Why political systems based on atheism kill several times more citizens

[Dr Adequate]

Oh, plumjam's lying about Hitler now.

Here's some quotes from Hitler.

Quotes where not explicitly attributed may be found in Mein Kampf.

---

"I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord." --- Adolf Hitler

"The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level of the higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness. To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator." --- Adolf Hitler

"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape." --- Adolf Hitler

"It is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if ... Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions." --- Adolf Hitler

"When He [Jesus] found it necessary He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests. But at that time Christ was nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards the Jews; whereas our modern Christians enter into party politics and when elections are being held they debase themselves to beg for Jewish votes. They even enter into political intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of their own Christian nation." --- Adolf Hitler

"Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise." --- Adolf Hitler

"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." --- Adolf Hitler

"Of course, one doesn't discuss such a question with the Jews... Their very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image in His creation." --- Adolf Hitler

"Anyhow, the Jew has attained the ends he desired... the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve." --- Adolf Hitler

"And only for such action as is undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to be shed once again. Before God, because we are sent into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread." --- Adolf Hitler

The most devoted Protestant could stand side by side with the most devoted Catholic in our ranks without having his conscience disturbed in the slightest as far as concerned his religious convictions. The bitter struggle which both waged in common against the wrecker of Aryan humanity taught them natural respect and esteem." --- Adolf Hitler

"Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. Be just, as Thou hast always been just... Lord, bless our struggle." --- Adolf Hitler

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work." --- Adolf Hitler (Speech, Reichstag, 1936)

"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 only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in his might and seized the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before that it was for this that he had to shed his blood on the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice..." --- Adolf Hitler (Speech, April 12 1922)

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." --- Adolf Hitler (Speech, April 26, 1933)

 

[Dr Adequate]

And here's a question for plumjam --- why is it that you can't make your point without lying and lying and lying and lying and lying, whereas I can make my point by telling the truth?

 

[DOC]

Oh, plumjam's lying about Hitler now.

Here's some quotes from Hitler.

Quotes where not attributed may be found in Mein Kampf

---


"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." --- Adolf Hitler (Speech, April 26, 1933)

This quote is such a joke. Read the Book "Hitler Youth". And you'll see pictures of German school age students of that era learning to throw mock hand grenades and other weapon training. The Nazi schools were basically a boot camp and propaganda outlet for what was to come. That is why there was such conflict between the Catholic Church and the Nazis about the "Hitler Youth" program. A priest even got killed according to the book.

Also read the Book "Hitler Table Talk" and you'll discover the real Hitler. The one 60,000,000 dead found out about the hard way. And not the master of propaganda and demonic persuasion. More people should have listened to Churchill earlier. He wasn't fooled by the charade.

 

[articulett]

DOC, do you just let anyone dump crap in your head if they plug in the words god.

Nazi belt buckle (it says "god is with us") and loads of religious memorabalia (get thyself a clue.) http://nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-hitler-was-atheist.html

When you find out the people you have been trusting have been filling your heads with lies, are you going to come back and apologize?

 

[articulett]

Of course, it's possible that plum is a Protestant. Many of them don't think anything Catholic is "Christian."

It would help if their invisible savior was clear since none of them seem to agree on who is and isn't a christian.

 

[Damien Evans]

come off it, Hitler was never a genuine Christian, he had little real interest in religion. If he had been a genuine Christian he would have loved his fellow man as himself, regardless of jew, christian, gypsy or anything else

What, like all those medieval Popes? Or were they not "genuine christians" either?

 

[SomeGuy]

Hey if you can claim nazi's weren't theist, than I'm going to play the card that communists weren't atheists.

the Nazis did try to use the population's belief in God to their own ends. Not a single senior Nazi was a sincere believer in God. If any of you can furnish me with a quote from Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Bormann, Speer, Heydrich or any of the rest of them which shows anything other than a possibly useful use of God in some political speech, then I'd be intrigued

The communists tried to use the population's anger with the church to their own ends. Not a single senior communist was a sincere atheist. If any of you can furnish me with a quote from Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro or any of the rest of them which shows anything other than a possibily useful use of the anger towards the church in some political speech, then I'd be intrigued.

 

[blobru]

crikey, i'm not especially pro jew, but I never originallly brought up St John Chrysostom, and if he was as anti-jewish as you claim then he was obviously mistakenly canonised... which is not difficutl to believe seeing as many Popes were just Popes through being bought to that position through influence and money.
So St John Chrysostom hated Jews, and so did Hitler... how much further are we down the path to sorting out your salvation?

If his canonization was a mistake, his sainthood should be revoked. But don't hold your breath. (I should also mention he's Orthodox, so not an issue of papal venality).
And as others have pointed put, he's not the only "genuine Christian" who hated Jews (Martin Luther, St. Augustine; many NT authors, converted Jews, weren't too thrilled with Jews who didn't convert).

But the real problem with all of this, as I see it, is contained in the OP. You appear to want to split history into theists and atheists, do a bodycount, and see who's worse. I think that's misguided. How many people were killed by Christians? by Christian Nazis? by non-Christian Nazis? by Communists? by Muslims? by Jews? by Buddhists? by Hindus? by Primitives? by Pagans? by Theists? by Atheists? by pizza delivery men? by dog catchers? -- A whole bunch, unfortunately (although the last two groups come off considerably better than the rest -- maybe there's a lesson there).

The origin of all this terror is not, as Elentar has already demonstrated (posts #56 & #102), "atheism", is not "lack of belief", or even "belief"; it is "too much belief". Too much belief in the State. Too much belief in the Leader. Too much belief in God. Too much belief in any dogma justifies any atrocity to combat any evil the believer can imagine -- from witch trials to colonial massacres to party purges to terrorism. That's why many choose to reject all beliefs but a simple one: "doubt!" Ask questions. I don't care if the guy calls himself the Pope or the President or the 2nd coming of Jesus *****ng Christ -- ask questions. This is skepticism. And it's why you'll run into a lot of questions on this board. Because skeptics see no reason to repeat the rather obvious mistakes of history.

Now as for "my salvation": Never heard of it -- is that a balm for stigmata?

 

[Darat]

If anyone wishes to discuss Hitler's atheism/religious beliefs or lack of I would recommend this very, very good thread from many a year ago (Ed) Hitler's Atheism as a starting point.

 

[Foster Zygote]

so you see yourself as a "Skeptic" yet believe every word uttered by Hitler

I doubt that Ducky believes every word uttered by Hitler any more than he believes every word uttered by Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot.

 

[Foster Zygote]

i'm a non-jerry springer guest human being, and I have a knowledge of history that means i know Adolf Hitler was not motivated by Christianity...

Hitler may not have been motivated by Christianity as you know it, but he was a theist not an atheist. Nazism was not based on Christianity, but then Communism was not based on atheism. You cannot blame atheism for the crimes of Communism any more than you can blame Christianity for the crimes of Hitler.

maybe some of you can contradict me by reporting his weekly church visits, or his written commentaries on St John's Gospel

Ah, so anyone who does not attend church weekly or write commentaries of the gospels is not a true Christian. Got it.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Yea but they don't kill them, confiscate their property, and close down their church.

You're kidding, right? Do you really want to continue this claim? Really?

 

[Dr Adequate]

This quote is such a joke. Read the Book "Hitler Youth". And you'll see pictures of German school age students of that era learning to throw mock hand grenades and other weapon training. The Nazi schools were basically a boot camp and propaganda outlet for what was to come.

Yes indeed. I guess that's why they made prayer compulsory in schools.

That is why there was such conflict between the Catholic Church and the Nazis about the "Hitler Youth" program.

To quote von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth: "He who serves Adolf Hitler, the Führer, serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany, serves God."

 

[Darth Rotor]

Isn't it obvious that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was based on religious hatred? Hitler himself said as much, something about (and I paraphrase because I don't care to waste time looking up the exact quote) how Jesus cast out the snakes from the temple and how inspiring he found it. The anti-semitism that was used by the Nazis was also religious-based. Atheists would not have any reason to exterminate the Jews in particular.

No. It was based on racial and ethnic cultural hatred, of which religion is a subset. This gets into the non equivalence of "Christian" and "Jew" as descriptive terms. "Jew" embodies blood, culture, and religion, or some of each depending on which person you are talking to. (Loss Leader had a great post on this a few months back, I may link it later.) For example, you can be an Atheist and a Jew at the same time, if you refer to yourself as a Jew, by blood and or cluture, but have lost faith in God's involvement in the world.

You can't be a Muslim and an Atheist at the same time, since Muslim is a more narrowly defined term.

(Loss Leader: If I didn't quite capture your explanation, please note that I am trying for brevity. Yeah, I know, a first for me. )

ETA: Elentar covered this next bit from a different angle, it seems, and I agree with Seifert that a Nom was in order. First class stuff.

@ plumjam: Sorry, your OP overlooks, to the detriment of your position, a small technological influence on the entire matter of slaughter. The autocracies you mentioned are all 20th century groups, who had at their disposal the means of slaughter enabled by the industrial age, and science. Had the Crusaders had such tools and means, for example, in the South of France when going after the Cathars, it is quite possible their slaughter would have been far greater. Perhaps not, killing off ones taxing and tithing base was a poor way to rule a land. Yet you appeal to orders of magnitude, numbers, to posit the purely secular (in your mind anyway) as somehow being worse than those constrained to pre industrial age tools.

Consider this as well: the population of the world, since 1800, has grown considerably, combining both population pressure and a target rich environment for the modern dictator/autocrat to apply his instruments of mass slaughter to with devastating effectiveness, while still leaving a large enough population base, taxing base, to run a country/empire on.

Had Tamerlane had the fuel and technical savvy in his army to mount quad .50 cals on half tracks in his day, his ability to slaughter would have been even more impressive than what he was able to achieve, until he ran out of targets.

For those who make a big deal of Stalin being raised by Jesuits, I offer a vigorous "so what?" That does not make him a religious person as a man, nor a Christian, as any number of people on this board who went to Catholic School as kids, and later became atheists or agnostics, can attest to.
DR

 

[Dr Adequate]

Did Hitler's ideology contain Darwinism?

No, of course not.

He was a stupid hateful lunatic, obviously he was a creationist.

Though, so far as I know, he didn't go so far as Stalin, who actively suppressed the theory of evolution by murdering its proponents.

Evil insane halfwits really get riled by Darwin for some reason.

 

[Cleon]

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Hitler_and_evolution
Though, so far as I know, he didn't go so far as Stalin, who actively suppressed the theory of evolution by murdering its proponents.

That's not entirely accurate. Stalin was OK with evolution itself; however, out of ideological convenience he promoted a method of evolution based on Lamarckism (as interpreted by Lysenko, Stalin's flunky). Lamarckist evolution held that species' change came not through Darwin's "descent with modification" but through "use and disuse." If you're interested you can read more about it here (or the Soviet interpretation here).

 

[Darat]

This quote is such a joke. Read the Book "Hitler Youth". And you'll see pictures of German school age students of that era learning to throw mock hand grenades and other weapon training. The Nazi schools were basically a boot camp and propaganda outlet for what was to come. That is why there was such conflict between the Catholic Church and the Nazis about the "Hitler Youth" program. A priest even got killed according to the book.

Also read the Book "Hitler Table Talk" and you'll discover the real Hitler. The one 60,000,000 dead found out about the hard way. And not the master of propaganda and demonic persuasion. More people should have listened to Churchill earlier. He wasn't fooled by the charade.

Being a member of Hitler Youth didn't seem to have much effect on this bloke's Christian beliefs.

 

[Beerina]

With respect, it seems like rather fuzzy speculation. Personally, I would imagine that the horrors of Nazi Germany generally stemmed from the Nazism and that those of the Soviet Union and China, from the communism.

Whether Nazi Germany was technically athiest or not is irrelevant to this discussion. Hitler used Europe's historical hatred of Jews (driven by religious belief) to his advantage (which is why such things develop, keep in mind.)

And the German citizenry went along with it, and hated Jews, because they were Christian, not because they were athiests.

Saddam's regime was technically athiest, too, in that sense (or at least secular) but that didn't stop him using hatred of the Jews to his advantage. He even started paying $25,000 to the familes of suicide bombers to reward them.

Secular? Athiest? Please.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

And the German citizenry went along with it, and hated Jews, because they were Christian, not because they were athiests.

I know this, you know that, we know this. It's been pointed out a thousand times in this thread alone that there's no evidence that atheism caused the horrors of the Soviet Union, or for that matter Nazi Germany. We've pointed out that correlation does not equal causation. We've pointed out that just because Christians were among the persecuted, doesn't mean that atheism was the cause of the persecution. It's clear as day that disbelief in God was not responsible for the atrocities committed by the USSR.

Yet, I'm betting that in a few posts, DOC or plumjam or someone else is going to resume their restating of the same old debunked arguments. 'If atheism's not the cause, why did they close churches?!', or 'if atheism is so harmless, why are the atheistic Communist countries so violent'? I might as well say, 'all the most murderous empires in the world, from the USSR to the Soviets to the British Empire, have been led by whites. Obviously, white people don't have morals!'. Face it, it's the same logic.

I've come to their conclusion that it is simply above their bigoted heads to realize that atheism is not evil. It's like debating racial tolerance with a devoted supremacist - no matter how much rationality you throw at them, they somehow manage to dodge it and retreat back into their fort of distrust.

Did Hitler's ideology contain Darwinism?

Atheism≠Darwinism.
Atheism≠Dislike of God.
Atheism≠Communism.

Some atheists are Darwinists, some are not. Doesn't matter one zilch to the discussion anyway.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

And the German citizenry went along with it, and hated Jews, because they were Christian, not because they were athiests.

I know this, you know that, we know this. It's been pointed out a dozen times in this thread alone that there's no evidence that atheism caused the horrors of the Soviet Union, or for that matter Nazi Germany. We've pointed out that correlation does not equal causation. We've pointed out that just because Christians were among the persecuted, doesn't mean that atheism was the cause of the persecution. It's clear as day that disbelief in God was not responsible for the atrocities committed by the USSR.

Yet, I'm betting that in a few posts, DOC or plumjam or someone else is going to resume their restating of the same old debunked arguments. 'If atheism's not the cause, why did they close churches?!', or 'if atheism is so harmless, why are the atheistic Communist countries so violent'? As I've already stated, I might as well say that 'all the most murderous empires in the world, from the USSR to the Soviets to the British Empire, have been led by whites, so obviously, white people don't have morals!'. Face it, it's the same darned illogical thinking. Or, Heck, I could've said that both Hitler and Stalin had mustaches, and persecuted people who didn't have mustaches, and that I distrust people with mustaches as a result.

I've come to their conclusion that it is simply above their bigoted heads to realize that atheism is not evil. It's like debating racial tolerance with a devoted supremacist - no matter how much rationality you throw at them, they somehow manage to dodge it and retreat back into their fort of distrust.

Did Hitler's ideology contain Darwinism?

Atheism≠Darwinism.
Atheism≠Dislike of God.
Atheism≠Communism.

Some atheists are Darwinists, some are not. Doesn't matter one zilch to the discussion anyway.

Also read the Book "Hitler Table Talk" and you'll discover the real Hitler. The one 60,000,000 dead found out about the hard way. And not the master of propaganda and demonic persuasion. More people should have listened to Churchill earlier. He wasn't fooled by the charade.

I haven't read the book, so I'll have to ask: do you mean 'demonic' litterally? Because an atheist, per definition, does not believe in demons as they're supernatural creatures.

Oh, and on these statements of yours:

First:
Social systems based on atheism cause a great deal more damage and suffering than do social systems based on theism.

Then:
As regards the examples you propose, of Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Canada.. this might seem a bit dismissive and smug... but honestly, the cultures of all those countries are classically stoic, and never likely to translate their non-theism into some kind of fiery revolutionary new utopian system. If you've ever had an hour-long conversation with a Norwegian you'll understand what I'm saying.

So basically you're saying that atheism always causes harm, except in this, this, this, this, and this case, but they don't count. Wonderful logic there.

Your first statement does not exclude 'stoic' societies unlikely to revolt. And your second statement, contradicting the first one, offers a better explanation for why the Russian revolution took place: conditions in Russia were hard, and the people were fed up, so a revolution took place.