Yeah, there's Godwin's law. so what?

[acroyear]

Pharyngula: Nice photo:

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life" ('My New Order', Adolf Hitler, Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)

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

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

He was utterly faithful to one woman only to the very end (though they saved the marriage to that last day).

Name one religious right televangelist for whom one can say the same.

There is no evidence that Hitler personally ever killed anyone save maybe Braun herself on that last day.

His alleged atheism is also very much subject to doubt. He was raised Roman Catholic.

But there-in lies the entire point - he put up the pretense, the face, the "vanity" (in the 3rd Commandment's sense) of being Religious and "Christian". He made the religious, including the Vatican, think he was one of them in order to gain power over them and manipulate them into doing his will BY MAKING THEM THINK they were doing the will of The Lord.

Dobson, Falwell, Oral Roberts, Jim Baker, Pat Robertson, the names go on and on and on - and the politicians they support, all giving that pretense of faith while clinging on to worldly power at the hands of those they manipulate daily.

If we don't stand up to the fact that politics and faith should never be mingled, we WILL have another. Go read some "religious right" theocratic web sites. Go read the hatred. Go read the lies, the deceptions, the misquotes. Go read how they constantly try to turn Jefferson and Madison into "good Christian founders" when they were at the time anything but.

Go read about how this majority faith is an "oppressed majority" whose "rights" are being infringed because they can't use my tax dollars to preach their lies to me, or how their "rights" are infringed because some other religion wants to put up a monument in their "exclusive" government-owned space where they put up the 10 Commandments (most of which they fail to follow).

Go read how they want their particular "morality" so enshrined to the point that no other Christian Sect INCLUDING CATHOLICISM can ever exist.

Just because they happen to vocally agree with Catholic Doctrine in a few issues related to biology does not IN ANY WAY mean they agree with Catholic dogma and philosophy.

Hitler played the politics of victimhood very well, manipulating the people in the vast majority into thinking they were a repressed and oppressed minority at their faith, at the very core of their self-identity.

The leaders of the religious right have taken that lessen VERY well.

BTW: The actions of the Vatican during the years leading to the war speak very loudly, too. Their Silence spoke volumes over their words, I must say. The photo linked to was Hitler shaking hands with Catholic officials.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

This is untrue, or at best, REALLY unprovable(goodness, I'm tired of this one.)

"Adolf Hitler was an atheist!

"Hitler was an atheist, and look at what he did!"

Adolf Hitler was emphatically not an atheist. As he said himself:

The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. [original italics]

For God's will gave men their form, their essence, and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other.

[...]

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. [original italics]
[Adolf Hitler, from "Mein Kampf," translation by Ralph Mannheim.]

Hitler certainly appeared at times to be a theist, and claimed to be a Christian:

The Führer made it known to those entrusted with the Final Solution that the killings should be done as humanely as possible. This was in line with his conviction that he was observing God's injunction to cleanse the world of vermin. Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy ("I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so" [quoting Hitler]), he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God--so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty.
[Pulitzer Prize winner John Toland
from "Adolf Hitler," pp 507, talking about the Autumn of 1941.]

The "I am now as before a Catholic..." quotation from Hitler was recorded in the diary of Gerhard Engel, an SS Adjutant, in October 1941. Hitler was speaking in private, not before a mass audience, and so it is difficult to dismiss the comment as propaganda lies.

Of course, someone bad believing something does not make that belief wrong. It's also entirely possible that Hitler was lying when he claimed to believe in God. We certainly can't conclude that he's an atheist, though.

(source: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/arguments.html#hitler)

Also, this:

"The Government of the Reich, who regard Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attach the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See and are endeavouring to develop them."

--Adolf Hitler, in his speech to the Reichstag on 23 March 1933

If he was an atheist, he was faking being a Christian pretty damned hard.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

This particular rumor pisses me off SO MUCH, Joe. SO MUCH. It's been disproven over and over again and people still parrot it.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

Tell any Dommie (Ben Stein for example) about that and they'll call you a liar and tell you that Hitler was an atheist darwinist and of course since most people are idiots and believe what their prejudices tell them this isn't much of a surprise.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Hitler didn't "believe" in evolution by the sense that biologists do nor the sense that Stein was implying. The "social darwinism" connection came from Himmler, and later on after Hitler's plans had already started. biologists had rejected ALL social darwinism as garbage in the 1910s.

Hitler's own vocabulary on the subject owes far more to Martin Luther, to Catholic authors from the Inquisition era, and (scientifically) to disease and breeding practices that came long before Darwin. Mein Kampf doesn't mention D at all. Eugenics is merely selective breeding applied to humans, and D is not evidence for selective breeding ("artificial" selection) - he actually used it as an example of the power of selection and then showed examples of how nature did it without our involvement - natural selection.

nothing about it is needed for eugenics. the "race" factor is an intentional distortion of his words and what Darwin meant by race in his writings, which was not what sociologists and politicians mean by it.

The vocabulary was useful, nothing more, just as the vocabulary of Christian anti-semites was useful - merely the right language for a particular audience.

as for "hatred" - i'm sorry, but these religious theocrats have given me more than enough reasons to hate, and Eiredrake too. ok, i'm not sorry - this hatred is FULLY JUSTIFIED by their actions against MY freedom.

yours too, if you would sit up and notice. It is NOT the church's place, ANY church's place, to enforce their own ideas of "morality", justified only by consulting their book with their own pre-set interpretations in mind, as a matter of state law against those who don't believe in it.

PERIOD.

What they choose to instruct their own believers is between them and their own believers AND SHOULD NOT affect MY freedom to do what I want provided it does not constitute a true social harm.

As for the churches and WW2. Sorry again, but the facts say the only thing they were out to do at the time of fascism was cover their ass and stay out of trouble, just like every other co-conspirator of the madness of that decade. Smile and nod and look the other way and all will be well. Simple as that.

Could they have done anything else? probably not without getting involved in other state alliances that would have made them a more direct target. Had Mussellini (sp) been more successful as a military leader and thus kept the support of his people through '43 he and Hitler probably could have been done with the Vatican entirely, regardless of their actions in the '30s. However, that would have turned the Spanish against them and likely increased Irish and Mexican involvement and cost them their South American connections (necessary for medical and armament supplies) so it wouldn't have been a smart move, war-wise, even though it was the local political ideal they wanted.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

Or you could read Hitler's own words, his speeches, his other works such as Mein Kampf and words that other people have written about him at the time when he was alive and realize that you are incorrect. Hitler didn't very obviously didn't believe of any authority above him on earth. But he also very obviously used his God on as an excuse to consolidate and strengthen his own power. That doesn't make him an Atheist.

He was a fascist megalomaniac which would have manifested no matter what his faith was or was not. But I've yet to ever see Hitler refer to himself in any other manner than as a good Catholic boy who was doing what his religion bid him to do. As acroyear70 mentions below, Eugenics was what he practiced and Eugenics has been known to those practicing farming and animal husbandry since we first started breeding dogs and horses for desired traits. Yet nobody is blaming Hitler on dog breeders or farmers.

Whatever 'valid reasons' the church might thought it had have had to stand by and ignore the slaughter of millions of innocent people, ultimately they did it to ensure their own power. They were hedging their bets so that in case Hitler won they'd still be allowed to exist. This is no different than what the church in general does today. They will use any tactic or doctrine to ensure their own advantage, comfort and power. All the golden temples, pretty statues and rich clothing doesn't come out of thin air.

The facts are facts, Atheism is merely a lack of belief in a deity. You can be an asshole and an Atheist just like you can be a Christian and be an asshole. Belief in a deity no more makes you a decent human being than non-belief in the same makes you a bad human being.

Evolution is an observation about how traits in species survive or die out in response to the environment due to natural selection and how said species evolve over time.

In neither of these things is there a mandate to murder millions of people and quite frankly I am sick to death of being conflated with the likes of Hitler by ignorant religious bigots who see me as a threat to their mythology and their age old power structure. Especially given the millions of people who have been murdered, tortured, raped, incarcerated and brainwashed over the years sorely because of their religion.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

and besides, I don't hate Christians or Catholics or religious people in general. I hate what the right wings of these organizations do as byproducts of their structures.

Quakers aren't trying to force their teachings into my school's science classes. Amish aren't trying to restrict my freedoms. Universal Unitarians aren't trying to tell me I can't marry someone. Buddhists aren't walking propane tanks wrapped in nails into women's clinics. Wicca aren't forcing CDC scientists into posting false information on their websites about the effectiveness of condoms. Taoists aren't trying to block vaccines for fatal diseases. Satanists aren't trying to use public tax money to build religious theme parks so they can rake in tax free dough.

People are free to believe what they wish. But when it comes down to preventing me from doing the same you're damn right I'm going to get angry. Especially when lies, propaganda, misinformation and character assassination and even outright terrorism are the tools they use to do it.