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(Ed) Hitler's Atheism

On 12-06-2002 12:11 PM, RandFan writes:

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Originally posted by Darat
I understand that "insane" is a rather vague term but it does seem to fit Hitler, from my limited knowledge.

He did, quite literally, foam at the mouth sometimes and when you read what he wrote, the sheer irrationality, the complete disregard for facts, the absolute hatred of anything that he didn't "approve" of I can't think of any other term to use then "insane".

(And it appears there is evidence that he did have times in his life when he quite literally couldn't "function". There is also evidence that he formed at least one "emotional bond" and that was with his dog.)

I haven't read about him claiming visions in the sense of hearing voices however he did talk a lot about his dreams and certainly believed they had prophetic qualities.

(I do admit my use of the word “insane” to describe Hitler is as much based on the fact that I can't think of any word but "insane" to describe someone capable of doing and condoning what he did rather then a “medical” definition of insanity. Not the most objective viewpoint I know.)
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Hey Darat,

Some good points. I'm not arguing and I should point out that I am a long way from a psychiatrist or psychologist. Just a year or more of psychology, and related subjects in college and whatever I have read over the years (enough to get me laughed at I suppose).

I know that at the end of his life Hitler suffered from a disease like Parkinsons and perhaps others. There is footage of Hitler reviewing a youth brigade and he is unable to stop one of his hands from shaking. I think any lack of control probably was from the Parkinsons as opposed to anything else. However, towards the very end of the war while in his bunker during military meetings he talked of non-existent troops that would arrive to save Germany. I do think that Hitler was at times psychotic during this period.

It should be noted that there was a substantial amount of propaganda aimed at Hitler during and after the war that painted him as a lunatic. While I am not aware of Hitler foaming at the mouth any references to such a claim might be the result of such propaganda. There is one popular piece of doctored footage in which Hitler dances a jig after hearing of some good news from the front. Close inspection shows that the footage was cut and edited so that the same footsteps were repeated a number of times. A popular trick for cat commercials.

Hitler may have been psychotic. I am no expert on him and it wouldn’t surprise me that someone had in fact documented that he was quite “mad”. I have read some stuff pro and con but remain as yet unconvinced.

Edited to change length of study.
 
On 12-06-2002 01:10 PM, Thr0n writes:

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Originally posted by Franko
Was Hitler trying to be Religious or Scientific when he tried to make nuclear weapons?
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Neither. He was attempting to create a weapon that would be capable of eliminating an entire enemy base with a single explosion. The United States was doing the same. We succeeded. Hitler failed. Then, instead of dropping the bomb on a military target, we hit two large civillian targets in order to frighten Stalin and prevent a Soviet ground invasion of Japan (by forcing unconditional surrender of the Japanese a few days prior).

So what's the relevance of your question? Hitler was making a tactical move by instituting a nuclear weapons program. His decision had little, if anything, to do with religion or science.
 
On 12-06-2002 05:44 PM, Mike B. writes:

I think a good book to read on the subject is "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer.

Speer was as close to Hitler as he allowed people to be.

Goering called him Hitler's "unrequited love." Hitler had his fantasy that he was a great artist and was a lover of building design. I suppose he saw Speer as a kindred spirit.

I have the book on my shelf. If I remember correctly, Speer says Hitler once said the greatest misfortune to Europe was that Charles Martel had stopped the Muslim invasions at Tours in the 8th Century. He said Islam was a warrior's religion and Xianity was not. Germany would have been much better Muslim.

I can try to find the page. However, if another source has it, I would be surprised if it wasn't true. It might have been one of those things Hitler said and thought was really clever so repeated it.

I also recall Martin Borman was telling Hitler to go against the churches, but Speer said Hitler did not want to rock the boat during the war and was always a bit paranoid and wanted to give the people what they wanted.

Whether Hitler was an atheist or not: I don't think he was. It would seem he was a Mystic...I mean afterall he was interested in Astrology. If he was an Atheist anyway it wouldn't cast any aspertions on atheists...

As a non-theist myself it doesn't matter...

However,
In semi-defense of JK, I have been on Paltalk where Atheist rooms were named things like "Hitler was a Xian" and so forth. Both sides would love to have Hitler be on the other side. And both of course therefore use selective quoting...
 
On 12-06-2002 10:43 PM, Nova Land writes:

I hadn't realized there'd be so many posts so quickly! I had to go off-line early in the morning, so I'm about18 hours behind where this thread is now, and trying to catch up.


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Originally posted by Soubrette

I suppose my question would be - why would Hitler bother to lie - after all there was no official religion in communistic Russia and yet the people did not rise up against that - or fail to support it. So why would he bother to lie about something like that when he's already made clear (as Headscratcher4 pointed out) his dislike of the Jews (out of interest did he make clear what he intended to do them also) in Mein Kampf?

In short the view that he did it to maintain the support of the people seems flimsy when communism managed without a religion.
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Good question! I think Darat has already addressed this but I'd like to put a couple cents in too.

My understanding is that Christians made up a very active part of the German electorate in the 1920s and 1930s, with several of the splinter parties (such as Catholic Action) being religion-based. I don't think atheists made up any significant portion of the electorate -- at least not avowed atheists.

Hitler rose to power by attacking liberalism and feminism, and by supporting old-fashioned patriotism and "family values". The people supporting Hitler in his rise to power included conservative Christians, because many of them agreed with key the planks in his platform. It would thus make sense for Hitler to put on a show of religious belief, whether he was truly religious or not. It would not make sense to claim to be an atheist, since that would lose him a great deal of support and gain him little or none. It's the same reason why you often see US politicians pander to the Christian Coalition and other sizable religious voting blocs, but rarely see major presidential candidates addressing atheist conventions.

The situation in Russia was different because the communists came to power through a revolution rather than through elections. I can imagine atheism being much more exciting and appealing to small revolutionary cells than to the general Russian population. My guess is that atheism wasn't emphasized as a major reason for over-throwing the czar, and that it didn't really become an important issue until after the communists had taken power.

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Another interesting thought. If someone should be judged by what they do and not what they say - then is anyone truly a Christian. or a Jew or a member of any religious order? Most people strive to follow the tenets laid down by their religion but are likely to fail at one point or another - does this make them all atheists in reality? Or is it the magnitude of the transgression that counts?
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Good point, and a problem that comes up often: do we accept people's self-descriptions of their beliefs, or do we try to put our own labels of "what they really believe" on them?

For example, there are many people who self-describe themselves as conservatives whom Jedi does not consider to be conservatives, and there are many people who do not consider themselves liberals whom Jedi does consider as liberal or ultra-liberal. It would be good to have some definition we held in common and some yardstick to measure by.

Allowing people to self-describe (and accepting their self-description) certainly makes life simpler. In this case, Hitler self-described (at least publicly) as being Catholic. The obvious problem is that sometimes people claim to be something they clearly are not.

But trying to divine people's political or religious beliefs through their actions seems as prone to problems as taking people strictly at their word. If rules for how to do this can be set down and agreed on that would be one thing, but from what I've seen of this it's equivalent to astrology, a way to justify whatever conclusion a person wishes to prove.

I think a good direction would be to take people at their word, but to do that for their professed beliefs rather than for their professed label. Thus, we would not accept Hitler's public self-label of Catholic because the beliefs he espoused (in the table talks) are at odds with core Catholic beliefs. (For example, he does not accept the Pope and the Church as his spiritual authorities, he does not agree with key beliefs about Jesus that are vital to Catholicism, he does not believe in communion, etc.) But we also would not label him as an atheist, because the beliefs he espoused are likewise at odds with atheism. What we would do is compile a list of his stated beliefs, and see what label if any suitably described such beliefs.

It does happen sometimes that a person's stated beliefs are clearly contradicted by their actions. The greater the length at which they propound their beliefs, however, the less often this contradiction is a problem. For instance, there are many racists who will say, "I'm not a racist," and their actions clearly seem to contradict this. However, if they keep on talking, they usually continues, "I'm not a racist, but..." and the explanation of their beliefs which follows usually makes it clear they are racists.

In the case of Hitler, his stated beliefs in Table Talks are in synch with his deeds, so there is no need to toss the words out.
 
On 12-06-2002 11:29 PM, Nova Land writes:

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Originally posted by headscratcher4

I believe JK thinks Luther made atheism possible. Prior to Luther, the benign institutions of the church helped to focus individuals on their shared community and their shared ethic/values, etc. After Luther, it becomes possible for the individual to have a direct relation knowledge of God...an individual able to have a direct knowledge of God, can come to doubt God if prayers are unanswered, signs not given, etc. From doubt arises atheism, from atheism dissolves all of the checks on human action. In other words, morality becomes fungible if there is no God at the core of morality. That Hitler did not believe in God is made manifest by his ability to create and order conditions necessary for mass murder -- as anyone who believes in a higher authority would not engage in such activities for fear of a higher retribution and final judgment. I.e. no God, no fear of hell.
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This is interesting and helpful; thanks!

JK: is that indeed a fair re-statement of your views?

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Also, I note that JK seems to indicate through his writings a belief that any religious belief other than a "Judeo/Christian" based belief is Atheistic (am I missing something here JK?). Islam is atheistic. Buddhism is atheistic. etc.
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Aha! You may have brought out a problem I hadn't anticipated.

I was aware there is a language problem in trying to talk about liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, etc., as different people in the forum define those terms differently and apply them to different people and positions. But I was thinking that atheism was reasonably clear, despite the arguments I've seen in some of the other threads. Those arguments seemed to be over whether atheists don't believe in god or believe there is no god, which are different but which didn't seem to pose a problem as far as discussing Hitler (since neither of those seems to match his views).

But I was assuming we could divide the world semantically into theists and atheists: those who believe in gods (Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindi, Wiccans, etc.) and those who don't. I hadn't considered a semantic division into those who believe in the True God and those who don't.

By that latter system, everyone who doesn't believe in the True God is an atheist, since they are denying the existence of the only god that matters -- an interesting way of looking at things, since it makes a majority, possibly an overwhelming majority, of the world's population into atheists.

JK: is this indeed how you are defining atheism?

I'm quite willing to use your definitions for the purpose of this discussion; I just want to be clear on what those definitions are.

If we're using the same words, but with very different ideas of what they mean, I can coin different terms for the concepts I'm trying to talk about. That way we can talk productively about what it was Hitler did or didn't believe without arguing fruitlessly about whose definitions are correct.
 
On 12-07-2002 12:39 AM, Nova Land writes:

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Originally posted by Jedi Knight

1) Hitler lied in Table Talks to form a positive propagandized posterity account for future global populations that the Reich would reign over. The Table Talks were "authored" by Hitler. It is a well-known historical fact that Hitler was a chronic, habitual, political liar.
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Agreed, Hitler was a chronic, habitual liar. We know that in several ways: (a) he often said one thing and did another; (b) the people who knew him say that what he said and what he really felt were different; and (c) Hitler tells us himself, in places such as the "table talks", that much of what he has said publicly is not what he really felt.

However, it is impossible for anyone (even Hitler) to lie about everything.

In comic books, there are the Bizarros, who try to do everything opposite to how someone "normal" would do it. If they are sad, for instance, they say they are happy. Seeing a friend makes them sad, leaving a friend makes them happy.

You see the problem? The negatives start cancelling out, and pretty soon Bizarros aren't really acting opposite.

Same problem with Hitler. Even if he were a comic book character who had set out to lie about everything, he wouldn't be able to do it.

But Hitler isn't a comic book character. He was an actual person, and like actual people he lied for reasons. Sometimes he flat out lied; sometimes he told half-truths; sometimes he told what he thought was true, but he was mistaken. But much of the time, even despite himself, what he said reflects what he felt.

We can be reasonably sure that many of his public utterances were lies, told for political advantage. It was to his advantage for the public to believe he was a Catholic during his rise to power, so he pandered to that belief. Lying in public speeches is relatively easy, because one can take the time to write the words out in advance and make sure they present the image one is trying to present. Politicians do it all the time.

Lying in conversation is harder. People do that all the time, too, but it is often much easier to spot the lies. Lying is an act, a performance, and it is hard for anyone to be "on" all the time.

Look, for instance, at Richard Nixon (and before him, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy). They were taping their White House conversations. They knew these conversations were being taped. On one level they may have been interested in preserving history; but on another, they must have wanted to present themselves in a good light -- very similar to how Hitler must have felt in having his "table talks" transcribed. And yet they said many things which revealed a part of themselves they would almost certainly have preferred to conceal. Why? Because lying in conversation, day after day, isn't as easy as you may be assuming.

Should we take everything in Table Talks at face value? No. Anyone can lie fairly consistently on a few key points. But should we discard it as all a carefully crafted mask? Again, no. That strains credulity.

Hitler was talking to his close associates. He likely wanted to impress them with his insights, his cleverness. He likely wanted to expound things to them which he felt were profound thoughts and which he wasn't able to say more publicly. He may be exaggerating some of his views, or shading his views a little in order to be able to make some clever-sounding point, but on the whole it's reasonable to assume much of what he's saying in these "conversations" comes close to his real beliefs.

You yourself quoted from it (in a previous thread, as the source of your belief that Hitler was an atheist). That would indicate you do find it to have some value as a source of insight into Hitler's beliefs.

Which parts truly reflect his beliefs, and which are distortions? That's certainly a question worth pondering. First let's see what he actually said in the table talks, and see which things he uttered consistently over the course of these 4 years, and see which of these are consistent with what he confided to others.

To simply declare that anything he said which is in line with one's own preconceptions is Hitler telling the truth, and anything he said which is out of line is part of his lies, would be un-skeptical. Let's go over the material together, skeptically, and see what if anything we can make out of it.

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2) Hitler's "mission from God" was an atheist action to remake the world in the Nazi image, liquidating Christianity and the guardians and architects of Christianity (the church, Jews, etc).
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You've lost me. If Hitler believed it was a "mission from God", then it was by definition not an atheist action. And he did say, both publicly and privately, that he believed he was acting in accordance with God's wishes. He was mistaken in that; but it appears to be a misguided belief in god, rather than a lack of belief, which led him astray.

We'll never know what would have happened if Hitler had not been raised to believe in god. Quite possibly he would have turned out the same. We do know that he was raised to be religious, and that while he distorted many of the things he was taught he never proclaimed himself an atheist or said he was acting out of atheistic beliefs.

That, at least, is my reading of the facts at hand. Earlier you had indicated, by your quoting from it, that you thought Hitler's Table Talks was a valid source of information on Hitler's religious beliefs. If so, let's go through it to see what it actually says. I may be mis-reading it, or over-looking something; the same goes for you.

Or, if you feel there is a better source of information as to Hitler's religious beliefs, name that and we can go through that together. I think it's worth going through this one first, as long as we've begun, but if you think there is a better source of factual information we can stipulate as we go through Table Talks that any conclusions it leads us to are superceded by any contradictory material from the better source..
 
On 12-07-2002 01:10 AM, Nova Land writes:

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Jedi Knight (in response to a request from CWL for his source of evidence for assertions made in response to 2 previus questions):

Sure. History.

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Is this history as you experienced it growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, or history as you have read about it?

If this is history as you have read about it, it would be helpful to provide the sources where you read these things, so that others of us can look it up for ourselves and weigh what the material says.
 
On 12-07-2002 01:36 AM, Nova Land writes:

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Originally posted by De_Bunk

Jedi
Its a real shame that Hitler was a Catholic...
Goto..

www.angelfire.com/wy/wyrd/antinazi.html

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Angelfire is an interesting site, and appears to have some useful information. However: many of the quotes given are from Mein Kampf. Jedi has already explained why Mein Kampf cannot be taken at face value. It was written for propaganda purposes, for public consumption. Just as many of us would not accept uncritically anything Bill Clinton, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, etc. might put into a book supposedly telling what their inmost thoughts really were, so many of us would not blindly accept Hitler's word in a manifesto like this -- even if it happens to contain passages that could be used to bolster points we'd like to prove.

I disagree with Jedi's reading of Hitler's true religious beliefs, but I do think he has a valid point in not accepting any old Hitler quote that happens to support one's view. The test for how much weight a quote should carry is not "Does this agree with the point I want to make?" More important questions include: "Where does this come from? How reliable is the source? What does this actually mean when read in context?"

In a previous thread Jedi indicated (by quoting from it) a willingness to accept material in Hitler's Table Talks. This book was not written for public consumption in the way Mein Kampf or his various speeches were, so it may give better evidence of what his real beliefs were. That is why I'm interested in going through this particular book with Jedi.

And while I like the Angelfire link you provided, are you sure you want to rely too heavily on a site which accepts contributions from well known comic-book supervillains?

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from the Angelfire site:

the next contribution on this subject was made by
Mr. PerDegaton
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I mean, granted, Mr. Degaton was a contemporary of Hitler and all, but jeeze, he tried to take over the world, too, you know!
 
On 12-07-2002 02:51 AM, Nova Land writes:

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RandFan (responding to Soubrette's point that if deeds rather than words are to be judged then few if any may be Christian):

... Now it is possible that someone pretends to be christian and in reality does not believe it at all. I for example came to believe less and less in Mormonism. Yet I continued to go to church and act like I was a believer. The process was gradual so I'm not certain that I can say exactly at what moment I wasn't a believer yet continued to go. There did come a time that I was no longer able to continue to put on a charade but there were times that I acted like I believed but did in fact I did not.
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A lot of people attend church because they were raised to, or because their neighbors do and it's socially expected; we have a high percentage of church membership and attendance in the US, but we may not have that high a percentage of actual believers.

Gallup polls and similar surveys generally measure how many people are self-professed members of various religions. If that standard is not acceptable -- if Hitler, although a publicly-professed Catholic and a privately-professed believer-in-god-although-not-a-christian, is to be categorized as something other than a theist -- then we may need to distinguish between membership in a religion and belief in that religion.

The standard for counting membership would be a statement professing to be a member and/or periodic attendance. (We could sub-divide this into: people who profess membership and attend regularly; people who profess membership and attend occasionally; and people who profess membership but attend rarely or never.)

The standard for counting belief... Now there's a hard one!

Jedi: you're the one who sort of opened this can by saying Hitler's religious beliefs should be judged by his deeds rather than by his self-professions. Any thoughts on how this would apply in general? Is it your belief that many people attending churches in this country should actually be counted as atheists?

Should, for instance, the KKK and White Citizen's Council members be considered atheists even though they were generally considered themselves to be true Christians (and claimed they were motivated to oppose integration because of their Christian beliefs)? What about Paul Hill, John Salvi, James Kopp? Michael Bray? In Ireland, is the IRA Catholic or atheist? Is the Ulster Defense Association Protestant or atheist?
 
On 12-07-2002 03:22 AM, Nova Land writes:

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Originally posted by Jedi Knight

How can people actively and freely pursue religious belief and customs when the very nation-state that they exist in forbids it?
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It seems to me that is when religious belief is often strongest. The early Christians, facing persecution, seemed much stronger in their faith than 20th century Christians.

In the 1600s, people were arrested in England for daring to worship other than in the approved way and at the approved church (Church of England). In colonial America, some colonies had similar restrictions, and people were exiled (and hanged) for defying those restrictions. Those who defied
the restrictions triumphed, which is one reason we have religious freedom today.

How did they do it? In England, by holding services despite what the law said, and going to prison for it. In colonial America, by returning to the places they had been exiled from and continuing to worship as they felt called to do.

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If you live inside a totalitarian state void of morality, are you going to say no when you are ordered to be a camp guard?
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I hope so, yes.

And that, to me, is the amazing thing. People throughout history
have found the strength to say no, even to the most brutal regimes. And it seems to me that people from a wide variety of cultural and religious (and non-religious) backgrounds have found that strength.

Sadly, people have also found the ability to say yes to evil throughout history, and this too has come from people from a wide variety of culturan and religious backgrounds. Why some say yes and some say no is a question worth pondering.


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Would a Christian church order you to gas Jews?
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Again, sadly, yes.

Or at least, churches of people who call themselves Christian certainly seem to have been able to do that, and other atrocities.
 
On 12-09-2002 04:10 AM, Nova Land writes:

Previously I posted portions of table tqlks # 3 and # 4, both from the same night. Here is the next table talk, from a couple weeks later.


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Conversation # 5: Night of 21st-22nd July 1941

Gratitude to the Jesuits -- Protestant fanaticism -- Similarities between Germany and Italy -- Dante and Luther...

When all's said, we should be grateful to the Jesuits. Who knows if, but for them, we might have abandoned Gothic architecture for the light, airy, bright architecture of the Counter-Reformation? In the face of Luther's efforts to lead an upper clergy that had acquired profane habits back to mysticism, the Jesuits restored to the world the joy of the senses.

It's certain that Luther had no desire to mould humanity to the letter of the Scriptures. He has a whole series of reflections in which he clearly sets himself against the Bible. He recognizes that it contains a lot of bad things.

Fanaticism is a matter of climate -- for Protestantism, too, has burnt its witches. Nothing of that sort in Italy. The Southerner has a lighter attitude towards matters of faith. The Frenchman has personally an easy way of behaving in his churches. With us, it's enough not to kneel and attract attention.

But Luther had the merit of rising against the Pope and the organization of the Church. It was the first of the great revolutions. And thanks to his translation of the Bible, Luther replaced our dialects by the great German language!



It's remarkable to observe the resemblances between the evolution of Germany and that of Italy. The creators of the language, Dante and Luther, rose against the ecomenical desires of the papacy.

Each of the two nations was led to unity, against the dynastic interests, by one man. They achieved their unity against the will of the Pope.

Hitler then rambles on for another page and a half in praise of Mussolini, Italians, and Italian architecture; there's nothing relevant to religious beliefs, so it's deleted.
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COMMENTS: It may be possible to draw some minor inferences (about Hitler's attitude towards Luther, towards the Bible, towards the Catholic Church and the Pope) but on the whole there isn't a whole lot here.

It does illustrate the nature of these "table talks", however. They are rambling, and often not of great consequence. This, I think, lends credence to them as being just what they purport to be: transcriptions of Hitler spouting off after-dinner thoughts to his associates.

Earlier in this thread a theory was put forward that these were part a plan by Hitler to spread disinformation. I think that's the kind of view that's easy to put forward when you haven't actually read the things, only heard about them or seen snippets. That's one reason I encourage people to look at the book themselves if they have access to it, and why I'm putting up more than just the "hot" quotes from it, so that people can get a feel for what this material is actually like.
 
On 12-09-2002 04:32 AM, Nova Land writes:

The next table talk to deal with religion comes 3 month later. This one is long and covers a lot!

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conversation # 39: 14th October 1941, midday
special guest: Himmler

Disadvantages of a Concordat with the Churches -- Difficulty of compromising with a lie -- No truck with religion for the party -- Antagonism of dogma and science -- Let Christianity die slowly -- The metaphysical needs of the soul -- No State Religion -- Freedom of belief.

It may be asked whether concluding a concordat with the churches wouldn't facilitate our exercise of power.

On this subject one may make the following remarks:

Firstly, in this way the authority of the State would be vitiated by the fact of the intervention of a third power concerning which it is impossible to say how long it would remain reliable. In the case of the Anglican Church, this objection does not arise, for England knows she can depend on her Church. But what about the Catholic Church. Wouldn't we be running the risk of her one day going into reverse fter having put herself at the service of the State solely in order to safeguard her power? If one day the State's policy ceased to suit Rome or the clergy, the priests would turn against the State, as they are doing now. History provides examples that should make us careful.

Secondly, there is also a question of principle. Trying to take a long view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable on falsehood? When I think of our people's future, I must look further than immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last three hundred, five hundred years or more. 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.

An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the State, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.

That's why I've always kept the Party aloof from religious questions. I've thus prevented my Catholic and Protestant supporters from forming groups against one another, and inadvertently knocking each other out with the Bible and the sprinkler. So we never became involved with these Churches' forms of worship. And if that has momentarily made my task a little more difficult, at least I've never run the risk of carrying grist to my opponent's mill. The help we would have provisionally obtained from a concordat would have quickly become a burden on us. In any case, the main thing is to be clever in this matter and not to look for a struggle where it can be avoided.

Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet, be explained -- that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can't satisfy them with the Party's program. 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. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. 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.

Originally, religion was merely a prop for human communities. It was a means, not an end in itself. It's only gradually that it became transformed in this direction, with the object of maintaining the rule of the priests, who can love only to the detriment of society collectively.

The instructions of a hygienic nature that most religions gave, contributed to the foundation of organised communities. The precepts ordering people to wash, to avoid certain drinks, to fast at appointed dates, to take exercise, to rise with the sun, to climb to the top of the minaret -- all these were obligations invented by intelligent people. The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Mussulman was promised a paradise peopled with houris, where wine flowed in streams -- a real earthly paradise. The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing Hallelujahs! All these elements contributed to form human communities. It is to these private customs that peoples owe their present characters.

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.

But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature, or by knowledge of' the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind's development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown, and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That's particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impotently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.

Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed, it's most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.

It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that period the ancient world was divided between the Systems of philosophy and the worship of idols It's not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified-and the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.

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.

If in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself.

One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?

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.

I especially wouldn't want our movement to acquire a religious character and institute a form of worship. It would be appalling for me, and I would wish I'd never lived, if I were to end up in the skin of a Buddha!

If at this moment we were to eliminate the religions by force, the people would unanimously beseech us for a new form of worship. You can imagine our Gauleiters giving up their pranks to play at being saints! As for our Minister for Religion, according to his own co-religionists, God himself would turn away from his family!

I envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing with the religions. These latter must simply be forbidden from interfering in future with temporal matters. From the tenderest age, education will be imparted in such a way that each child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the State. As for the men close to me, who, like me, have escaped from the clutches of dogma, I've no reason to fear that the Church will get its hooks on them.

We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.
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COMMENTS: There are a lot of juicy passages in this one. I've refrained from highlighting them, and will mostly hold off on commenting, so that people can read this for themselves, in context, and form their own impressions first.

I do want to put in one brief note. In this conversation Hitler refers to the worship of Wotan (aka Odin). Some Nazis had wanted to replace Christianity (a weak, feminine religion, in their view) with a new version of the pre-Christian Germanic religion (a religion more in line with their values). In a previous thread I had suggested that the quote Jedi offered, in which Hitler criticized Christianity, might indicate Hitler's belief in this older religion. As this section shows, I was mistaken.
 
On 12-09-2002 09:02 AM, headscratcher4 writes:

Back from a few days away, this will probably only did the pit deeper, but, here goes. JK's statemens in quotes.

“There are population grudges in every country that is on the fringe of revolution and the Nazi ideology seeped across the border of Poland long before the war started. Poland wasn't an isolated sphere of containment. It was a country that was under relentless pressure from the communists to the east and the fascists to the west.”

True – yet in this specific case, the “population grudges” you speak of were long standing and predated both Nazism and Bolshevism. Indeed, they were historic and pre-date the Reformation and Luther. My point in raising this issue was not to suggest that Poland was unique or that there was no lack of stress on Poland. Rather, it was to point out that a profoundly “Christian” country with a profoundly Christian culture and all that you claim for such culture in terms of toleration and personal responsibility and fear of ultimate judgment and retribution cracked very quickly. I think this is understandable…my ultimate goal was to suggest that many who marched their Jewish neighbors to the killing pits (as in Germany, and elsewhere) considered themselves good practicing Christians before and after the war. So, while for the sake of argument, accepting for a moment your contentions about the “atheist-ization” of the state, the state was ultimately dependent on “believers” to do its dirty work. And, taking Hitler at his most cynical (note Nova’s citation of the Table Talk) he could not have pursued his murderous “atheism” were he not able to rely on the willing conformance of a population – both in Germany and in occupied countries – to
his anti-Semitic message.

Further, I would contend that, in Poland at least, the structures, tenants and dogma of the religious institutions may have created a willingness to bow to authority (such as the structured authority) of the Church and thus made the Nazi’s job of cowing the population that much easier. Remember, the Pope was more interested in fighting Bolshevism than the Nazis and did much to ease the way of the Nazis.

-------

”Poland knew that they would be attacked. They knew it. It was the only way that Hitler could access the main avenues of approach to get into Russia. Poland was the gateway.

In any country that falls under military attack and revolution, internal populations will conflict amongst themselves over past slights, positions in the new system, etc. It is common.”

Again, I would agree with most of these statements. However, your contention is that there was something inherently atheistic in the Nazi actions, and that arose in particular from Hitler’s own atheism. Maybe. However, it is also, as suggested, an opportunity for Poles to act-out on historic anti-Semitism bread and proclaimed by the Church form a millennium. The Nazis, atheistic though they may be for the sake of argument, found Poles not only willing to suck up to the conquerors, but also willing and able to act on a millennium of Church teaching to justify their actions and accommodation of Nazi power over their Jewish neighbor. As history showed, it was the rare Pole, the rare Catholic that actively joined the underground and risked life and limb to fight the Nazis or to save Jews. Again, my point is not to suggest that Poles were not under unique stress, merely that the core values that you claim operate within religious beliefs – values such as toleration – if not absent, certainly dissipated quickly under this stress.

__________
"Some of Hitler's favorite henchmen were native ancestral Poles. Also, you failed to mention the majority of military Poles were killed during the initial attack and again after the communists invaded in the later stages of the war. There was no resistance."

Agreed. There was little or no resistance. I also agree that the Russians murdered the core of the Polish military. However, my argument isn’t about military resistance. It is about a profoundly religious population that quickly embraced what you’ve termed the atheistic machinery of its invaders to settle old scores with their neighbors and fellow citizens of Jewish descent. My point all along is that the checks that you claim to exist in a believing person/population – that you specifically argue Hitler as an alleged atheist did not have – disappeared when the Nazi’s offered the local population the opportunity to settle scores.

BTW – I have no confidence that I would have acted much better. Who can know, ultimately, how we will respond to terror of this kind – either Nazi or Communist. I fear that history shows us that we can generally expect the worst. History also shows that we can expect the worst when believers of any kind are out on a mission of purification whether Nazi, Communist, Christian, Islamic, Israelite (remember the clearing of Canaan), etc.

Also, you’ve argued that Hitler was an atheist and this made mass murder possible. You’ve also argued that Atheism is a religion. You’ve also argued that the religious are inherently more tolerant as opposed to the atheistic state, which has no check and cannot afford toleration or room for alternative beliefs. But, if for your definition atheism is a religion, than surely the religious – and I would have to assume that this would mean those who believe in a deity as well as those who believe none to exist – are each capable of committing mass murder. In short, it seems to me that one of the only way that your argument and effort to tag Hitler with the title of atheist and thus to expose the evil of atheism in contrast to the values of the otherwise traditionally religious (and Judeo/Christian specifically) works only if atheism isn’t a religion. I.e. the evil springs from the lack of religion/belief/higher moral authority, etc.

_____________
”The catholic church can't be blamed for the onslaught in Poland after the Nazis invaded. The only way that you can credibly blame the church is if the church had government power in the Nazi system and it had none.”

This may be a fair point. But, than I would hope you would agree that “religious” institutions in power represent a potential totalitarian danger, as do societies where religion and the state are essentially distinguishable. This is certainly true today in many an “Islamic” state. But, historically, it is true in Europe as well…where the Pope, for example, was a secular as well as spiritual power, or Spain at the height of the Inquisition, etc. On the other hand, the philosophical effort to get religion out of the secular state – most notably in the US – has been an attempt, and only partially successful one at that – to limit such totalitarian power and intolerance. How successful? Well, clearly that is arguable.
__________

”That is the point that I am making. People are hard-wired to believe in God, but Nazi atheist belief made that belief unfashionable. The people in Germany and Poland weren't raising their arms saying "Siege Hail Jesus".

Yes, maybe (though you’ve not proved to me that there is “hard-wiring” and we’ll just have to disagree on that point), and my point was that in spite of that hard wiring, and profound religious indoctrination of a kind that you would argue is more tolerant, these hard wired people for a myriad of understandable reasons abandoned their fear of god, god’s retribution and their dogma to help murder their neighbors. Further, that they did so relatively quickly. In short, I guess it is always Lord of the Flies when the ◊◊◊◊ hits the fan, but that doesn’t speak well for religion or the over-reaching power of a belief in God.

_________

"The atheist state killed God in Germany and the surrounding European countries long before World War II broke out. World War II was just a continuance of World War I."

Clearly, this is your core point, and one that I think many – including some profoundly religious and Christian – would have to disagree with you on. It seems that your basic point is that as a result of German/European Atheism run amok, Hitler/Stalin were inevitable. I think where the argument lies is that you describe and lump all humanist movements emanating from the Reformation forward as essentially atheistic…i.e. lacking a belief in God(s). However, many of the philosophical foundations of these various humanist movements were laid by individuals who had a profound belief in God. While you describe them as atheistic, they would have shuddered at such a description and your definition.

Bottom line is that as interesting as some of your opinions are, and, indeed, informed by history and fact, I do not concede that you get to be the one who defines not only belief and ideology but also how the words are used. In other words, the individuals who founded these movements have described themselves to varying degree. For example, Hitler did not describe himself as an atheist, just wary and antagonistic to Christianity. You read that/describe it at Atheism. I, on the other hand, take Hitler at his word here, for he had no reason to lie.

By the same token, Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim il Sung, all would have described themselves as “atheists” and their state as “atheistic”. No reason to doubt them either. On the one hand, you want to argue with “atheist” by tarring one (Hitler) who many see as the epidemy of evil – sort “see, you are just like him…at core” Thus causing revolsion and horror among Atheist who would never see themselves as Hitler. On the other hand, you do not need Hitler for your case, as Lenin, Stalin, Moa, et al – atheist all, have all murdered far more than Hitler ever did, and far more indiscriminately as well.

However, and further, though not an atheist, I would take issue with the core contention that being “an atheist” is somehow endemic to this kind of violence or mass terror. History has shown that not to be the case (rather, I think, science and technology has made it more efficient…imagine the councils of the Inquisition with the killing potential of the Nazis or Soviets as they tried to root out the Jews and Moors in Spain, etc.).

And, again, I keep coming back to your central point…you want to disparage Atheism and show it to be a danger and set it in contrast to the toleration that you claim on behalf of those who espouse a religious belief in a deity(s). Yet, you’ve also decreed that atheism is a religion…which makes me think, agreeing with you for the moment…that religions and the religious – as shown throughout history – are completely capable of the kind of cruel intolerance you seek to decry.

This also leads me to seek clarification, are you at core arguing that all religions are more tolerant, or is it, as I suspect, that you are arguing that Judeo/Christian (and Catholic in particular) are more tolerant? Further, if Islam is atheistic, what “religions” do you believe are not “atheistic”?
 
On 12-09-2002 09:13 AM, headscratcher4 writes:

Quick question, JK:

Did Hitler know he was an atheist?
 
On 12-18-2002 03:41 AM, CWL writes:

To get back to the topic of the thread I would encourage anyone interested in the subject to visit the following webpages:

Was Hitler an Atheist?

Adolf Hitler's Religion

Interesting reading indeed. A quote:



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atheists have been, and continue to be the targets of a vicious, tireless smear campaign. For example, after informally questioning my co-workers, I realized to my chagrin that most of them think Adolf Hitler was an atheist! Not one of them realized that Adolf Hitler had a strict Catholic upbringing (of the type that supposedly produces moral, virtuous people), or that he was an altar boy in his youth, or that he once told General Gerhart Engel that "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so". None of them knew that his infamous "Mein Kampf" contains phrases such as this: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." (among many, many other things; see my page on Hitler's Religion for more). None of them knew that Nazi soldiers wore belt buckles inscribed with "Gott mit uns" (God is with us).

None of them knew that he made Christian school prayer mandatory for the 1930's German schoolchildren who grew up to be his dreaded SS, or that he publicly espoused "family values", which in his mind meant the condemnation of sexual "perversions" rather than the promotion of healthy marriages and parenting methods (rather reminiscent of the right-wing fundamentalist position today). None of them knew how much the German Christian Social movement resembled the modern right-wing Christian Fundamentalist movement. None of them knew that Hitler closely followed the anti-Semitic teachings of none other than Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, but this isn't surprising since they didn't know about Martin Luther's extreme anti-Semitism either, even though he wrote a book titled "On Jews and their Lies". Anti-atheists have noted that Hitler had minor disagreements with the Catholic church in Germany (but not with the church in Rome, with which he signed a Concordat in 1933, and which ordered the German church to fall in line), and they have attempted to twist these minor disagreements into a widespread misconception that he was an atheist, when nothing could be further from the truth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
On 12-18-2002 03:25 PM, Nova Land writes:

Hi! It's nice to see people visiting this thread again. I haven't posted here in a while, since we are planning to start an experimental moderated thread on this topic early in the new year, but I'm happy to continue the discussion here as well.

(Girl 6 is working out the rules for the moderated thread, and will post them over in banter for people to look over before we go ahead with the experiment. I'm interested in testing that out, even if this thread goes well, as that will offer another option for the future if it does work out.)

I glanced at the material in the links CWL posted and it looks interesting and well-written; I've saved it to read more carefully when I go off-line (which I'll need to do soon). One thing: both links took me to the identical site. Was this supposed to happen, or am I missing out on something?

The question about whether there can be moral behavior without a belief in god is an interesting one.


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Acrimonious:

Err... wait. Hmmm... Seems to me there ARE punishments for all those things. Come to think of it, I doubt an A-Theist would want to risk having the miniscule number of years they have on Earth wasted in a prison, or, even worse: taken completely away by a policeman's bullet, a lethal injection, or electric chair.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CWL


THANK you!

A perfect summation of my own stance. We are in complete agreement.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'm especially pleased by this question since it gives me a chance to disagree with everyone who has addressed this so far!

Here's a pair of questions I'd like people to think about.

(1) How many of you are refraining from committing acts of theft, murder, and rape primarily because you know that if you did these things and were caught you might be imprisoned or executed? If that is the main reason you have for refraining from such acts then I'd feel uneasy about having you around my loved ones.

(2) How many of you are refraining from committing acts of theft, murder, and rape primarily because you believe there is a god? Again, if that is your main reason for not committing such acts I'd be worried about you. If this is truly your reason for behaving decently, then what you are saying seems to be that if for some reason you were ever to undergo a crisis of faith, you would no longer find it difficult to commit heinous acts.

I believe in god, but that is not why I try to refrain from things that hurt others. My reason is because, in my heart, I know these things to be wrong. When I lie, when I take things that aren't mine, when I say cruel things to people or otherwise hurt them, it does not make me feel good -- it makes me feel bad inside.

That seems to be the experience of most people I know. It seems to be true regardless of whether one believes in god or which god one believes in.

Indeed, belief in a god often seems to hinder rather than help some people in acting on this inner awareness -- there are people I've known who I believe knew in their hearts that certain behavior was wrong, but went ahead with it because their understanding of their religion told them that what they were doing was not only okay, it was what their god demanded of them.

The people I know personally would not mean anything to you, so let me give a couple of examples of people I don't know personally but who are national news figures. One is Fred Phelps, the person who organizes people to picket at the funerals of gay people and other such events with signs saying "God hates fags." Another is James Kopp, the sniper who killed Bernard Slepian (an abortion doctor in Buffalo, New York).

I think if they had listened to that quiet voice within each of us that lets us sense when we are doing something good and when we are doing something bad, they would have acted differently. But they allowed the things they had been taught by others, the abstract theological doctrines that had been drummed into them, to drown out the actual voice of god.

People with no belief in god are often, paradoxically, more able to hear and respond to that voice (even if they don't call it god) because they don't have all those human-created doctrines getting in the way.



Okay, that should get me in lots of trouble...
 
Okay... that's all of the relevant material. I apologize for not being able to keep up with the special vB coding. Hopefully, it doesn't detract too much from the material.

Carry on,
G6
 
Girl 6 said:
On 12-18-2002 03:41 AM, CWL writes:

To get back to the topic of the thread I would encourage anyone interested in the subject to visit the following webpages:

Was Hitler an Atheist?

Adolf Hitler's Religion

Interesting reading indeed. A quote:



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atheists have been, and continue to be the targets of a vicious, tireless smear campaign. For example, after informally questioning my co-workers, I realized to my chagrin that most of them think Adolf Hitler was an atheist! Not one of them realized that Adolf Hitler had a strict Catholic upbringing (of the type that supposedly produces moral, virtuous people), or that he was an altar boy in his youth, or that he once told General Gerhart Engel that "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so". None of them knew that his infamous "Mein Kampf" contains phrases such as this: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." (among many, many other things; see my page on Hitler's Religion for more). None of them knew that Nazi soldiers wore belt buckles inscribed with "Gott mit uns" (God is with us).

None of them knew that he made Christian school prayer mandatory for the 1930's German schoolchildren who grew up to be his dreaded SS, or that he publicly espoused "family values", which in his mind meant the condemnation of sexual "perversions" rather than the promotion of healthy marriages and parenting methods (rather reminiscent of the right-wing fundamentalist position today). None of them knew how much the German Christian Social movement resembled the modern right-wing Christian Fundamentalist movement. None of them knew that Hitler closely followed the anti-Semitic teachings of none other than Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, but this isn't surprising since they didn't know about Martin Luther's extreme anti-Semitism either, even though he wrote a book titled "On Jews and their Lies". Anti-atheists have noted that Hitler had minor disagreements with the Catholic church in Germany (but not with the church in Rome, with which he signed a Concordat in 1933, and which ordered the German church to fall in line), and they have attempted to twist these minor disagreements into a widespread misconception that he was an atheist, when nothing could be further from the truth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...

I will start with this post. I am not going to revisit any information provided in previous posts so if I ignore questions that I believe were already covered by me in the former posts, don't take it personally. Read the entire thread.

Now, I have read this article posted on the web that you cut and pasted and it was clearly written by an atheist using bad logic.

The author claims:

Atheists have been, and continue to be the targets of a vicious, tireless smear campaign.

In his eyes, perhaps. Christianity and all other religions except for Islam have gotten a bad rap lately. An atheist claiming his religious beliefs are being "smeared" can join the other religions treated in exactly the same way currently in history. This is nothing new and is a very modern viewpoint and the author's opinion in defense of his atheist religion.

Then the author claims:

For example, after informally questioning my co-workers, I realized to my chagrin that most of them think Adolf Hitler was an atheist!

The author's co-workers have every reason to believe that Hitler was an atheist, supported by Hitler's historical actions as the prince of the German fascist state.

Then the author claims:

Not one of them realized that Adolf Hitler had a strict Catholic upbringing (of the type that supposedly produces moral, virtuous people), or that he was an altar boy in his youth, or that he once told General Gerhart Engel that "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so".

I haven't shared this historical fact yet but Hitler's break with Christianity occured strongly when his mother died of a terminal illness. Hitler's mother was attended by a Jewish physician, and after she died it became a personal offense to Hitler. Adolf Hitler's pathology was sociopathological, and the slightest personal grudge that Hitler held for anyone who he deemed to slight him in any way became a personal, prolonged grudge that demanded action against the trespasser. Most normal people (99% of any population) take small slights against them and move on while dismissing them. Men like Hitler who are sociopathological do not rest until they receive their version of defined justice.

When Hitler's mother died that was a major contributing factor to his desired liquidation of the entire Jewish race from the face of the earth and his abandonment of Christianity. This occured many years before he seized power and moved his plans into action.

Keep in mind that his personal hatred for Jews had everything to do with the fascist German bureaucracy labeling the Jews as the transgressors for every problem encountred by the German state. I will add to this in a moment below. However, the author uses bad logic by believing that just because as a child Hitler was introduced to Catholicism that as an adult he would formulate an unwavering allegience to it. Quite the contrary. Hitler's pathology would not allow any form of inner belief in an exterior God. That is one of his key atheist traits. Very clear.

Then the author continues:

None of them knew that his infamous "Mein Kampf" contains phrases such as this: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Hitler isn't talking about the Jewish Christianity or the offshoots of Christianity that use Jewish Institutions in faith (any Christian religion that uses the Holy Bible). That paragraph by the author simply demonstrates a complete disregard for history. Why on Earth would Hitler read the Holy Bible and participate with loyalty in the Christian religion when the Old Testament of the Holy Bible was written by Jews?

Think about that clearly. Hitler's connection with his people was in "identity". I could write volumes about it but I do not have the time nor the interest to do so. Hitler followed Hegel religiously. He also followed Nietzche religiously. If you understand Hegel and Nietzche, what those two philosophs are telling us is that "God is dead" and the "state" needs God to a point--once that point is crossed then the state must move on. The only way that it can move on is with fascism and complete state control over all religious belief and institutions.

Hitler took the "God is dead" philosophy and the "Superman" theory and dismissed God completely. Why would the fascist state give any authority to God? To give authority to God means that you have to give authority to the clerics of that God. Germany wasn't a monotheistic terror state like Iran. There was not one single religious cleric in power in the German fascist state under Hitler. Not one. If there was one, show me documentation with signatures proving it. Show me one, just one, in all the years of Hitler's reign, where a religious cleric inside the German state issued orders to assist Hitler and was personally assigned by Hitler or the German fascist bureaucracy to fulfill the desires of German fascist efficiency.

Why push a total agenda of the "Superman" (master race) if there was a God watching you? The "Superman" theory came from Nietzche and when that theory gripped Germany, the German people believed that they were Gods. That is an atheist religious-science trait.

Finally, show me in the bible where it says to genocide the Jews, as the author claims. Show me. The author is confusing a "Christian Identity" form of religion (completed rejected by Christian churches and leaders) and then claiming that Hitler was a "Christian". Christians are not followers of "identity". Christian "identity" ideology dismisses the historical Holy Bible completely and claims that "whites" are the chosen people of God and not the Jews. That is not Christianity and it is disgraceful that the author didn't understand that. Hitler claims in Mein Kampf that he is "fighting" for his "Almighty God", but it is not the Christian God. It is himself as God. It is atheism. If not, produce an accurate example where Hitler describes his God.

Then the author claims:

None of them knew that Nazi soldiers wore belt buckles inscribed with "Gott mit uns" (God is with us).

Again, whose God? Not the Christian God. Muslims in Iran chant that "God is Great" (Allah Ahkabar), but is that the Christian God? You could put "God is great" on your belt-buckles and your God could be Satan. Everyone speaks of God and thinks of God, but what God? Using the author's logic, Hitler could have ordered the "God is with us" on beltbuckles while secretly worshipping himself. That is what atheists do. It isn't a problem I guess until that atheist seizes power at the nation-state level and then begins to genocide other people, because genocide is a godless act.

Then the author continues:

None of them knew that he made Christian school prayer mandatory for the 1930's German schoolchildren who grew up to be his dreaded SS, or that he publicly espoused "family values", which in his mind meant the condemnation of sexual "perversions" rather than the promotion of healthy marriages and parenting methods (rather reminiscent of the right-wing fundamentalist position today).

The author forgets that Germany was being starved in the 1920's and 1930's by the international community and I can imagine that through all that starvation that the German people called out to God to help them. People do those things when they are starving. Starving people become religious people because they pray for food and relief.

The unfortunate part that the author failed to mention (yet again and in too many numerous ways to cover here) is the fact that while the German people were calling for God because they were being starved to death, God did not come to them. So they began to search for another God, another prince. They found that prince (God) in Hitler and the German people embraced their new prince because he declared himself, through the Nazi establishment, as the "new God". This falls directly in line with the fascist state evolvement from allowing religion to dismissing religion as an unnecessary distraction and unworthy of any form of political power. In the atheist state there is no room for competing religions.

What productive value do competing religions have in the atheist state? Atheism is all about killing God. Why would any atheist state allow God to enter? They wouldn't.

Insofar as the author's protest of how Hitler dealt with homosexuality and established positive family institutional belief, that was common in every nation-state of those times. The United States in the 1930's was putting homsexuals in mental hospitals. You can't judge another nation-state for perversion when that same perversion is being used in your state. It is a false analogy. The author also forgot to mention that until the 1990's, homosexual behavior wasn't fashionable. It wasn't fashionable until 45 years after the end of World War II. It is pretty laughable to even bring homosexuality up, but it must have been convenient for him to try and lump together the "right-wing" as he describes.

What is the right-wing? What is it? Who are its members? What are their names? What positions of power do they hold? What country are they in? I keep hearing about vast, vast, super vast, endless, without end, completely infinite "right-wing conspiracies" but I have yet to identify one member. Maybe someone on this forum can explain to me what the "mystical" right-wing is. Maybe JREF should toss in a $1,000,000 prize onto it because I really don't think such a thing exists.

And then the author goes on.....

None of them knew how much the German Christian Social movement resembled the modern right-wing Christian Fundamentalist movement.

Really? Enlighten me. Explain the connections. What is the mystical right-wing? Sounds like wooo wooo nonsense to me but I am all ears. Show me one Nazi symbol in the United States that the mystical "right-wing" uses in their institutions.

None of them knew that Hitler closely followed the anti-Semitic teachings of none other than Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, but this isn't surprising since they didn't know about Martin Luther's extreme anti-Semitism either, even though he wrote a book titled "On Jews and their Lies".

Really? That is some claim. Show me one documented moment in history where Hitler even claimed to be a follower of Lutherism. If Hitler followed anything he would have talked about it. Show me one documented page where Hitler praises Luther.

Now it gets really hilarious. The guy who wrote that drivel claims that Hitler was a staunch catholic since childhood. If Hitler was really a Catholic, why would he follow Protestantism? :eek: It makes no sense! That would be like me saying that a person is a Christian and two sentences later claiming that the same Christian was praising Islam! It makes no sense.

Anti-atheists have noted that Hitler had minor disagreements with the Catholic church in Germany (but not with the church in Rome, with which he signed a Concordat in 1933, and which ordered the German church to fall in line), and they have attempted to twist these minor disagreements into a widespread misconception that he was an atheist, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Hitler had "minor" disagreements with Catholic Church?!? :eek: Why would Hitler throw 6,000,000 ancestors of the founders of Catholicism into ovens?!? That is ridiculous to even say that!

Do priests fight in wars? Do Cathoilic priests pick up rifles and grenades and fight in wars? Was it unreasonable for the Catholics to sign the Concordat? That is open to debate, but the Catholics had no arms, no ammunition--they were as defenseless against Hitler as their bretheren the Jews were defenseless against Hitler. The same Jews that wrote the Catholic bible.

Hitler was an atheist and an atheist he shall be remembered in all of human history.

Jedi Knight
 
Jedi,

Your latest post begs the following question.

Are any and all non-Christians "atheists" by your definition?

Point being that while your arguments may support the belief that Hitler was not Christian, they in no way refute that he did believe in an "Almighty God", which God he believed supported his actions. That cannot be described as atheism by any reasonable definition IMHO.

I will take the liberty of reposting the following links (as they were lost through the moderation). I think the pages should be visited as they contain interesting quotes with good source references.

Adolf Hitler's Religion

Was Hitler an Atheist?

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BTW Jedi, slightly off topic: I note that you still have an Orwell quote in your signature. Does that mean that you do not belive that all atheists are evil? Confused? You will not be if you visit this thread.

Edited to fix incorrect link
 
Looks like we're off to a good re-start! Thank you, Jedi, for getting this going again with a very intriguing post!

And many thanks to Girl 6 for all the work in copying the posts from the old thread into this new one! I hadn't realized how many posts there had been until I re-read them a little while ago.
Jedi Knight said:

I haven't shared this historical fact yet but Hitler's break with Christianity occured strongly when his mother died of a terminal illness. Hitler's mother was attended by a Jewish physician, and after she died it became a personal offense to Hitler. Adolf Hitler's pathology was sociopathological, and the slightest personal grudge that Hitler held for anyone who he deemed to slight him in any way became a personal, prolonged grudge that demanded action against the trespasser. Most normal people (99% of any population) take small slights against them and move on while dismissing them. Men like Hitler who are sociopathological do not rest until they receive their version of defined justice.

When Hitler's mother died that was a major contributing factor to his desired liquidation of the entire Jewish race from the face of the earth and his abandonment of Christianity.
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(1) This part about Hitler's mother's death affecting Hitler's religious beliefs is intriguing, and something I'm not familiar with.

The obvious question is, how do we know this? Is it something Hitler wrote in one of his private works, or something he confided to someone close to him who later revealed this? If you could provide some sources where I could look this up, I'd like to read more about this.

(2) You make many good criticisms of the rhetoric used in one of the web sites about Hitler's beliefs.

I think the person who wrote what was on that site took some good information and phrased it in a way to try to make it sound persuasive. That's a common practice, but it's also one reason I prefer not to rely to heavily on other people's interpretations and to go back to the source material. Rather than jump into arguing about that writer's wordings and that writer's conclusions, I'd like to look at the source material used to reach those conclusions.

There's plenty of time for that, so I'm not going to overload this post with too many things now.

(3) There are a few historical side-notes that arise in the course of discussing Hitler's religious beliefs which I'd be interested in exploring here. For instance, you quote and respond to a passage from the site:
"None of them knew that he made Christian school prayer mandatory for the 1930's German schoolchildren who grew up to be his dreaded SS, or that he publicly espoused "family values", which in his mind meant the condemnation of sexual "perversions" rather than the promotion of healthy marriages and parenting methods (rather reminiscent of the right-wing fundamentalist position today)."

The author forgets that Germany was being starved in the 1920's and 1930's by the international community and I can imagine that through all that starvation that the German people called out to God to help them. People do those things when they are starving. Starving people become religious people because they pray for food and relief.
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Both the web site's mention of mandatory prayer in schools, and your mention of starvation in Germany, are matters of history worth going into a little as we continue.

The web site brings this in rhetorically -- the emphasis, at least as I read this, is on "None of them knew...", i.e. it's being used to attack those disagreeing as ignorant. That's a shame, because it distracts from an interesting and relevant bit of background information worth looking up. Rather than introducing it as a throwaway bit, I'd like to see this expanded on a bit more -- what is the history of the introduction of mandatory prayer into German schools, what were some of the speeches made in favor (and by whom), what were some of the speeches made against (and by whom), etc.

Often history is more complicated than the over-simplified versions we are taught.

Another historical side-note I'd like to explore more:
Insofar as the author's protest of how Hitler dealt with homosexuality and established positive family institutional belief, that was common in every nation-state of those times... until the 1990's, homosexual behavior wasn't fashionable. It wasn't fashionable until 45 years after the end of World War II.
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This assertion may or may not be true. I've read elsewhere, for instance, that homosexuality was much more openly practiced and openly accepted in the late 19th century US than during much of the 20th century. I think it is quite possible that homosexuality was fairly openly practiced and accepted, in ways comparable to 1990s USA, in 1920s/1930s If this is relevant to understanding Germany of the time and how it influenced Hitler, it's worth looking up, especially in materials written during that time or in histories that draw directly on those sources, to be clearer about this.

(4) You make a number of other good points, such as asking what "mystical right-wing" means and asking what being a "staunch Catholic" means. Before these terms get bandied about, it would be good to be clear on what whoever is using them is talking about.

Again, I think the web site author had some good points, but worded them poorly in trying to be persuasive. "Staunch Catholic" is a good example. The factual material supports the assertion that Hitler was raised as a Catholic and continued to be technically a Catholic (i.e. he never officially renounced it and was never officially ex-communicated). To raise "never officially renounced and was never officially ex-communicated" into "staunch" is annoying because by over-stating a fact he makes it into a point of contention.

That raises something I hope we can do early on in this re-start: be clear on what each of us means when we use the term atheist. HS4 raised a good point earlier, that you may be using a different meaning than some others of us.

I'm not trying to argue about whose definition is better -- I'm quite happy to let the "official" definition of atheist in this thread be yours. What I want is to be clear what you mean by atheist, so we can respect that definition (rather than be talking at cross-purposes) and so we can coin and agree on other terms for other concepts of atheism so we can talk about those concepts meaningfully as well.

(5) That seems like enough for one post! I'll shut up for a bit, read over the thread again more carefully to refresh my memory more, and be back again later.
 
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