WARNING: long post! Consumption of caffeine before reading is recommended.
In preparing to make some comments on the recently-posted final excerpts of Table Talk # 51, I looked back to see what comments and analysis had been made about the first excerpt. That excerpt appeared as post 160 on page 4. Reading through pages 5 and 6, I see that discussion on those pages went in other directions and the first installment of this Table Talk does not appear to have been commented upon yet. So here -- nine pages later! -- are some thoughts about what appears in the first part of TT 51.
... Religion is in perpetual conflict with the spirit of free research. The Church's opposition to science was sometimes so violent that it struck off sparks. The Church, with a clear awareness of her interests, has made a strategic retreat, with the result that science has lost some of its aggressiveness.
Here, as in many places in these transcripts, Hitler speaks admiringly of science and scornfully of religion. This seems to me a key part of his religious beliefs (as well as his racial ones). He believes that most people are superstitious fools, but that he has risen above this nonsense and is a man of Science and Realism.
Just as there are many people who are more concerned with (capital-T)
Truth than with
truth, so there are many people who are more devoted to (capital-S)
Science than to
science.
Some religious fundamentalists are examples of the former. In opposing abortion, for example, the
Truth (that
Abortion Is Murder!) is more important to some people than the factual accuracy of statements they use to further their cause. (Joe Scheidler in his book
Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion includes a tactic he calls
Truth Squads, which are people who lie about being a couple considering an abortion, make an appointment at a clinic, and while sitting in the waiting room go through a charade of reading anti-abortion leaflets and pretending to be converted by the arguments presented there, eventually "deciding" to go to a Crisis Pregnancy Center for help instead and trying to persuade other people in the waiting room to leave with them.)
Similarly there are people -- many of them paranormalists -- who are very enamored of
Science but not very fond of
science or scientific methods. These are people who are sure that they have seen (or intuited) the True Nature of Reality. Science, to them, is primarily a dogmatic assertion of Reality As They See It.
And that's the impression I get about Hitler from the Table Talks. He sees himself as a Clear Thinker -- a Rationalist -- a person who has shaken off the superstitious beliefs that others cling to and who sees the world as it really is -- even though much of the "reality" he sees has no factual basis.
The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation fo the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught in despair an hour before -- and I remember that I drove them to despair.
In this passage Hitler talks about religion and science being in conflict. If we simply took this passage on its own, it might be possible to think Hitler was equally frustrated with both, but the implication here is that it is the religious teaching he believes is absurd. (If that is not clear to others in reading this passage, I think it will become clearer in a future Table Talk where he talks more about his school experiences. My own impression of this passage may be colored by having read that one.)
Richard Carrier (whom I quoted on the previous page of this thread) argued that because early on the Nazis made a deal to allow Catholic instruction in the public schools that Hitler must have been a strong supporter of such religious instruction. But a number of passages in the Table Talks indicate Hitler was actually hostile to such instruction and saw it as foolishness.
The next couple paragraphs are interesting as well, but let's cut to the chase -- the paragraph where Hitler starts talking about God:
When one says that God provokes the lightning, that's true in a sense...
Not very helpful yet. What does he mean,
"true in a sense"? (He could, for instance, mean it's
metaphorically true.)
... but what is certain is that God does not direct the thunderbolt, as the Church claims. The Church's explanation of natural phenomena is an abuse, for the Church has ulterior interests.
Interesting, but still not clear.
Whoever sees God only in an oak or in a tabernacle, instead of seeing Him everywhere, is not truly pious. He remains attached to appearances -- and when the sky thunders and the lightning strikes, he trembles simply from fear of being struck as a punishment for the sin he's just committed.
Is Hitler beginning to move beyond
attacking other people's conceptions of god and starting to
give his own? It sounds like Hitler is saying he believes that God is everywhere. If so, that would certainly support the idea that he believed in a god.
Unfortunately, it is not clear to me whether that is what he's saying. Hitler spends a lot of time pointing out shortcomings in other people's thinking, and this may simply be one more example. In other words, he may be pointing out the contradiction of claiming to be deeply religious but not actually thinking much about god at all except in church on Sunday or in moments of crisis. Saying that these people are wrong is not necessarily saying that people who see god everywhere are right.
... Recent experiments make it possible for one to wonder what distinguishes live bodies from inanimate matter. In the face of this discovery, the Church will begin by rising in revolt, then it will continue to teach its "truths". One day finally, under the battering-ram of science, dogma will collapse. It is logical that it should be so, for the human spirit cannot remorselessly apply itself to raising the veil of mystery without peoples' one day drawing the conclusion.
Hitler raises the question of what distinguishes live bodies from dead ones without giving an answer as to what he believes about this. But the implication I get from this passage is that he doesn't particularly believe in a soul which survives death. It seems to me that this passage is probably referring to notions such as souls and an afterlife as the "truths" which are being battered out of existence by the march of science.
The 10 Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they're inspired by the best religious spirit, and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.
So Hitler liked the 10 Commandments
as a code of living. This is what religion is good for, he seems to be saying, providing people with rules for how to behave and providing a rationale for why to obey them. It is a positive comment about an
aspect of religion without actually endorsing
religious belief.
The Churches are born of the need to give a structure to the religious spirit. Only the forms in which the religious instinct expresses itself can vary.
In recent years there has been talk about a
religious gene -- some physical quirk which makes people prone to believe in a god (whether one actually exists or not). What Hitler is saying in those two sentences sounds similar.
That would be consistent with much of the rest of what Hitler seems to be saying -- that the mass of people are superstitious fools who believe all this nonsense because they emotionally need to, but that he has risen above this and is able to see reality for what it is ...
Except -- and this is important to point out -- Hitler's "reality" includes something mysterious called Providence which he periodically touches upon, as he did back in TT # 27 and as he does in the concluding sentences of this excerpt:
So-and-so doesn't become aware of human littleness unless he is seized by the scruff of the neck.... In the depths of his heart, each man is aware of his puniness...
That is not the most explicit reference to the Something-Greater-Than-Man that Hitler seems to believe in, but it does serve as a reminder that in the midst of his constant attacks on other people's religious beliefs (which he sees as being superstitious nonsense) he does sometimes allude to his own religious beliefs (which he sees as simply a recognition of the natural world as it is).
And there is a much stronger reference coming up later in this Table Talk.
"The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It’s a fact that we’re feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly..." That's at the very end of the third excerpt, so it will be a little while yet before we get to it. But for those who are getting impatient, that looks to me like the clearest indication so far of what Hitler believed about the existence and nature of god.
