals.

    Unless now you are going to claim that none of the Germans who were Heiling and Goosestepping right with him were Christian, either, at which point, no one is a Christian.

  71. Helio says

    If its irrelevant Pablo, why are you so uptight about it, jerk?
    Christianity is no more to blame for Nazis than Darwinism.
    You’re starting to sound as incoherent as the Creos.
    Just replace “Darwinism” with “Christianity” in every rant about Nazis. I thought this place had more class than that.

  72. Colugo says

    Yet another thread returning to the issue of whether or not the Nazis were Christian.

    First, the most important aspect of the relationship between Nazism and Christianity is the fact that German churches had stoked eliminationist antisemitism for centuries and offered no collective resistance to Nazism in general nor to the Holocaust in particular.

    Second, a lot of confusion is due to the fact that much of the Nazi elite, including Hitler, styled themselves as followers of Positive Christianity. However, rank-and-file Nazis were doubtless unaware of these esoteric theological issues and simply thought of themselves as good Christians, good Germans, and yes, good socialists (but not leftists nor liberals, sorry Jonah Goldberg).

    Positive Christianity emphasizes Jesus’ “socialist” opposition to the Jews and views Paul of Tarsus as a Jewish corrupter of the Aryan Christ’s message. (Interestingly, the notion of a Nordic Christ was promoted by the anti-Christian Ernst Haeckel.) From this perspective, emphasis on Jesus’ martyrdom characterizes “negative Christianity.”

    While Hitler and Goebbels did not think highly of Rosenberg’s book overall, the following passages encapsulate some themes of Positive Christianity.

    Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century:

    “Abstract spirituality … was flanked on each side by all the magic of Asia Minor, Syria and Africa. … Thus the world did not proceed from the life of the saviour (soter) but from his death and its miraculous consequences. This is the single motif of the Pauline epistles. Goethe, on the contrary, held that it was the life of Christ which was important, not his death. In this he was attesting to the soul of the Germanic west expressed in Positive Christianity, as opposed to negative Christianity based on priesthood and witch mania and deriving from Etruscan Asiatic concepts. …

    Negative and Positive Christianity were locked in conflict from the beginning, and that conflict is today being waged with ever more bitterness. The negative type emphasises its Levantine Etruscan tradition, its abstract dogmas and hoary old customs; the positive consciously calls upon the Nordic blood to awaken…”

  73. john j says

    Donnie:

    Are you serious man, do you really believe the “In the name of Christ,” part..? Come on. What did Lenin and his cohorts claim to be acting in the name of? I bet someone on this blog will say Christianity! Seriously. Watch, it will happen.

    Lenin, Stalin and the boys of 1917 were again and again acting in the name of science, atheism, rationalism and “clarity” of thought. Does that make scientists evil, totalitarian murderers? Hardly. And that this blog has carried on this long with morons sighting stupid sources in search of the Hitler/ Christianity connection is really embarrassing. How weak is it that this character PZ Myers takes the time to post this shit about Hitler and bishops while ignoring the millions and millions that died at the hands of materialist meglomaniacs who are only about a pigs hair removed from the true believers found on this site… Oh wait, that’s right, there is no angle on this site, no philosophy, just pure, crystalline peace loving scientists. Give me a break. I’m just waiting now to see how long it is before someone associates Communists materialist thug murderers with the Orthodox Christians they murdered. What’s the over under on that? Three blogs? Four? Go ahead guys, go get the info… Ready… prove!

  74. raven says

    Hitler claimed to be a Xian many, many times. In Mein Kampf, Christian occurs 32 times, Darwin occurs…zero times. He was also a creationist.

    There it is. Hitler said it and there is no reason not to believe him.

    Adolph Hitler:

    “My feeling 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.”[25]

  75. negentropyeater says

    Initially the German churches — both Catholic and Protestant –stood in opposition to Hitler and the Nazis. For example, the Catholic hierarchy had ruled that Catholics could not be members of the Nazi party.

    That all changed in 1933 when the Papal Nuncio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) and Hitler signed the Reich Concordat of 1933. Hitler was determined to gain the support of the church, if possible, and thus in the Concordat promised to respect and protect the Catholic church in Germany. This led to his proclamation in his “My New Order” on February 1, 1933 and to the photograph above.

    When the church joined with the Nazis, the Catholic bishops lifted their ban on membership in the Nazi Party shortly after the Pacelli concordat, and both Protestants and Catholics enthusiastically supported the Nazi regime. Protestant and Catholic churches provided the Nazis with church records to better determine which Germans were Jewish or had “Jewish” blood so all Jews, including those who had converted to Christianity, could be sent to concentration camps.

    So, it’s clear that Hitler trumped the church, but here’s the lesson of this story, if the church could surrender to the popularity of Hitler, and renounce to its own absolute morality, how can it be trusted ?

  76. Tom Marking says

    So here is your boy Adolf commenting on what he really thinks of Christianity:

    http://www.davnet.org/kevin/articles/table.html

    Excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk, stenographic notes of Hitler’s private conversations [Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1953]

    “…
    The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions. But in that case we must not replace the Church by something equivalent. That would be terrifying!
    .
    .
    .
    The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key-note is intolerance.
    .
    .
    .
    Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.
    .
    .
    .
    I’m convinced that any pact with the Church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such a compromise. Thus the State will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.
    .
    .
    .
    If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can’t satisfy them with the Party’s programme. Time will go by until the moment when science can answer all the questions.
    So it’s not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. A slow death has something comforting about The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that’s left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.
    .
    .
    .
    Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that’s why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline.
    .
    .
    .
    A movement like ours mustn’t let itself be drawn into metaphysical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It’s not the Party’s function to be a counterfeit for religion.
    .
    .
    .
    The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily puts himself in opposition to the Churches. And that’s why they’re heading for ruin-for science is bound to win.
    .
    .
    .
    The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. Thus one understands that the healthy elements of the Roman world were proof against this doctrine.
    .
    .
    .
    Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it’s certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore-of a whore and a Roman soldier.
    .
    .
    .
    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?
    .
    .
    .

  77. raven says

    For the “No True Xian” folks. The first plans for a Final Solution to the Jews was drawn up by Martin Luther. I suppose that means Martin Luther must not have been a Xian. Hmmm, what are all those churches doing with Lutheran in their names then?

    This thread has degenerated into the Liars for Jesus trying to rewrite history. As usual. FWIW, after 63 years, the Holocaust has been understood as well as it ever will. Most mainstream historians, Xian and Jewish, ascribe it to a mix of German culture and German variety Xianity which fostered a strong antisemitic prejudice.

    Wikipedia; Martin Luther

    Luther advocated an eight-point plan to get rid of the Jews either by religious conversion or by expulsion:

    “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …”
    “Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. …”
    “Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. …”
    “Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. …”
    “Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. …”
    “Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them. … Such money should now be used in … the following [way]… Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed [a certain amount]…”
    “Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow… For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.”
    “If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country” and “we must drive them out like mad dogs.” [31]

  78. john j says

    Tom:

    Thanks for some clarity… but of course, it won’t matter. True believers are a hard lot to crack and hate is a blinding force that affects more than the “religious”. But of course, people on this site are just that, religious. Ture believing religous zealots. Can there be any doubt of that?

  79. Donnie B. says

    Hey, john j… way to miss the whole point.

    Hitler repeatedly and publicly professed his Christian faith. Whether or not he was really, truly a Christian deep down is irrelevant, because he was embraced as such by the German people and the leaders in the Catholic and Lutheran churches.

    Oh, and john, do try to stay on topic, would you? We can talk about Lenin and the Godless Commies in some other thread.

    And as for the rest of your comments: we love you, too. *smooch*

  80. Schmeer says

    Helio,
    Perhaps Pablo seems uptight about Hitler’s religious affiliation because some of us care about the truth. You’re not going to win an argument by calling him a jerk. There are numerous sources that refute your claim that Hitler was not a Christian.

    john j,
    You may want to take a closer look at Lysenkoism, it is not science. It is bullshit.
    Only in a Jack Chic tract or the The Brothers Karamazov, etc. does anyone say “If there is no God I can murder these people”
    Please explain to me how rationality leads one to kill millions. I would love to hear the twisted logic that allows you to say that without vomiting.
    Finally, you may want to read Marx. The communism in Cuba, Venezuela, China and the USSR doesn’t much resemble Marx’s writings.

    By the way, that’s a fantastic example of Christian love you’re showing. Please continue with your temper tantrum.

  81. Pablo says

    If its irrelevant Pablo, why are you so uptight about it, jerk?

    Because leaders that use religion to try to incite genocide scare me. YMMV. It doesn’t matter whether he personally believed it all or not, but he clearly used it as a means to persecute.

    As Donnie noted, we don’t know what anyone really believes deep in their heart. What matters is what they do and how they act. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it might just be a spastic monkey with flat feet, but everyone will still see a duck.

    Christianity is no more to blame for Nazis than Darwinism.

    This is clearly not true. Hitler never claimed to be doing the work of Darwin. We don’t know that he would have been able to do what he did if he claimed he was doing the work of Darwin.

    He did, however, claim to be doing the work of “the Lord,” and proclaimed himself a Christian. He very clearly used Christianity to sell his nonsense, and the German people didn’t object very strongly, did they? The belt buckle said, “Gott mitt uns” not “Survival of the Fittest”

    Could Hitler have sold the Holocaust of the Jews on the basis of Darwin?

  82. raven says

    Tom Marking is now reduced to outright lying. Hitler’s Table Talk was heavily forged after the war to make Xians look good. I linked to this above in the thread, repeated below.

    This is why no one in their right mind would trust Xian Dominionists to do anything but make Hitler look like an amateur. They are evil people devoid of morality and incapable of understanding much less caring about the truth.

    Tom Marking reduced to lying:

    So here is your boy Adolf commenting on what he really thinks of Christianity:

    http://www.davnet.org/kevin/articles/table.html

    Excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk, stenographic notes of Hitler’s private conversations [Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1953]

    Tom Marking is pathetic. Posting known forgeries to hide the truth. BTW, Whatever Hitler’s real thoughts, without millions of enthusiastic German Xians, he would just be another pathetic loon ranting and raving.

    They even went so far as to forge Hitler documents implying he was an atheist.” Raven, I’d love to read about that if you knew where it was cited………..
    There are many sources. Wikipedia will work.

    http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php
    Stevens and Cameron are certainly guilty of some shameful incompetence, if not outright dishonesty. Nor does Trevor-Roper have much of an excuse. But the real culprit is François Genoud. David Irving tells how Genoud attempted to hoax him in the 1970s with a forgery of “Hitler’s Last Testament.”7 Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, “But it’s just what Hitler would have said, isn’t it?” He was evidently willing to perpetrate a hoax, thinking it permissible to fabricate the words of Hitler if it was what he believed Hitler “would have said.” His motives for doctoring the Table Talk may be unfathomable. Genoud was a very strange man with a colorful history: a Swiss banker and Nazi spy who laundered money for the Third Reich, a self-professed neo-Nazi even up to his suicide in 1996 (though, stranger still, he never supported the holocaust), a voracious purchaser and profiteer of Nazi archives, and an admitted financer of terrorists.8

  83. john j says

    Donnie:

    It’s too bad that you can’t see that I am exactly on point. I mean if your point is Hitler used Christianity to incite the masses… wow, what insight! As if that is what people are saying on this thread. Come on man! The reason this thread exists at all is because this professor associated the two to DEFAME Christianity. So let’s put it to you straight up: Do you believe Christianity was responsible for the Holocaust? I mean the idea, the teachings of Christians as taught by the Catholic Church (which is EXACTLY what this blog is implying). Because if you don’t believe this, than you will clearly understand my point on the Communist Russia. If you DO believe that Christianity is responsible, than you must clearly claim that materialism is responsible for the death of millions in the Soviet Union. Right? As in… it is relevent.

  84. PA says

    You’ll notice that neither John J nor Tom Marking have turned the other cheek. I guess that means that they’re not true Scot… I mean Xians.

  85. Colugo says

    The issues of the authenticity and accuracy of different versions of Table Talk aside, this alleged statement by Hitler is noteworthy:

    “Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position against Jewry.”

    Ranting and railing against the churches while remarking on the alleged true essence of Christ are hallmarks of Positive Christianity.

    Booklet on racial policy for SS members, from Calvin College’s German Propaganda Archive: “the tragedy of the Reformation is that began as a German revolution, but ended in a battle over dogmas, and Luther finally bound the conscience to the Jewish teachings of the Bible.”

    (Aside: The article linked to by Raven alleging that Table Talk is a hoax contains an error: “Even the SS wore Gott mit uns, “God is with us,” on their belt buckles.”

    No, the SS had “My honor is my loyalty” on their belts. The Wehrmacht had “Gott mit uns,” a carryover from the Prussian era.)

  86. Donnie B. says

    Tom: did you happen to notice that the excerpts you quoted were from Hitler’s private conversations, rather than his public statements? How many of his followers, do you suppose, were privy to those thoughts? And how did that compare to the number of his followers who heard only his public professions of faith?

    Christian or not, Hitler did sweep to power thanks to the votes of those who felt he was one of the faithful — and that was even before voting became meaningless in the Third Reich.

  87. Susan says

    @Tom — the Table Talk quotes are interesting, but wouldn’t they fall under hearsay? These are transcriptions of what someone said he heard Hitler say. Why do these thoughts not show up in other more reliable sources?

  88. RAM says

    Raven, thank you for further reading links on this topic. Enlightened persons like yourself with actual references are why I love this website.

  89. Colugo says

    “The article linked to by Raven alleging that Table Talk is a hoax contains an error”

    I meant to write that aspects of some editions were hoaxed or distorted, not that it is being alleged that the whole thing is a hoax. Poor phrasing on my part. My bad.

    Isn’t the Hitler Stick useful for beating up on contemporary adversaries – Christians, evolutionists, leftists, Republicans, environmentalists, pro-choicers, evangelicals, animal researchers etc.?

  90. Tom Marking says

    “Tom:
    Thanks for some clarity… but of course, it won’t matter. True believers are a hard lot to crack and hate is a blinding force that affects more than the “religious”. But of course, people on this site are just that, religious. True believing religous zealots. Can there be any doubt of that?”

    John, first you should know that I am an atheist myself. But I cannot deny that there are many, many on the atheist side of the debate whose behavior is indistinguishable from religious zealotry. They claim that they are evidence based, but if you attempt to show them evidence that contradicts their viewpoint then your evidence must be wrong. Why? Well, it contradicts their views, of course. LOL.

    Case in point: In posts #10, #35, and #89 it is asserted that Hitler was a creationist? I wonder how that jibes with this quotation from Adolf. Does a creationist believe in a man-ape?

    “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.”

  91. Donnie B. says

    So let’s put it to you straight up: Do you believe Christianity was responsible for the Holocaust? I mean the idea, the teachings of Christians as taught by the Catholic Church (which is EXACTLY what this blog is implying).

    I think the answer has to be more nuanced than a straight-up yes-or-no.

    German society had a very long tradition of antisemitism that dated back to before Luther’s day. This form of prejudice ran through virtually all public and private institutions, including the churches (Catholic and Protestant). Hitler exploited that existing tendency, along with the Germans’ sense of shame at their loss in the previous World War, and melded a witches’ brew of nationalism, antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and militarism, along with a few generous dashes of Nordic/Teutonic mythology and the occult.

    I don’t point to any of these as the factor responsible for the Holocaust. They all played a part. The role of the churches was not solely to blame, but it was a very considerable enabler for Hitler’s policies.

    And though I may have this part wrong, I also believe that’s exactly what “this blog” (i.e. PZ’s original post) is saying.

  92. Schmeer says

    Tom Marking,

    Your quote mentions a man-ape, but that does not show that Hitler believed that man evolved from an ape-like creature. For example, when I call you a pig-fucking-asshole that does not mean that I think you are someone who actually has intercourse with a pig. It’s an insult. It says nothing about my acceptance of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

  93. Colugo says

    “Does a creationist believe in a man-ape?”

    Certainly he can, if he is a believer in the static Great Chain of Being. Comparisons of other populations to apes is an ancient and cross-cultural theme. So your specific point is refuted.

    However, based on passages of Mein Kampf and the Second Book I believe that Hitler accepted macroevolution, evolution through natural selection, the great antiquity of the earth before humanity, and that civilization had thwarted natural selection (the last is a frequent eugenicist theme). In addition, that particular quote mirrors a statement by Ernst Haeckel. But that’s a whole other can of worms.

  94. Colugo says

    “macroevolution, evolution through natural selection, the great antiquity of the earth before humanity, and that civilization had thwarted natural selection”

    Incidentally, nothing prevents a proponent of Intelligent Design or an evolutionary creationist from accepting these things.

  95. says

    @Colugo –

    Objectivists claim to be all about reason and science rather than Rush albums. (Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter – ‘Priests of Syrinx’ kicks ass.)

    It’s worth noting that Neil Peart has, for quite a while now, felt rather embarrassed about his youthful enthusiasm for Objectivism. In particular, he shudders at the notion that markets are inherently moral.

    FWIW, I’ve been a hard-core Rush fan for decades and thought Ayn Rand was a complete shithead within a few chapters of Atlas Shrugged. Don’t even get me started on The Fountainhead.

  96. Tom Marking says

    “You’ll notice that neither John J nor Tom Marking have turned the other cheek. I guess that means that they’re not true Scot… I mean Xians.”

    I never claimed to be a Christian, dumb ass.

  97. Kagehi says

    John.. You really have to be a serious half wit to continually fail to grasp that the point of PZ’s using this is to suggest that ****some**** people claiming to be the ****leaders**** of “True” Christianity in the US right not are fascist and dangerous, not that “all” of them are. What’s your next BS argument going to be, to claim that if someone says skin heads are dangerous, its an attack of all bald people? Get your head out of your ass and pay attention. We have radical, lunatic, nuts pushing to run this country, and it hardly matters that *this time* they may actually believe in the shit they preach, instead of just playing up to it. That doesn’t make them less dangerous, less insane, less likely to kill people, or what ever. In fact, given their behavior, their zeal, and the real actions of some of their own members, I would say their certainty that they are right makes them ***more*** likely to become the next group of mass murderers. The fact that they cloak themselves in the flag and Christianity while doing it **is** relevant, since its the same thing the Nazis did to convince fools in their country that it was in the “best interest” of their nation to believe their insane bullshit. It worked there, and, to some extent, its *working* here, complete with stupid propaganda films, calls for a return to imaginary golden years, claims of persecution and evil from people that have never lifted a finger to hurt anyone, but *do* represent a threat to their power, and babbling BS about the glory and unity of the nation, if everyone just agreed to follow one fascist vision and rid the nation of undesirables.

    You want to get your panties in a wad over *valid* comparisons of the tools being used to promote this crap, because one of those tools happens to be claims of Christian faith, then you really need to pull your head out of your ass and look at the bigger picture, instead of whining about how unfair we are, according to you, being to the 90% of the Christians in this country that haven’t *yet* fallen for their ranting, insane, lies. If they where dressing up as the McDonald’s clown to promote this crap, we would be talking about **that** instead, and it wouldn’t be any more an attack on *all* people that play clowns than this is against *all* Christians.

  98. Matt Penfold says

    Why is Tom Marking quoting from a source that no serious historian of the second war thinks is valid ?

    If he is doubt about his I suggest he looks at Burleigh and Kershaw. Both have made it clear that “Hitler’s Table Talk” has been discredited and is no historical value.

  99. Quiet Desperation says

    You need to read the newspaper more.

    (Rolls eyes)

    OK, mom.

    The xian Doms own president moron Bush, controlled the US congress from 2000 to 2006 and have taken over the republican party and Texas. Huckabee who could be our next president in a plausible scenario, is one. He only got about 10% of the total vote, but really, 10% of the electorate wants to destroy the US by electing another xian extremist.

    OK. This is, like, completely different from your previously stated 1% Demographic Of Rapturous Doom. I’m afraid I can’t sit here and evaluate every potential nightmare scenario you whip up. Sorry.

  100. PA says

    @111

    I never *said* you claimed to be an Xian, dumb ass. (Although there might have been a pragmatic implication to that effect in the vicinity). I just said that your failure to turn the other cheek showed that you’re not one (at least according to a certain, perhaps controversial, measure of membership in this group).

  101. Kseniya says

    In particular, he shudders at the notion that markets are inherently moral.

    Don’t we all?

  102. Tom Marking says

    “Tom Marking is now reduced to outright lying. Hitler’s Table Talk was heavily forged after the war to make Xians look good. I linked to this above in the thread, repeated below.”

    Even the URL you provided says the following:

    “Hitler’s Table Talk. This is purportedly a notebook based on the shorthand of two secretaries to Hitler, Heinrich Heim and Henry Picker, instructed by Hitler’s right-hand-man Martin Bormann to record for posterity whatever Hitler said in his bunker in Berlin, usually at tea. They recorded official orders as well as things he said off the cuff, and logged entries by date and time of day. Bormann intended to edit the notes and publish them as a definitive party manifesto for the victorious Reich. It is likely these notes were real. Six original pages from the notebook still exist in the Adolf Hitler Collection at the Library of Congress, which should be authentic.”

    So at least in some form the Table Talk is real.

    “Clever minds might consider the possibility that the Bormann Vermerke was actually fabricated by Genoud, by simply copying and expanding on Picker’s German. But we can actually rule that out from an examination of Picker’s first and second editions. Genoud correctly translates several words and sentences in 1952 that were accidentally omitted from Picker’s 1951 release, but restored by Mediger in 1963. Thus, Genoud must have had access to a genuine manuscript, and that must be the one Jochmann finally released in 1980. This, in fact, corroborates the authenticity of both German originals, at least where they agree.”

    So even the Genoud version is not a complete forgery.

    “For example, one oft-repeated quote comes from 13 December 1941: “But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery” (Stevens and Cameron’s English, again matching Genoud’s French verbatim). But the original German says, “Christianity teaches ‘transubstantiation,’ which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly.””

    So the so-called forgery replaces “Christianity is an invention of sick brains” with “Christianity teaches transubstantiation which is the maddest thing ever concocted”. It doesn’t matter, it’s still a criticism of Christianity from Adolf who is supposedly pro-Christian.

    “We already saw Glover quoting an entry for 19 October 1941 where Hitler is made to say that all Christianity was “a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society.” This is, in fact, an accurate translation of what appears in the Bormann Vermerke. But Picker has no entry for this date at all. In it, Hitler equates Christianity to syphilis as the two diseases that destroyed Rome.”

    Again, one insult against Christianity is replaced with another. What difference does it make? He’s still disparaging Christianity.

    “All this is not to say that Hitler does not criticize the Church and various Christian dogmas, even in Picker’s and Jochmann’s versions of the Table Talk. For instance, in an entry for the afternoon of 13 December 1941, Hitler rails against the idea of a physical resurrection and in favor of a spiritual one, and takes a very cynical view of Catholicism, voicing many of the same criticisms one might hear from a candid (and bigoted) Protestant.”

    So at most, the so called “forgeries” replaced authentic anti-Christian statements with other anti-Christian statements. It hardly supports the claim being made which is that Hitler was pro-Christian.

    And finally, on to Richard Carrier himself:
    “Richard Carrier is a member of the Internet Infidels with numerous writings on the Secular Web”

    If OSS documents are tainted by their association with a Rutgers Christian student group, then what does that say about this URL

    http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

    which is written by a member of something called “Internet Infidels”? I’m sure they must be the fountain of virtue and have no philosophical axe to grind, right?

  103. Kate says

    As an aethiest, this kind of thread really annoys me. Why? Because it’s reaching.
    A photo of Hitler shaking hands with a couple of priests. Oooo, aethiests wet themselves with excitement.
    I’m no history expert, but didn’t Hilter come to power as a result of the socio-political conditions of the 20’s and 30’s? Hardships and humiliations resulting from their defeat at the end of WWI? It would just be the case that most of the country was xian (like any other western country).
    Wasn’t there at least as much publicity given to bogus scientists regarding the inferiority of Jews? Not to mention all the other scientists working for the ultimate victory of the Third Reich.
    Now all this is fairly uninformed ramble (cue the rude comments, as is commonly the norm here…), but basically I’m saying, as an aetheist, I would rather stick to the scientific facts than eagerly latch onto the death of millions (rather tenously I would say), to counter xianity. Does our cause no good.
    Kate

  104. Colugo says

    Kate is correct. Religion and science alike were enlisted in the Nazi cause.

    Is there a scientist version of No True Scotsman / No True Christian? Certainly.

    Political, economic, religious, and scientific (would you feel better if that last one was in scare quotes?) rationales for the Holocaust were constructed before Hitler came to power.

  105. Tom Marking says

    “If he is doubt about his I suggest he looks at Burleigh and Kershaw. Both have made it clear that “Hitler’s Table Talk” has been discredited and is no historical value.”

    That is not what Carrier says at
    http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

    According to Carrier there is an authentic version and several others that have been tampered with. BTW, I am not arguing that Hitler was an atheist which seems to be what Carrier is attempting to debunk. Rather, I think that Hitler was attempting to hijack Christianity and turn it into an Aryan racist religion.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_the_Church

    In 1941, Martin Bormann, a close associate of Hitler said publicly “National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable”. In 1942 he also declared in a confidential memo to Gauleiters that the Christian Churches ‘must absolutely and finally be broken.’ Thus it is evident that he believed Nazism, based as it was on a ‘scientific’ world-view, to be completely incompatible with Christianity.

    “When we [National Socialists] speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naivety or else upon shameless professional self-interest”

    Other members of the Hitler government, including Rosenberg, during the war formulated a thirty-point program for the “National Reich Church” which included:

    The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
    The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
    The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
    The National Church will clear away from its alters all Crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of Saints.
    On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword.

  106. Pablo says

    “Political, economic, religious, and scientific (would you feel better if that last one was in scare quotes?) rationales for the Holocaust were constructed before Hitler came to power.”

    As has been mentioned in this thread, Luther had rationales and a plan for the Holocaust (destroying houses, blackballing Jews from work, sending them to concentration camps), and that was before anything like modern science (much less evolution) was around.

  107. Interrobang says

    As an aethiest, this kind of thread really annoys me. Why? Because it’s reaching.
    A photo of Hitler shaking hands with a couple of priests. Oooo, aethiests wet themselves with excitement.

    Way to miss the point. Did you study on that, or does it just come naturally. (By the way, it’s spelt atheist, analogously to “apolitical” and “acephalous.”)

    Let me break it down for you:

    We have a photograph of a political leader cozying up to religious leaders, with the caption as above. PZ Myers comments that the sentiments expressed in the caption, that is, words uttered by that particular political leader, are extremely similar to sentiments expressed by current American political and religious leaders.

    The congruence between that political leader’s sentiments and certain threads in the American political discourse have been amply documented in just this thread alone, with quotations from Randall Terry, R.J. Rushdooney, Coral Ridge Ministries, the Washington-Israel summit participants, and so on.

    Christianity is actually irrelevant to noticing the similarities here; it just happens that in both political contexts, Christianity is a convenient crutch for extremist ideology and eliminationist rhetoric.

  108. says

    Excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk, stenographic notes of Hitler’s private conversations [Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1953]

    Posted by: Tom Marking | May 5, 2008 2:19 PM

    LMAO. You know that book is a forgery, right? Not by the man who wrote the book (Trevor-Roper), but by Francois Genoud. Genoud, who was Goebbels executor and a Nazi collaborator, was a rather “colorful” Swiss banker who supported the Nazi’s in WWII by spying and laundering money.

    Genoud, apparently, forged these documents in order to raise the capital necessary to found a number of banks that were front-men/conduits for Arab terrorist organizations, such as the Algerian National Liberation Front, Hamas and Al Queda. All-in-all, a lying piece of shit as human being as there ever could be.

    When confronted by the historian Irving, Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, “But it’s just what Hitler would have said, isn’t it?” Irving is also famous for exposing the “Hitler Diaries” as forgeries.

    But, of course you didn’t. That’s why you brought it up.

  109. windy says

    When we speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God.

    Hey, doesn’t that sound like that sophisticated theology we keep hearing about?

  110. says

    Tom:

    Thanks for some clarity… but of course, it won’t matter. True believers are a hard lot to crack and hate is a blinding force that affects more than the “religious”. But of course, people on this site are just that, religious. Ture believing religous zealots. Can there be any doubt of that?

    Posted by: john j | May 5, 2008 2:24 PM

    What clarity? Tom is posting known forgeries as fact.

  111. PA says

    In light of a certain recent movie in which evolutionary theory was linked to the Holocaust, the issue here is (i)whether any Christian beliefs Hitler might have had played a greater role in his decision to commit the atrocities that he did than did any evolutionary ideas he might have had and (ii) whether Hitler’s public endorsement of Christian ideas played a greater role in his ability to come to power and carry out these atrocities than did his public endorsement of evolutionary ideas.

    What is clear is that despite his antipathy for certain Christian institutions, Hitler did hold broadly Christian theological views. And although he may have held evolutionary ideas as well — even though that whole “man-ape” business is hardly decisive — there is little reason to suppose that his public endorsement of these ideas played much of a role in his rise to power.

    To the extent we have any evidence re. the comparative role Christian and evolutionary ideas played in Hitler’s atrocities, the latter come out at least as morally innocent.

  112. raven says

    What is important about Hitler and the Nazis is that they represented a vanguard of a major segment of the popular will. They used Xianity and German Xianity let itself be used. There are countless Hitler wannabes on the street corners, internet, and in Moslem countries. These days so far no one takes them seriously and they are just ranting and raving loons.

    And the difference between Hitler using Xianity and Bush, Falwell, Kennedy, Dobson, Robertson, Hagee, Hagard etc. using Xianity for their own agendas and ends is????? Nothing really. These men are wealthy for just pandering to segments of the Death Cult fringes. No one can read minds, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some or all of the televangelist Dominionist leaders thought Xianity was a useful myth and didn’t take it any more seriously than that.

    Richard Carrier again:

    This was the official position of the Nazi party. And it went to the very same extremes that we see among Christian Fundamentalists in America today. For instance, read this excerpt from the 24th principle of the Nazi party, from the infamous Twenty Five Points (1920):

    We demand the freedom of religion in the Reich so long as they do not endanger the position of the state or adversely affect the moral standards of the German race. As such the Party represents a positively Christian position without binding itself to one particular faith.
    Likewise, the 1933 Nazi Concordat with the Catholic Church, Article 21:

    Catholic religious instruction in elementary, senior, secondary and vocational schools constitutes a regular portion of the curriculum, and is to be taught in accordance with the principles of the Catholic Church. In religious instruction, special care will be taken to inculcate patriotic, civic and social consciousness and sense of duty in the spirit of the Christian Faith and the moral code, precisely as in the case of other subjects.
    So there can be no doubt that the Nazis were thoroughly and devotedly Christian, eager to inculcate Christian theism for future generations.

    This is especially important, since hundreds of thousands of Nazis carried out the Final Solution, not one man. If they disagreed with Hitler’s orders, they could have ignored them or sandbagged the process. To the contrary, all survivor accounts agree: Nazis involved in carrying out Hitler’s orders were eager, even zealous for the task. So what Hitler himself believed is almost irrelevant. Had he rejected certain elements of Nazism openly, he would likely have been deposed and replaced with a more suitably Christian villain to carry out the Final Solution.

  113. Arnaud says

    Irving is also famous for exposing the “Hitler Diaries” as forgeries.

    Funny that, I would have thought Irving (in)famous for totally different reasons…

  114. xyz says

    When confronted by the historian Irving, Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, “But it’s just what Hitler would have said, isn’t it?” Irving is also famous for exposing the “Hitler Diaries” as forgeries.

    That’s rich! Using Holocaust-denying anti-Semite David Irving, a man who has lied under oath to conclude that documents are forgeries. Maybe while you’re at it you can give us Fred Singer’s debunking of AGW!

  115. Tom Marking says

    “Tom is posting known forgeries as fact.”

    Even Carrier, a member of Internet Infidels, admits that “Hiter’s Table Talk” is NOT a forgery. The anti-Christian passages that he claims are forgeries are associated with authentic passages that are also anti-Christian so it makes little difference. Please provide some evidence for your assertion.

    And I suppose all the sources concerning the National Reich Church are forgeries also? How was Alfred Rosenberg able to get away with planning for the National Reich Church without Hitler’s direct approval? I’d like someone to explain that one to me.

    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Rosenberg.html

    3) Persecution of Christian Churches. Rosenberg expressed his theory as to the place of religion in the National Socialist State in the “Myth of the Twentieth Century” additional excerpts from which are cited in (2891-PS):

    “We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches, being a negative Christianity, do not respond to our soul, that they hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, that they must give way to them, that they will have to be remodeled to conform to a Germanic Christendom. Therein lies the meaning of the present religious search.” (2891-PS)

    In the place of traditional Christianity, Rosenberg sought to implant the neo-pagan myth of the blood. At page 114 in the “Myth of the Twentieth Century” (2891-PS) he stated:

    “Today, a new faith is awakening — the Myth of the Blood, the belief that the divine being of mankind generally is to be defended with the blood. The faith embodied by the fullest realization, that the Nordic blood constitutes that mystery which has supplanted and overwhelmed the old sacraments.”

    Rosenberg’s attitudes on religion were accepted as the only philosophy compatible with National Socialism. In 1940 Bormann, in writing to Rosenberg, made this statement:

    “The churches cannot be conquered by a compromise between National Socialism and Christian teachings, but only through a new ideology whose coming you yourself have announced in your writings.”

    Rosenberg actively participated in the program for elimination of church influence. Bormann frequently wrote Rosenberg in this regard, furnishing him information as to proposed action to be instituted against the churches and, where necessary, requesting that action be taken by Rosenberg’s department. See 070-PS dealing with the abolition of religious services in the schools; 072-PS dealing with the confiscation of religious property; 064-PS dealing with the inadequacy of anti-religious material circulated to the soldiers; 089-PS dealing with the curtailment of the publication of Protestant periodicals; and 122-PS dealing with the closing of theological faculties.

  116. john j says

    To Tom:

    You have done more than make a case here, you have actually taken the sting out of the entire thread. The picture has become a testimony to the vile, boorish, totalitarian nature of the beliefs held by those who manage this site. Ironically then, one must ask if the thread itself does more to accuse the founder of this site of Nazi like behavior, “Goebellesque” propoganda, than the silly picture ever could. Again, hateful religious zeal does indeed belong to the religious… whatever religion that may be (and in this case it is the religion of the materialist. clearly). Thanks Tom. You go boy.

  117. Kate says

    Interrobang –

    You’re right. I actually agree with PZ’s comments. I was rather reacting to various other comments in the thread. Should have made myself clear.
    Your opening statement does, however, bear out something else I said in my post.
    Kate

  118. Tulse says

    one must ask if the thread itself does more to accuse the founder of this site of Nazi like behavior

    Wow. Just…wow.

  119. says

    Kate is correct. Religion and science alike were enlisted in the Nazi cause.

    Is there a scientist version of No True Scotsman / No True Christian? Certainly.

    Or not. No one says of Sir Isaac Newton “Oh, well, he was a batshit insane numerologist, therefore his other work in physics and optics shouldn’t be regarded as truly scientific.” We’re perfectly comfortable pointing out that he was a leading scientific light of his day AND that he was an asshole and a nutcase. We are able to separate the science from the crankery. Why? Because as PZ and others have been pointing out for months now, The Laws Of Motion contain no ideology to encourage people to want to kill other people, however useful they may be for constructing devices to do just that. Scientists may sometimes have ideologies as individuals, but science itself does not.

    Religion, however, is ALL about ideology, all the time. And since Xianity, especially in its conservative strain, has variously promoted and/or been used to promote ideologies of hate and death for many centuries longer than science has recognizably existed, its claims about both both itself and science/scientists must be evaluated in that light.

    Another thing. About Lenin/Stalin/et al.; merely tacking the assertion “…and we should do these things because they are scientific!” when they are clearly not onto the end of a pogrom order that blatantly taps into generations of superstition/xenophobia/bigotry/whatever doesn’t even remotely count as an indictment of science or any particular scientific work. But when a religion spends centuries carefully cultivating bigotry and xenophobia and oppression and devotes volume upon volume of “scholarly” work to justifying those attitudes and policies, and then either unleashing them, allowing themselves to be harnessed for someone else’s crusade, or simply standing idly by without significant protest while horror is wrought in their name, then they have no moral high ground to claim in protest of the charges leveled against them.

  120. gex says

    Let’s just get this tidbit straight. When the people you are criticizing are in fact SHAKING THE HANDS OF HITLER, you haven’t Godwinned the thread. This isn’t a case of using hyperbole to link the Pope and Hitler, this is using a picture to link the Pope and Hitler. Get the difference?

  121. Tom Marking says

    “Thanks Tom. You go boy.”

    See, that’s two people who actually like me. You and my mom. :)

    I do find it ironic that the very people who have recently been on the receiving end of the tar-with-Nazism brush via Mr. Stein are so quick to grab the brush themselves and tar their opponents.

  122. john j says

    Two Things:

    1) GEX: Lots of people shook Hitlers hand, we just don’t have pictures of them all… wait, Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England was a Nazi sympathizer! The picture! It proves it. It wasn’t that he was a weak politician, or in a political bind… nope HE LOVED THE NAZI’S! Shaking hands, dangerous business indeed.

    2)Eric: Man, you let “science” off so easy… just like that. When Communists assert materialism as their raison d’etre they are “not being scientific,” but when Nazi’s claim Christianity there must be something in it. Hmmm. I wonder if that doesn’t speak more to your faith than to the faith of the Nazi’s? Christianity = Bad… Nazi’s = Bad… Nazi’s = Christianity… OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THIS THREAD!!! It is like a college dorm filled with angry feminists arguing over the meaning of a penis. Please, someone stop it with some sanity, something that says the picture above, way above, is simply a device to make brownie points against an enemy, namely Christianity and the Catholic Church. Please! Someone? Anyone?

  123. Tom Marking says

    “When the people you are criticizing are in fact SHAKING THE HANDS OF HITLER, you haven’t Godwinned the thread. This isn’t a case of using hyperbole to link the Pope and Hitler, this is using a picture to link the Pope and Hitler.”

    Here is a picture of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with Adolf Hitler at the Munich summit:

    http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blhitler22.htm

    Now, does the fact that this handshake took place mean that the British government was responsible for the Holocaust?

    Here is a picture of Bill Clinton shaking the hands of both Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat:

    http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8010/2873/1600/barak-arafat-bill.jpg

    Does that mean that Clinton is responsible for the Palestinian terrorist attacks or for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon?

  124. says

    2)Eric: Man, you let “science” off so easy… just like that. When Communists assert materialism as their raison d’etre they are “not being scientific,” but when Nazi’s claim Christianity there must be something in it. Hmmm. I wonder if that doesn’t speak more to your faith than to the faith of the Nazi’s?

    Reading comprehension much? I made very clear the distinction between rationalizations invoked for convenience versus literally CENTURIES of carefully crafted and culturally maintained justifications for hate and violence and death. Huge and unmistakable difference. To anyone who’s actually paying attention.

    Darwin abhored racism and slavery and the notion that some people are superior to others. He wrote rather extensively about that, as is known to anyone who bothered to read his books rather than just grab a convenient third-hand quote-mine from a fellow mouth-breather.

    And the Lamrckism/Lysenkoism of Stalin was. Not. Science. Any more than phlogiston or alchemical transmutation. Xianity, however, commonly reflects and carefully maintains the bigotry, xenophobia, and smug egotism of the cultures from whom the stories in the books of the Bible were drawn and points to those stories for justification of all manner of horror. The fact that these self-evident truths have to be pointed out to you is frighteningly revealing of your own pathology.

  125. says

    I do find it ironic that the very people who have recently been on the receiving end of the tar-with-Nazism brush via Mr. Stein are so quick to grab the brush themselves and tar their opponents.

    Funny; I find it ironic that some people don’t recognize that Stein and his buddies in the Disco Institute crowd actually share a great deal of ideology and rhetoric with the Nazis and that it’s entirely appropriate to point that out. Oh well, trolls are noted for high intelligence…

  126. says

    Correction – NOT noted for high intelligence.

    Good illustration, though; make error, catch error, admit error, and correct error. Now, if only only the creotards could take a lesson from that…

  127. Colugo says

    “Darwin abhorred racism and slavery and the notion that some people are superior to others.”

    What Darwin thought about race (or what Hitler thought about evolution) should be of little relevance for today’s culture wars. But since most seem to think that it is important, we may as well discuss these issues. Darwin definitely did abhor slavery. But he certainly did not abhor “the notion that some people are superior to others.” Darwin was not a modern liberal. He was a Victorian Whig. Nor was Hitler a modern fundie. Historical heroes and villains are not contemporary allies and adversaries translocated to other eras and places.

  128. says

    What Darwin thought about race (or what Hitler thought about evolution) should be of little relevance for today’s culture wars.

    There’s no attempt here to portray Darwin as a “modern liberal”, and I expect you to be smarter than that. The relevance is that the creotards are spreading blatant lies about each each man and their ideas and motivations in order to promote a political agenda that is alarmingly similar to much of what Hitler was about. And THAT is why “we may as well discuss these issues.”

  129. raven says

    John practicing Goebbels Big Lie:

    Even Carrier, a member of Internet Infidels, admits that “Hiter’s Table Talk” is NOT a forgery.

    Richard Carrier German History Studies:

    “For example, one oft-repeated quote comes from 13 December 1941: “But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery” (Stevens and Cameron’s English, again matching Genoud’s French verbatim). But the original German says, “Christianity teaches ‘transubstantiation,’ which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly.” The difference in meaning here is radical, and again shows how Genoud (hence the Trevor-Roper translation) has distorted Hitler’s criticism of one form of Christianity (which implies he believed there was a true Christianity) into a thoroughly anti-Christian sentiment.”

    The reason why the quotes appear to be a caricature of what right wing Christians might *want* Hitler to say… because that’s pretty much what they are!

    Stevens and Cameron are certainly guilty of some shameful incompetence, if not outright dishonesty. Nor does Trevor-Roper have much of an excuse. But the real culprit is François Genoud. David Irving tells how Genoud attempted to hoax him in the 1970s with a forgery of “Hitler’s Last Testament.”7 Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, “But it’s just what Hitler would have said, isn’t it?” He was evidently willing to perpetrate a hoax, thinking it permissible to fabricate the words of Hitler if it was what he believed Hitler “would have said.” His motives for doctoring the Table Talk may be unfathomable. Genoud was a very strange man with a colorful history: a Swiss banker and Nazi spy who laundered money for the Third Reich, a self-professed neo-Nazi even up to his suicide in 1996 (though, stranger still, he never supported the holocaust), a voracious purchaser and profiteer of Nazi archives, and an admitted financer of terrorists.

    There you go. Carrier says parts of Table Talk might be authentic. The parts covering up Xian participation in the Nazi party are the parts that were faked, twisted, or forged. The original German was in part deliberately mistranslated into French and English to deliberately change its meaning. To something a cultist would use to lie.

    They even know who did it and why, a Swiss Nazi sympathizer after the war.

    It is a Death Cult thing. Lie, lie, lie, lie some more. Pure Nazi tactics used by the American cultist perverion of Xianity. Which makes your kind modern day Nazioids.

    You can see how and why Hitler used Xianity. Something about religious fanatics makes them act like Nazis. You do realize that Goebbels popularized your tactic of Lie Big and Lie often. Oh nevermind, as a proven liar who cares what you say.

  130. Tom Marking says

    “Darwin abhored racism”

    The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould, 1996, p 417

    The common (and false) impression of Darwin’s egalitarianism arises largely from selective quotation. Darwin was strongly attracted to certain peoples often despised by Europeans, and some later writers have falsely extrapolated to a presumed general attitude. On the Beagle voyage, for example, he spoke highly of African blacks enslaved in Brazil:

    “It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies; I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti.”

    But toward other peoples, particularly the Fuegians of southern-most South America, Darwin felt contempt:

    “I believe if the world was searched, no lower grade of man could be found.”

    Elaborating later on the voyage, Darwin writes:

    “Their red skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gesticulation violent and without any dignity. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures placed in
    the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture, what pleasure in life some of the less gifted animals can enjoy? How much more reasonably it may be asked with respect to these men.”

    Yes, Virginia, your hero Darwin was a racist.

  131. Tom Marking says

    “Pure Nazi tactics used by the American cultist perverion of Xianity. Which makes your kind modern day Nazioids.”

    LOL. Dang, I guess Godwin’s Law really is true. Raven, is your knowledge of history so shallow that the Nazis are the only bad guys you know? Why not a Genghis Khanoid or an Attila the Hunoid?

    BTW, in post #97 you say:
    “Tom Marking is pathetic. Posting known forgeries to hide the truth.”

    Now in post #147 you say:
    “Carrier says parts of Table Talk might be authentic.”

    I’d say some cracks are beginning to appear in your argument. Also, I don’t hear any comments from you concerning the National Reich Church which was contradictory in almost everyway from Christianity.

  132. PA says

    I see your true colors
    shining through
    I see your true colors
    and that’s why I loathe you

    –C Lauper (with certain liberties taken)

  133. Ichthyic says

    Now, does the fact that this handshake took place mean that the British government was responsible for the Holocaust?

    an interesting thing to say, after choosing Chamberlain for the picture to try and make your point.

    Hitler, after all, is not solely responsible for the holocaust.

  134. SC says

    Michael Mann offers this analysis of Nazi religious voting constituencies in his 2004 comparative study Fascists (I have replaced actual references with “[reference]”), pages 186-9:

    “In the major national studies, easily the best predictor of Nazi voting is religion ([references]). Of all registered voters in July 1932 (including people who did not vote), about 38 percent of Protestants supported the Nazis, only 16 percent of Catholics – a big difference. The greater percentage of Protestants in an area, the greater its Nazi vote. In solid Catholic areas the Nazi vote was commonly below 10 percent, in solid Protestant areas it was commonly above 60 percent. All but seven of the 124 constituencies with the highest Nazi vote in 1930 were majority Protestant ([reference]). Even in the big cities, where the two faiths lived among each other, the religious impact was as important as class ([reference]). And in the small towns with a population of fewer than 25,000, where two-thirds of Germans lived, religion far exceeded class as a predictor of Nazi voting.

    Thus the electoral surge of the Nazis was disproportionately a surge among Protestants. Conversely, the collapse of the liberal and conservative parties in the face of the Nazi electoral surge was only a Protestant collapse. The two Catholic parties (the Center Party and the Bavarian BVP) managed to hold up their vote, which was correlated around .90 with the percentage of Catholics in a constituency. Thus Catholics in the Catholic areas barely wavered. Yet the three so-called bourgeois parties – the liberal DDP, the conservative DVP and the ultraconservative DNVP – had depended on Protestants. From 1928 the Nazis began to mop up much of these…

    Thus all other correlations reported here were only partial ones: It was overwhelmingly Protestant classes, Protestant veterans, Protestant students, a Protestant generation, and so on, which were drawn particularly toward Nazism. Strong Catholic communities were insulated against the charms of Nazism – just as a similar number of Germans were insulated inside cohesive ‘proletarian ghettos’. In the end neither ‘reds’ nor ‘blacks’ were untainted by authoritarianism. The Catholic parties supported reactionary authoritarianism after 1930, in order to head off what they believed to be the worse dual threats of fascism and Bolshevism. In 1932-3 they cooperated with Hitler…

    The importance of religion to Nazism has been recognized, but undertheorized. In general, scholars stress Catholic resistance to Nazism, but see Protestantism less as pro-Nazi than as ‘weaker’ than the Catholic Church, less able to resist ([reference]). There are also puzzles. The association between Nazism and Protestantism was not constant. Initially, the core Nazis, especially the core theorists, tended to be renegade Catholics (like Hitler) coming from the Vienna-Munich axis. And from the late 1930s renegade Catholics were to reassert themselves, being disproportionately involved in the worst excesses of Nazism (see my forthcoming volume). Nor was the relationship constant across Europe…So why at this particular stage did German Protestants support Nazism?

    The causal link runs less through theology or church strength than through the churches’ relation to the nation-state. The Catholic Church looked askance at the German state. Catholicism’s heartlands were in southern provinces incorporated fairly unwillingly into the Prussian-dominated Kaiserreich in the nineteenth century. The German Catholic Church was controlled from abroad and favored transnationalism, not ‘nation-statism’…Thus they had imbibed pan-German aspirations (the union of all Germans), not the Kleindeutsch (little German) strategy of Prussia. The Protestant Church – strictly, the Evangelical Church – had been in a complicated way the Established Church of Prussian Germany, and so was ‘nation-statist’ in an implicitly Kleindeutsch way…Their assemblies, pulpits, and publications supported the Kaiserreich and its official values of discipline, piety, order, and hierarchy. Weimar had removed the monarchy and most state controls, but not the government subsidies or the identification with the nation-state. Thus the Evangelical Church remained, in its traditions and expectations, rather ‘nation-statist’. It looked to the state to provide social order, positive Christian-German and mainly conservative values, and an active national social policy.

    But such a Christian conservative state no longer existed, and conservatives and Evangelicals were now searching for a stronger state capable of embodying German culture and morality. Few initially supported the Nazis. More drifted through volkisch or conservative organizations toward the Nazis. From the mid-1920s the irreligious Nazi leaders were surprised by a spate of Protestant churchmen endorsing the party from the pulpit and party platforms. Nazis in the small town of ‘Northeim’ studied by Allen (1965) responded by adding prayers and hymns to meetings, and they ran ‘Christian-National’ candidates for school board elections. Protestant themes attracted votes to the Nazis from the ‘bourgeois’ parties. The Nazis thus succeeded in splitting the Evangelical Church, as they could not the Catholic. The Evangelical ‘German Christian’ Nazi front organization won a two-thirds majority in the Evangelical Church election of July 1933. But it then overreached itself, proposing to expunge the whole of the (Jewish) Old Testament from the Bible! Nonetheless, over half the church remained ‘Nazi German Christian’, the rump forced to form an independent ‘Confessing Church’ ([references]). The affinity between Nazism and the Evangelical Church, evident in both membership and voting data, had an obvious ideological core: their common nation-statism. Since it was Protestant civil servants, Protestant students, Protestant veterans, and so on who were becoming Nazis, this doubled their nation-statism.

    But once an expansionist Reich was established, the Evangelical Church might not offer such ideological support. A powerful Austria no longer existed to block union of all Germans in a single Grossdeutsch state…My forthcoming volume shows a religious shift in the core Nazi constituency, from Protestant to (ex-)Catholic, occurring in the late 1930s as Nazism ‘radicalized’.”

  135. Ichthyic says

    The importance of religion to Nazism has been recognized, but undertheorized.

    that was very interesting.

    thanks, SC.

    IMO, it ends up underscoring the current links between evangelical protestantism and neo-conservative politics in the US. Something that has been carefully cultivated by the neocons for over 30 years now.

  136. Ichthyic says

    Why not a Genghis Khanoid or an Attila the Hunoid?

    because their rise to power was based on totally different social and political issues?

    are you so unfamiliar with history you wouldn’t realize this in making such a blatantly false comparison?

    pot-kettle?

  137. says

    Yes, Virginia, your hero Darwin was a racist.

    Reading. Comprehension. You might want to work on that.

    The passages incompletely quoted above about the peoples of Tierra del Fuego were a comment about their living conditions and their low-to-nonexistent development of both tools and what the Europeans would recognize as the trappings of civilization. Darwin was struck by how harsh their life was, and yet they were still just as human as he. If you have actually read the book you’ve just quote-mined, then you already know that Darwin and Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle had a harsh difference of view over these and other peoples encountered on their voyage – to Fitzroy, they were hardly more than animals; to Darwin, they were men, regardless of how savage they appeared and how unpleasant he found them or their circumstances, and there were important lessons to be drawn from that fact.

    Of course, acknowledging the full and true breadth of Darwin’s writing and the intent behind it would require something called “honesty”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. On blogs like this one.

  138. Tom Marking says

    “The passages incompletely quoted above about the peoples of Tierra del Fuego were a comment about their living conditions and their low-to-nonexistent development of both tools and what the Europeans would recognize as the trappings of civilization. Darwin was struck by how harsh their life was, and yet they were still just as human as he.”

    Nope, Eric, they were comments by Darwin on the Tierra del Fuegians themselves. Forgive me if I don’t believe your interpretations of Darwinian quotes that you don’t provide. But at least you didn’t claim that Stephen Jay Gould was a notorious Christian fundamentalist and therefore can’t be trusted. That would have really made my day.

  139. says

    Forgive me if I don’t believe your interpretations of Darwinian quotes that you don’t provide.

    Like I said, you need to work on reading comprehension.

    But at least you didn’t claim that Stephen Jay Gould was a notorious Christian fundamentalist and therefore can’t be trusted.

    Whether I agree with everything Gould thought on any given subject or not, I would certainly not characterize him as something he wasn’t. I leave the lies to dishonest hatemongering filth like you.

  140. JimV says

    In the spirit of the great story that Richard Dawkins tells, about an old biology professor who thanks a visiting lecturer for convincing him that he has been wrong about something for many years, I must say that I find some of Tom Marking’s arguments and supporting citations convincing.

    I first read the quotations in which Hitler professes his Christianity in the comments to Sam Harris’s Atheist Manifesto, and took them at face value. I have since seen them repeated several times, including in this thread. Now I see that they might be just self-serving political statements.

    The most convincing, and disturbing, aspect of this is that some of the new (to me) statements by Hitler which TM has quoted aren’t too dissimilar to my own views. Such as: transubstantiation being a ridiculous belief; and the number of conflicting religions and their ages being evidence against religion in general. If the latter statement was forged, could the forgers be any sort of orthodox Christians? If so, they were much cleverer than Mathis and his ilk.

    Maybe all of us humans, with our evolutionary kludged-up neuron structures, are capable of varying mixtures of rational and irrational thoughts, even Hitler.

  141. Charlie Foxtrot says

    Now, does the fact that this handshake took place mean that the British government was responsible for the Holocaust?

    On the truism that “For evil to win all is required that good men do nothing” – then – Yes.
    Chamberlin’s head-in-the-sand diplomacy certainly facilitated Hitler’s plans. The day after Chamberlin’s “Peace for our time” speech the Sudetenland was annexed for Lebensraum, and then less than a year later Hitler invaded Poland and started clearing the ghettos.

  142. Bubba Sixpack says

    Not a surprise to me. Hitler initiated his own “faith-based initiatives” — he started the practice wherein taxpayers pay for the Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany. Which is still in existence.

    Here’s another shocker for the clueless Ben Stein type dweebs of the world: atheists were put in the concentration camps.

  143. Ichthyic says

    And while we’re on the subject of photographic guilt by association here’s one you ought to check out:

    hello?

    anybody in there?

    there was a speech associated with the above photograph.

    did you read it?

    there is also a lecture by Dawkins associated with the presentation of the slide you linked to.

    did you listen to it?

    you sure are a champion of false analogy, aren’t ya?

  144. Sven DiMilo says

    a you sure are a champion of false analogy, aren’t ya?

    Or, just a dick.

  145. echidna says

    Sigh. Evil as Hitler was, he did not appear evil all the time. He was not a Hollywood character wearing a villain outfit. The Germanic population was devastated by the Treaty of Versailles, as vulnerable as Hansel and Gretel. Hitler spoke of home, family, church, and the restoration of the national economy and identity. This talk made him appear like a hero, hence the welcoming crowds wherever he went, and the accolades of the Church (terrified of communism, then the most likely alternative), as well as the Prince of Wales, Chamberlain and others.

    It is faulty historical hindsight to view the crowds or even individuals that welcomed Hitler as knowingly welcoming a slaughtering monster. The evidence for this lies in the fact that even the Jewish people were largely taken by surprise by the Holocaust. Although a few people saw it in time to escape, it is mainly In hindsight that you can see the danger signs appearing much earlier, but it must have been hard to distinguish deadly intentions from political propaganda against a backdrop of long-standing prejudice. If you saw such statements as warning signs, you would have fled when Martin Luther wrote his diatribes.

    As I see it, this photo is important, because it shows how “values” are used to gain the support of the population, even, perhaps especially, in the case of Hitler. He may have even meant it – he was certainly convincing enough. And anyone, such as the makers of Expelled, who says that Darwin, and science in general, set the stage for Hitler is both ignorant and a fool. Worse, if history teaches us anything, it is that vulnerable people are easily exploited, and are inclined to believe someone who holds out hope. Lying to vulnerable people, holding out promises of salvation (physical or spiritual), is not ethical.

  146. Tom Marking says

    “did you listen to it?
    you sure are a champion of false analogy, aren’t ya?”

    It’s a joke. I knew someone would get all bent out of shape about it. Don’t worry, I’m not claiming Dawkins is a Nazi or anything like that, even though I have been called a “Nazioid”, “hate mongering filth”, etc., etc. As a matter of fact I haven’t called anyone a Nazi on this board, not atheists, not Christians, not Dawkins, not P.Z. Meyers, not any of the posters, and I intend to keep it that way.

  147. Tom Marking says

    “If the latter statement was forged, could the forgers be any sort of orthodox Christians?”

    Also, why would a supposedly pro-Nazi forger (Genaud) make up statements that were anti-Christian and put them in Hitler’s mouth? If he were pro-Nazi he would have tended to minimize Hitler’s conflict with the religion of the conquering British, American, and French allies in order to make him seem more conciliatory in regards to Christianity. In other words, he would have tried to make Hitler out to be not such a bad guy after all in the eyes of the western allies. Making up anti-Christian comments and placing them in Hitler’s mouth has exactly the opposite effect.

  148. Schmeer says

    Tom Marking,
    No, you have just quoted lies that show Hitler to be an atheist. When your lies are exposed you perform some hand waving to explain away your dishonesty. Hitler’s comments were not anti-Christian in the corrected quotes, they were Protestant. That would certainly not make Hitler an atheist. And in light of the popularity of Hitler among Protestants in Germany that is very revealing.

    Hitler’s rise to power was also not as easy as we may sometimes believe. He was actually arrested for after an attempted coup in the Beer Hall Putsch and spent five years in prison(wrote Mein Kampf) before his successful rise to power.

    So it is reasonable to assume that many Catholic Germans and others would have hated Hitler and expressed feelings like many liberals do today concerning modern political figures. *gasp* Another parallel between today’s Evangelicals and Nazis.

    You are a liar. You have repeatedly been a dishonest quote miner throughout this thread.

  149. Colugo says

    “Hitler’s comments were not anti-Christian in the corrected quotes, they were Protestant.”

    Protestantism does not reject Paul of Tarsus. Positive Christianity does.

    This discussion has gone round and round but one issue has already been resolved: the Nazi elite, with some exceptions, were generally followers of Positive Christianity, which emphasizes the Aryan Christ’s opposition to the Jews rather than his martyrdom and rejects Paul.

  150. Tom Marking says

    “No, you have just quoted lies that show Hitler to be an atheist.”

    Please give us the number of the post where I claimed that Hitler was an atheist. I’ve never asserted that, not one time. And if you cannot provide everyone with the post number then it’s clear that you are the liar concerning that topic.

    And as yet, not one bloody comment on the National Reich Church whose existence doesn’t depend on Hitler’s Table Talk at all. It’s obvious that if Hitler was an atheist he wouldn’t be promoting a national church.

  151. Ichthyic says

    I knew someone would get all bent out of shape about it.

    ah, so you confirm you’re nothing but a troll.

    got it.

    frankly I don’t care what you call people, you posted that obviously to further your point of “association by picture” that you had raised earlier in #140.

    if you wish to abandon that point, please do so without trying to pretend it was all a joke, and generally being a disingenuous ass.

  152. Tom Marking says

    “your point of “association by picture””

    It’s not my point. It’s PZ’s point in the original picture.

  153. Ichthyic says

    now you’re being an ass again, you damn well know what i meant, since i pointed to the exact post you originally made the point in.

    here, would you like me to repeat the example of the point you were raising in #140 again, just for you?

    Now, does the fact that this handshake took place mean that the British government was responsible for the Holocaust?

    you constructed a strawman (several in fact), of what PZ was presenting in this thread, and proceeded to try and tear them down.

    then you made an even more pathetic attempt at a strawman, by linking to a picture of one of Dakwin’s lectures, and when called on it, tried to make it seem as if it was nothing but a joke.

    pathetic.

  154. says

    So the so-called forgery replaces “Christianity is an invention of sick brains” with “Christianity teaches transubstantiation which is the maddest thing ever concocted”. It doesn’t matter, it’s still a criticism of Christianity from Adolf who is supposedly pro-Christian.

    And this piece of demagoguery by Tom Marking shouldn’t go unpunished either.

    First of all, is the paraphrasing grammar here willfully befuddling for possible future use, or is it just a side-effect of the writer’s overall sloppiness? It is the forgery that inserts the “sick brains” where the (supposed) original blasts transubstantiation, not the other way round. But that’s just an aside.

    While Luther still insisted on the “is” in “this is my blood” etc. and supported, as a proponent of consubstantiation, by and large a doctrine similar to transubstantiation, the majority of the “reformed” Protestant churches followed Zwingli, Calvin, Müntzer, Die Täufer, and others by rejecting transubstantiation wholesale in no uncertain terms (word choice in reformation disputes are quite edifying).

    So, no: To claim that to attack Christianity as “an invention of sick brains” and to say that transubstantiation “is the maddest thing ever concocted” would amount to the same thing is either outrageously uninformed or blatantly dishonest. But it illuminates the general argument’s overall quality either way.

    ^_^J.

  155. says

    … and of course would Positive Christianity also violently reject transubstatiation for related but still different reasons. Transubstantiation as a sacrament comes with an agenda: the repetition, as opposed to a mere reenactment or commemoration, of the original sacrifice (with all the power this entails for the priestly caste, who becomes “one” with Christ in the eucharist). The sacrifice has to be “renewed” in order to deal with perpetually added and freshly committed sins, and that’s why confession and penance are mandatory before receiving the eurachist.

    Since Positive Christianity—and Hitler’s speeches and quotes lean heavily in this direction, as do the complementing elements of crude paganism summoned for this cause—rejects the sacrificial element wholesale, Hitler’s alleged attack on transubstantiation would fit right into this mindset.

    ^_^J.

  156. Hematite says

    Xuul (#45):

    Stop being disingenuous, folks. Why even mention right wing Christians in the article unless it was intended to take the analogy all the way to Godwinland? It’s meaningless otherwise.

    The post works as counterpoint to the recent Ben Stein “ZOMG!! Hitler was a Darwinist!” rhetoric. Not that Stein is likely to be stopped by mere facts, they haven’t had any impact before. The reference to right wing Christian groups doesn’t seem inappropriate in that context; they’re Stein’s primary audience. Pointing out that they have a lot in common with Hitler when their spokesman has been trying to foist him on atheists is just tit-for-tat, pot meet kettle. Yes, saying that modern Christians are Hitlerian is silly; just as silly as saying atheists are. Most of the thread is an utter waste of time and I’m grumpy about feeling obliged to wade through it.

    What a shame that we’ve got a good hundred posts in the thread that completely failed to grasp that important context. So yes, Xuul, I agree with you about the comments even though I don’t think that’s what PZ meant.

    Kate (#119):

    I’m no history expert, but didn’t Hilter come to power as a result of the socio-political conditions of the 20’s and 30’s? Hardships and humiliations resulting from their defeat at the end of WWI? It would just be the case that most of the country was xian (like any other western country).

    Indeed. Hitler was a politician, any Christian rhetoric he used is hardly surprising considering he led a Christian country. The quote in PZ’s post is standard religious-conservative boilerplate, it would fit right in in any Western country in the last hundred years.

  157. Ichthyic says

    they’re Stein’s primary audience. Pointing out that they have a lot in common with Hitler

    …or at least with Nazi supporters.

    and you wouldn’t be the only one to conclude that. check the latest thread for the link to Dorchen’s takedown of Stein:

    This man, this Ben Stein, who invokes American-style Volkische moral purity, pretending support for the earning class while favoring economic policies rewarding the ruling class at the expense of his vaunted “heartland,” who impugns the patriotism of those who dare question the noble intent of our leaders, who sneers at intellectual “elites,” this Ben Stein who champions a psuedo-scientific, politically oriented narrative of creation that would have made Himmler proud – can there be any doubt that Ben Stein, had he been born a German gentile, would have been a spokesman for National Socialism? I don’t think anyone with a grasp of how academia, particularly science (particularly medicine), was taken over by quacks, politicos and party-line liars in the Germany of the 1930s can doubt it.

    You may say it’s rude to point it out, but I’m not the one who stomped all over Dachau calling Darwin a Nazi. And I’m not calling Ben Stein a Nazi. All I’m saying is: had he had the opportunity, he would have been a wholehearted Nazi supporter. All his current public positions indicate the validity of such an assessment. And he wouldn’t have had to believe in Darwinian evolution to be one, either. All he would have had to believe, or say he believed, was that Germany and the purity of its traditions were in danger from an internal elitist liberal enemy.

    See? Then he could go on to say that, in academia, the liberal elites, tainted with deranged or at best biased and totally unfair intellectual sophistry, were stealing jobs from more deserving scientists with wholesome beliefs. That the scientists with all the good ideas had been, in effect, Expelled from the scientific profession by a cabal of deceivers who control scientific knowledge.

    All Ben Stein would have had to say to support the Nazis back then is what he’s saying right now.

  158. Hematite says

    Tom Marking (#138):

    See, that’s two people who actually like me. [john j] and my mom. :)

    I do find it ironic that the very people who have recently been on the receiving end of the tar-with-Nazism brush via Mr. Stein are so quick to grab the brush themselves and tar their opponents.

    Tom, I respect that you offer evidence for your position (although I don’t want to comment on the Table Talk issue) and that you are willing to argue counter to the prevailing opinion around here. I don’t respect that you argue in bad faith and enjoy destroying straw men of your opponent’s position. Say hi to your mom from me.

  159. Hematite says

    Hrm. I messed up the quoting in #179 but I’m sure you can figure it out. My part starts “Tom, ”

    Re #178: Thanks Ichthyic, I guess I’ve got something to look forward to. I’m catching up in chronological order.

  160. says

    This comes as no surprise since we studied WWII and Nazi Germany heavily in high school history. We even had the opportunity to watch some of his speeches and other films that were both enigmatic and sickening.

    After visiting Dachau in 1976, I realized that the films we saw in high school were only the less sickening highlights of the true insanity of the Holocaust. The films they showed at Dachau could send an individual with an exceptionally strong stomach to the latrine to puke – particularly some of the experiments they did on humans.

    The Final Solution was just the means to the end of what the Mother Church had been spouting for the greatest part of two millennia – her very own abortion of the value of human life turned into a sadistic and notorious reality.

  161. Nick Gotts says

    A few points:

    The rancour of this discussion at some points perhaps illustrates the wisdom of Godwin’s Law.

    Any argument about “what Hitler believed” runs into a fundamental problem: Hitler loathed and despised rationality, so if his expressed beliefs contradicted each other, this would not have bothered him in the slightest. It seems fairly clear he was a theist – he believed himself “chosen by Providence”, and that he was not a conventional Christian, although he never repudiated Catholicism, nor did the Catholic Church repudiate him.

    A key stage in Hitler’s establishment of his dictatorship was the passing of the Enabling Act of March 1933, which gave the cabinet power to legislate without Reichstag approval for 4 years. The support of the BVP (Catholic Centre Party) was essential to getting the necessary majority for the Act. To gain this support, Hitler promised Ludwig Kaas, the Catholic priest who led the BVP, protection of Catholics’ civil and religious liberties, religious schools and the retention of civil servants affiliated with the BVP. He may also have promised to negotiate the Concordat with the Vatican which was later agreed.

    Hitler made extensive use of traditional Catholic anti-semitism in carrying out his conquests and the Holocaust itself: Austria was preadapted to Nazism by a clerical-fascist regime; the puppet leader of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso, was another Catholic priest; the Ustashi regime in Croatia combined mass-murder of Jews, Roma and Serbs with forced conversion of other Serbs to Catholicism; Horthy’s regime in Hungary was strongly Catholic; many Polish, Ukranian and Baltic Catholics joined enthusiastically in rounding up and murdering Jews – as indeed did many Orthodox and Protestant Christians, although of course some in all these denominations risked their lives to protect them.

    It has already been noted, but bears frequent repetition: don’t rely on anything David Irving says.

  162. Tom Marking says

    “The Final Solution was just the means to the end of what the Mother Church had been spouting for the greatest part of two millennia – her very own abortion of the value of human life turned into a sadistic and notorious reality.”

    How do you explain the millions of Christians in countries like the U.K. and the United States who were fighting against the Nazis and helped to bring an end to that regime? Were they not part of the Mother Church? Were only the Nazis the true Christians?

  163. says

    The rancour of this discussion at some points perhaps illustrates the wisdom of Godwin’s Law.

    There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Godwin’s Rule. Let’s take a look at what Mike Godwin actually said –

    “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

    It’s a comment on the path of increasingly inflamed rhetoric. It doesn’t actually apply here, since the topic from the start was the very real connection between the Christian political structure and the Nazi one, and the very real similarities between the goals and rhetoric of the Nazis and of their counterparts on the the modern Evangelical side.

  164. Nick Gotts says

    Re #183. Thanks – I stand corrected. I’d heard a version that was prescriptive rather than descriptive, something like “As soon as a comparison with Hitler or the Nazis is made in an Internet discussion, the subject must be changed.”

  165. Kseniya says

    Yeah… or “The first person who equates his opponent with Hitler automatically loses.”

  166. Pablo says

    Nick – that’s a common approach to it, although it is often taken further in that the person who uses the Hitler/Nazi reference is presumed to lose the argument (that’s even mentioned on Wikipedia).

    I tend to disagree. I can handle the generality that the person who invokes the comparison can be considered to have lost, BUT I would also say that this is trumped by the person who claims to win based on Godwin’s Law.

    It kind of comes down to, we can all see that you are resorting to desparate measures when invoking Hitler. However, it is even more desparate to claim victory as a result.

    So as long as you don’t say anything about it, you can be considered to win the argument by this variation of Godwin’s Law. However, as soon as you bring it up, you lose.

  167. Tom Marking says

    “It has already been noted, but bears frequent repetition: don’t rely on anything David Irving says.”

    You might want to tell that to Richard C. Carrier who uses David Irving as his 7th reference. IMHO that fact alone speaks volumes about Carrier’s credibility when it comes to these alleged “forgeries”. And of course, it is the reliance on Carrier by many folks in this group which causes them to send the epithet “liar” my way.

    BTW, this is what Carrier has to say about Irving:
    http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

    “Irving is infamous as a ‘holocaust denier,’ though in truth he does not deny the holocaust happened, only that Hitler knew of it.”

    He puts the term holocaust denier in quotes as if there is no such thing. Are you folks sure you want to be associating yourselves with Carrier?

  168. Pablo says

    No, Tom, he puts holocaust denier in quotes because he was called one (that’s what others said, hence the quotes) despite the fact he isn’t.

  169. johannes says

    @ 151,

    The German term “evangelisch” doesn’t translate into evangelical. It just means protestant as opposed to catholic, and is used to describe the various German state-churches, regardless of their Lutheran or Calvinist views on transsubstantion. There might be fundamentalist or evangelical strains inside the state-church, called “pietist”or “evangelikal” in German, but they were and are a minority.

  170. Tom Marking says

    “I don’t respect that you argue in bad faith and enjoy destroying straw men of your opponent’s position”

    I actually haven’t commented on P.Z.’s initial argument. I’m not actually sure it’s even been stated succinctly. But, correct me if I’m wrong, it seems to go something like this:

    Premise 1: Hitler was a Nazi.

    Premise 2: Hitler said
    “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”.

    Premise 3: Right-wing American Christians say exactly the same thing today.

    Conclusion: Right-wing American Christians are Nazis.
    Q.E.D.

    In a nutshell is that the argument? If so it’s so incredibly weak that it needs no strawman. It can be blown away by any counter-example you’d care to think of.

    Example:
    Premise 1: Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.

    Premise 2: Neil Armstrong said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

    Premise 3: My neighbor Ralph said exactly the same thing.

    Conclusion: My neighbor Ralph was the first man to walk on the moon.
    Q.E.D.

  171. SC says

    johannes,

    Aside from my brief introduction, my post @ #151 was a quotation from Michael Mann’s book Fascists. The portion of that paragraph (on page 188, beginning with “The causal link…”) that was replaced by an ellipsis reads:

    “It was actually a federation of various provincial Lander churches belonging to three Protestant denominations, Lutheran (the majority), Reform, and United. From the Reformation these churches had been headed in each German mini-state by its local ruler. After national unification (1871) they were administered and financed by each provincial Land government.”

    I left this section out because reproducing this long quotation was quite a bit of work, this section added little to the analysis and contained several italicized words as well as symbols (there’s supposed to be an umlaut above the a in Lander) that I don’t know how to create here, and I was frankly to lazy to include it. I did not mean to imply an equivalence between this Evangelical federation and contemporary evangelicals in the US, but I can see how leaving this section out would allow for this misreading, so I appreciate your clarification.

    That clarified, what follows – referring to the major Protestant denominations rather than a fringe sect – is telling. It would be nice if people in these discussions would engage more with the substantive evidence provided in numerous scholarly works on support for Nazism.

  172. SC says

    That should read “too lazy,” and evidently also applies to my proofreading.

  173. Tom Marking says

    “he puts holocaust denier in quotes because he was called one (that’s what others said, hence the quotes) despite the fact he isn’t.”

    David Irving is a well-known Holocaust denier who has even pleaded guilty to such a charge. If Carrier doesn’t even know that, then that raises all kinds of red flags concerning his “research”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm

    “Holocaust denier Irving is jailed

    British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989.

    “I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” he told the court in the Austrian capital.”
    .
    .
    .

  174. Kseniya says

    Yes, Irving is well-known, infamously so. Even I’ve heard of him, and know of his troubles with the law. Perhaps he has seen the light, and is no longer a Holocaust denier. Perhaps he still maintains that Hitler did not know of it, even though this claim is highly improbable.

    Either way, Irving’s retraction was made in 1989, and Carrier’s comment was writen in 2002, so it’s possible that Carrier’s comment – though it would have been grossly inaccurate had it been made ten years earlier – was entirely correct when it was made.

    Conclusion: Right-wing American Christians are Nazis.

    Tom, I find your conclusion to be a little black-and-white – hence the strawman charge. I’d say it’s more like:

    Conclusion: Right-wing American Christians are knee-deep in fascist ideology and most of them don’t even know it.

    Or ankle-deep, if you like. Or up to their eyeballs. It’s just a question of degree. In any case, file under: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

    I think that’s a valid concern. FWIW, I consider the photo, which was taken years before the atrocities began, a distraction from the valid underlying point.

    It sure has sparked a discussion, though.

  175. says

    No, Tom, he puts holocaust denier in quotes because he was called one (that’s what others said, hence the quotes) despite the fact he isn’t.

    That’s part of that whole “reading comprehension” thing that Tom has trouble with. As an example, take a look at this –

    it seems to go something like this:

    Premise 1: Hitler was a Nazi.

    Premise 2: Hitler said “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”.

    Premise 3: Right-wing American Christians say exactly the same thing today.

    Conclusion: Right-wing American Christians are Nazis.
    Q.E.D.

    The actual conclusion is more like “Since right-wing American Christians demonstrate the same kind of rhetoric, appeals to illogic, claims of science without actually using it, bigotry, hate- and fear-mongering and have clearly stated and pursued many of the same goals as Nazis they clearly represent a similar kind of threat to the modern world that the Nazis did in their day and must be confronted and opposed.” But that doesn’t make nearly as good a reductionistic sound-bite as the conclusion Tom offers, and therefore doesn’t as neatly promote –

    Premise 1: Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.

    Premise 2: Neil Armstrong said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

    Premise 3: My neighbor Ralph said exactly the same thing.

    Conclusion: My neighbor Ralph was the first man to walk on the moon.

    – this grotesquely laughable strawman (that Tom said he didn’t need, but hastily threw out anyway despite the fact that it wasn’t even a good attempt).

  176. Colugo says

    “Right-wing American Christians are knee-deep in fascist ideology and most of them don’t even know it.”

    “right-wing American Christians … clearly represent a similar kind of threat to the modern world that the Nazis did in their day and must be confronted and opposed.”

    Dominionism/Reconstructionism is not fascist. I hate to be a stickler about labels, but not all bad movements, ideologies, and regimes are correctly characterized as fascist. Fascism is just one form of malign politics.

    Aside: If it took power D/R would actually be worse than some forms of fascism, including early Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism. I wouldn’t say that of mainstream evangelicals, who are often conflated with D/R.

    A “similar kind of threat to the modern world”? This list of right wing Christian characteristics in no way uniquely links it to Nazism; rather, these are feature of many undemocratic ideologies – which do not even constitute a family of related ideologies.

    We’re all familiar with these increasingly employed tactics of contemporary political discourse: 1) associate political adversaries with Hitler, 2) mobilize political allies against the imminent threat of a new Nazi-like regime and Holocaust-like atrocities. Anyone can play.

  177. Tom Marking says

    “Since right-wing American Christians demonstrate the same kind of rhetoric, appeals to illogic, claims of science without actually using it, bigotry, hate- and fear-mongering and have clearly stated and pursued many of the same goals as Nazis they clearly represent a similar kind of threat to the modern world that the Nazis did in their day and must be confronted and opposed”

    I’d say you have your own reading comprehension problems. What you’ve presented here is not a conclusion, but a set of premises and then a conclusion as follows:

    Premise 1: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like rhetoric

    Premise 2: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like appeals to illogic

    Premise 3: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like claims of science

    Premise 4: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like bigotry

    Premise 5: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like hate-mongering

    Premise 6: Right-wing American Christians have Nazi-like fear-mongering

    Premise 7: Right-wing American Christians have stated and pursued Nazi-like goals

    Conclusion: Right-wing American Christians represent a Nazi-like threat and must be opposed

    Well, that’s a lovely argument. Unfortunately it is not P.Z.’s argument from the initial post since he doesn’t mention any of these 7 premises, let alone provide any evidence for each of them. Instead, the only premises he uses are a quotation from Hitler and an assertion that right-wing Christians say the same thing (without any evidence supporting that).

    You do realize that you’re expected to provide evidence for the premises used in your argument, don’t you? So far I count 11 posts by Eric Saveau on this thread with a total number of referenced URLs of exactly zero.

  178. Colugo says

    Let me amend what I wrote: the listed subset of right wing Christian characteristics isn’t even unique to undemocratic ideologies. It’s simply a set of appeals pandering mostly to destructive sentiments.

  179. brokenSoldier says

    Dominionism/Reconstructionism is not fascist. I hate to be a stickler about labels, but not all bad movements, ideologies, and regimes are correctly characterized as fascist. Fascism is just one form of malign politics.

    Posted by: Colugo | May 6, 2008 2:22 PM

    (bold mine for emphasis)

    100% agreement here, and this is something that goes on way too much in political discourse today. If these people who are so quick to label oppressive or dictatorial leaders or systems as fascist or link them to the Nazis would actually read some of the founding documents to these different belief structures, they’d recognize that almost every single one of them was borne out of political and ideological reaction unique to their respective surrounding situations, and as such had very wide-ranging differences. Often – a perfect example being Communism – our perception of them ends up miles away from their original composition and intentions. To try this out, read Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and see how well it squares with what the USSR became – the difference shows how badly the passage of time and manipulation of language by political opportunists can distort history.

    When it comes to these mis-labelings, George Orwell said it best in an article titled “What is Fascism?”:

    …the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.

    http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

  180. Nick Gotts says

    Either way, Irving’s retraction was made in 1989, and Carrier’s comment was writen in 2002, so it’s possible that Carrier’s comment – though it would have been grossly inaccurate had it been made ten years earlier – was entirely correct when it was made. Kseniya

    Not so: the original claim was made in 1989, the retraction at his trial in 2006. In 2000, he sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel in the UK in 2000 over claims that he was a Holocaust denier. Despite the fact that UK law makes defence against a libel claim very difficult, he got comprehensively trashed. Anyone relying on his word in 2002 is a fool at best.

  181. Tom Marking says

    “I hate to be a stickler about labels, but not all bad movements, ideologies, and regimes are correctly characterized as fascist. Fascism is just one form of malign politics.
    Posted by: Colugo”

    “100% agreement here”

    100% agreement here as well.

    “When it comes to these mis-labelings, George Orwell said it best in an article titled “What is Fascism?”:”

    That quote from Orwell is hilarious and spot on.

  182. SC says

    Colugo,

    I appreciate what you’re saying, but think it is important – if we’re to establish that a given movement does or does not qualify as “fascist” – to be explicit about the definition of fascism we’re using. In the work I cited above, for example, Mann discusses several differing definitions of fascism, ranging from the very narrow (which would include only the Italian original) to the very broad. His own definition: “fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.” He includes the following elements: nationalism, statism, transcendence, cleansing, and paramilitarism. His definition is broad enough to encompass movements in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Spain arising during the same period. Others have slightly different definitions. In Spain, for example, there has been a long-running debate concerning whether of not Falangism was technically fascist, as it lacked, relatively, the revolutionary impulse of the other fascist movements – the drive to remake people and society, as well as some other traits.

    In his conclusion, Mann argues that contemporary movements that are sometimes referred to as fascist don’t fit the bill. With regard to some religious movements, for example, he writes (page 374):

    “…neither Islamism nor Hindu nationalism is really fascist. This is for a simple reason: Unlike fascism, they really are political religions. They offer a sacred, but not a secular ideology. They most resemble fascism in deploying the means of moral murder, but the transcendence, the state, the nation, and the new man they seek are not this-worldly. We might call this ‘sacred fascism’, of course, though perhaps it is better to recognize that the human capacity for ferocious violence, cleansing, and totalitarian goals can have diverse sources and forms, to which we should give different labels – fascist, communist, imperialist, religious, ethno-nationalist, and so on.”

    I’m not entirely convinced by his argument here (for one thing, the worldly/other-worldly distinction isn’t in my view so clear in empirical movements), and would be somewhat wary of its application to Dominionism. I would have to read significantly more about the developing ideology and practice of Dominionism to understand its similarities or differences with historical fascism, but it does seem to me that in this case an argument can be made that, depending on one’s definition, referring to it as fascist or proto-fascist might have some substantive basis. However, I wouldn’t spend much time trying to establish this, since I agree with you that, regardless, it is a very scary political movement.

  183. Kseniya says

    Colugo and Nick: Corrections noted, understood, and accepted. I misread the meaning of the passage Tom quoted regarding the date of Irving’s conviction and retraction. No wonder I remember the outcome of trial – it happened when I was 22, not 5… LMAO. (I figured I must have read about it a couple of years ago, which would have explained why the memory was relatively fresh.)

    SC’s last paragraph — specifically this: “…an argument can be made that, depending on one’s definition, referring to it as fascist or proto-fascist might have some substantive basis” — nicely expands on what I was getting at (but didn’t bother to explain) with my Conclusion in #194. However, I do confess that the Orwell line clear applies as well. Maybe I should stop trying to post anything substantive until my brain comes back online… LOL.

  184. Matt Penfold says

    “Not so: the original claim was made in 1989, the retraction at his trial in 2006. In 2000, he sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel in the UK in 2000 over claims that he was a Holocaust denier. Despite the fact that UK law makes defence against a libel claim very difficult, he got comprehensively trashed. Anyone relying on his word in 2002 is a fool at best.”

    Well English law does allow for an absolute defence against a libel tort, and that is if you can prove what you said was true. Lipstadt did that and them some. The Judge concluded that Irving was indeed a holocaust denier and therefore could not be libelled by being called one.

  185. rusty wilson says

    Funny, Hitler was a socialist as was the National Socialist Party. Notice the date? It was during his rise to power. He duped the church in a switch a rue so that he could put in left wing policies.
    Just read his work. His intent was to replace religion with the state. He was anti religion, not pro religion. He was a leftist as were the Nazis.
    Oh, and this was not a religious endorsement, it was merely a correction to the lie that was portrayed. (the lie being Hitler was right wing and religious.)

  186. Zarquon says

    He was a leftist as were the Nazis.

    Only the insane, the deluded, or pathological liars repeat this piece of stupidity.

  187. johannes says

    > In Spain, for example, there has been a long-running
    > debate concerning whether of not Falangism was technically
    > fascist, as it lacked, relatively, the revolutionary
    > impulse of the other fascist movements – the drive to
    > remake people and society, as well as some other traits.

    Falangism had the “revolutionary impulse” until Franco merged it with ultra-conservative, clericalist and royalist Carlism by force, much to the chagrin of both Falangists and Carlists.

    To make things perfectly absurd, some Carlist leaders tried to convert their movement to Titoism in the sixties and seventies, ending up with a catholic, monarchist form of communism. Needlesss to say, it did not work too well…

  188. SC says

    johannes,

    Quite so. I was speaking of Franco’s Movimiento Nacional, but sloppy in my choice of terms. Also, when I said “lacked,” I meant not that this impulse was completely absent from the broader movement, but that it was arguably suppressed by more conservative rightist elements to a greater extent in Spain than elsewhere.

    All of this raises another important issue, beyond the definitional problem I noted above. When characterizing a complex movement (e.g., as fascist or nonfascist), we need to determine its boundaries and who represents it at any given time. Generally not an easy task.

  189. Alec Peltzer says

    Ths s sch grt rsrc tht y r prvdng nd y gv t wy fr fr. I njy sng wbsts tht ndrstnd th vl f prvdng prm rsrc fr fr. I trly lvd rdng yr pst. Thnks!