Why We Have to Fight

[ScottSA]

nope, it adds up to 100's of millions.

100's and 100's of millions.

That is factually incorrect.

[Black Dog]

Would you argue that mystic Nazism is NOT a religion? Would you argue that Hitler was not an atheist? He seemed to think he was. He seemed to think Nazism was a humanist religion too.

He wasn't an atheist. He may not have been a Christian, but he was a believer in a higher power (witness his pulpit talk of "Providence" and "Destiny"). Above all, though, Hitler was an insane meglomaniac: his case offers few lessons on the morality of atheism or religion.

Here's a hint: if you're going to pretend to be an intellectual and adopt snobbery as armor, learn something about the subject you're engaging before loping lopsidedly into battle.

Here's some snobbery for you: go fuck yourself.

[Canadian Blue]

They don't have an exact figure on the inquisiton.

[AndrewL]

Im certainly open to suggestion about ways in which rational sane people can marginalize and eventually eliminate religion, without resorting to widespread murder and genocide.

I don't think we can undermine Islam without undermining Christianity and Judaism, based as they are on the same silly beliefs.

It is a scary scenario we have right now, with all those violent fundamentalists convinced of their otherworldly destiny, be it Bush or the suicide bomber in iraq.

How do we combat that? At home we can stop allowing children to be exposed to such nonsense. But abroad how do we convince Muslims of their abject insanity? How do we first get them to moderate and modernize their beliefs? - How do we release all religious people from the clutches of superstition and literal beliefs about god and heaven?

This is the heart of the problem. How do we defeat the fanatical Muslims without murdering their children with cowardly air strikes and cluster bombs? That will certainly never lead to success. How do we spread enlightenment when our leaders hold the same stupid beliefs about the origin of the universe and their place in it?

The prospects for the future are looking dimmer every day.

Andrew

[M.Dancer]

They don't have an exact figure on the inquisiton.

maybe so..but it wasn't huge.

[M.Dancer]

They don't have an exact figure on the inquisiton.

maybe so..but it wasn't huge.

Borromeo, who oversaw the volume, said that while there were some 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, researchers found that about 1 percent of the defendants were executed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5218373/

1250.

That's less than the avergae monthly death toll in Iraq

[Charles Anthony]

How do we combat that? At home we can stop allowing children to be exposed to such nonsense. But abroad how do we convince Muslims of their abject insanity? How do we first get them to moderate and modernize their beliefs? - How do we release all religious people from the clutches of superstition and literal beliefs about god and heaven?

Why should we care about any of the above?????

This is the heart of the problem. How do we defeat the fanatical Muslims without murdering their children with cowardly air strikes and cluster bombs? That will certainly never lead to success. How do we spread enlightenment when our leaders hold the same stupid beliefs about the origin of the universe and their place in it?

Show them the power of The Almighty Dollar and engage in honest commercial trade.

[AndrewL]

Why should we care about any of the above?????

You dont need to care about it i suppose. I just personally convinced that the source of of justification for many of the horrendous things people do is religion. I think we are born with a great capacity for empathy, it takes something as powerful as religion to set natural empathy aside. Thats why i care about strategies that would marginalize and eventually relegate religion to a historical footnote religion in the world. I think it would bring forth a great improvement in the human capacity make the world a better place.

Show them the power of The Almighty Dollar and engage in honest commercial trade.

Honest commercial trade? You mean let them determine the fate of their own natural resources? Thats a start. I doubt it will have the power to overcome religion though. If we take a cue from the fundamentalist mega-church folks in the USA, all they have done is combine religion with capitalism and politics. Yikes!

Andrew

[B. Max]

'kuzadd' date='Mar 26 2007, 01:09 PM' post='200363']

Hitler was a christian!

very much along the lines of today's 'fundamnetalist" christians

Looks like he became converted to atheism. Sounds exactly like todays atheists.

"Christianity is an invention of sick brains," Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.

http://www.davnet.org/kevin/essays/hitler.html

[kuzadd]

So far the religion with the most killings under it's best is probably Christianity, aka western civilization. Why don't we go to war with ourselves.

Absolutely untrue. Not even close. Even with a headstart, Christianity isn't anywhere near Islam in bodycount. Not even in the same league. The only religion that beats Islam is the atheism of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and assorted hangerson like Pol Pot and Che.

Hitler was a christian!

very much along the lines of today's 'fundamnetalist" christians

I'll use some of his own words to demonstrate

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933"

supported religious schools!!!

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. " [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

Just like GWB! He belives 'god ' talks to him and guides him also! (?????)

" What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator." [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]

well America fights for the "homeland"!

"Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men. [Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism]"

women in their place, as second rate citizens, sound familiar, religious right?????

Make no mistake Hitler was a christian!

The citations you offer are all from the 1920s and early 1930s, and none of them mention Christ, who after all is rather central to Christianity. Hitler never pretended to be a Christian, and any serious study of his life is quite clear that he was if not an atheist, then a mystical humanist. Hence the 'master race' and the Aryan superman and all that.

laughable, the "differentiation" does God, father of Christ, not figure into christianity? It certainly doesn't figure into atheism.!

FYI:

The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, by Richard Steigmann-Gall

Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich

Doris L. Bergen

The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany

Author:Guenter Lewy

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII

Author: John Cornwell

Relying on exclusive access to Vatican and Jesuit archives, an award-winning Roman Catholic journalist argues that through a 1933 Concordat with Hitler, Pope Pius XII facilitated the dictator's riseAand, ultimately, the Holocaust.

and so forth and so on.......................

and finally.......................

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; )

[ScottSA]

They don't have an exact figure on the inquisiton.

Its a tiny fraction of a fraction of those killed by Hitler or Stalin.

[M.Dancer]

Nazism and the war had as much to do with Christianity as the Falklands war........

[Charles Anthony]

You dont need to care about it i suppose. I just personally convinced that the source of of justification for many of the horrendous things people do is religion.

I am convinced that all people are inherently greedy more than they are religious.

Honest commercial trade? You mean let them determine the fate of their own natural resources? Thats a start.

Yes.

I doubt it will have the power to overcome religion though. If we take a cue from the fundamentalist mega-church folks in the USA, all they have done is combine religion with capitalism and politics.

Do not take a cue from them. Combining capitalism with politics is NOT honest commercial trade.

[ScottSA]

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; )

I would urge you to discard the sources you cite and read real history. Try "Hitler", by Ian Kershaw. It's considered the foremost biography on Hitler. It's written by an academic.

Hitler, at a very early date, long before consolidating his power, played politics and told people what they wanted to hear. Remember, he came to power through a democratic system. As for the truth of what he claimed vis a vis Christianity, it holds about as much worth as what he claimed about Austria, the Sudetenland, the rest of Checkoslovakia, Poland or anything else. He jailed communists, Jews and Christians with the same degree of zeal.

[kuzadd]

Im certainly open to suggestion about ways in which rational sane people can marginalize and eventually eliminate religion, without resorting to widespread murder and genocide.

I don't think we can undermine Islam without undermining Christianity and Judaism, based as they are on the same silly beliefs.

It is a scary scenario we have right now, with all those violent fundamentalists convinced of their otherworldly destiny, be it Bush or the suicide bomber in iraq.

How do we combat that? At home we can stop allowing children to be exposed to such nonsense. But abroad how do we convince Muslims of their abject insanity? How do we first get them to moderate and modernize their beliefs? - How do we release all religious people from the clutches of superstition and literal beliefs about god and heaven?

This is the heart of the problem. How do we defeat the fanatical Muslims without murdering their children with cowardly air strikes and cluster bombs? That will certainly never lead to success. How do we spread enlightenment when our leaders hold the same stupid beliefs about the origin of the universe and their place in it?

The prospects for the future are looking dimmer every day.

Andrew

" At home we can stop allowing children to be exposed to such nonsense. But abroad how do we convince Muslims of their abject insanity? How do we first get them to moderate and modernize their beliefs? - How do we release all religious people from the clutches of superstition and literal beliefs about god and heaven?"

"But abroad how do we convince Muslims of their abject insanity? "

by bombing them back to the stone age, killing , raping and torturing them. That should make it clear to them they are the insane ones! YA THINK?!

"How do we first get them to moderate and modernize their beliefs?"

Why we get them to follow a President , who says , God tells him what to do, and that GOD told him to attack Iraq, then when that same President surrounds himself, with end-times Christian followers,???

But, is sure to tell all others ,"them" to "moderate and modernize their beliefs"????

How do we release all religious people from the clutches of superstition and literal beliefs about god and heaven?"

Well I would think largely, it would be to "walk the talk", but, that sure as heck isn't the case!!!

[AndrewL]

'kuzadd' date='Mar 26 2007, 01:09 PM' post='200363']

Hitler was a christian!

very much along the lines of today's 'fundamnetalist" christians

Looks like he became converted to atheism. Sounds exactly like todays atheists.

"Christianity is an invention of sick brains," Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.

http://www.davnet.org/kevin/essays/hitler.html

Mistranslation.

But the original German says, "Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly." The difference in meaning here is radical, and again shows how Genoud (hence the Trevor-Roper translation) has distorted Hitler's criticism of one form of Christianity (which implies he believed there was a true Christianity) into a thoroughly anti-Christian sentiment.

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

Andrew

[ScottSA]

How do we defeat the fanatical Muslims without murdering their children with cowardly air strikes and cluster bombs? That will certainly never lead to success.

That is demonstrably false. It works all the time. For instance, that's why central and western Europe isn't fascist these days, and why the Asian Pacific seaboard isn't still part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. You may not like the method, but you can hardly dismiss the results.

[ScottSA]

'kuzadd' date='Mar 26 2007, 01:09 PM' post='200363']

Hitler was a christian!

very much along the lines of today's 'fundamnetalist" christians

Looks like he became converted to atheism. Sounds exactly like todays atheists.

"Christianity is an invention of sick brains," Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.

http://www.davnet.org/kevin/essays/hitler.html

Mistranslation.

But the original German says, "Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly." The difference in meaning here is radical, and again shows how Genoud (hence the Trevor-Roper translation) has distorted Hitler's criticism of one form of Christianity (which implies he believed there was a true Christianity) into a thoroughly anti-Christian sentiment.

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

Andrew

Claiming that Hitler came to power as a Christian is just silly revisionism.

[kuzadd]

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; )

I would urge you to discard the sources you cite and read real history. Try "Hitler", by Ian Kershaw. It's considered the foremost biography on Hitler. It's written by an academic.

Hitler, at a very early date, long before consolidating his power, played politics and told people what they wanted to hear. Remember, he came to power through a democratic system. As for the truth of what he claimed vis a vis Christianity, it holds about as much worth as what he claimed about Austria, the Sudetenland, the rest of Checkoslovakia, Poland or anything else. He jailed communists, Jews and Christians with the same degree of zeal.

I read plenty of REAL history, thanks!

"As for the truth of what he claimed vis a vis Christianity,"

I said, he is as much a chrisitian as the fundamentalists of today, and GWB.

But that is subjective, you see, since I see NONE of them as being 'christians'

In my understanding of the word.

I don't know what your understanding is, the facts are , he was raised Catholic, he was supported by the vatican, and he extolled religion/ious virtue for the populace.

Also see Vatican 'rat' lines.

Vatican wants U.S. to quash Holocaust survivors' suit

JOE ESKENAZI

Bulletin Staff

The Vatican is asking the U.S. government to intervene against a suit filed on behalf of Holocaust survivors.

So, although it probably won't be his first priority, whoever becomes president will find a letter on his desk from the Vatican requesting that the United States block a class-action suit filed on behalf of 28 Americans of Ukrainian and Yugoslavian descent.

In a six-point note filed with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in late October, the Vatican secretariat of state expressed "surprise and regret" over the pending case filed against the Vatican Bank and the Franciscan order.

Among other claims, the suit charges the Vatican and Franciscans with accepting valuables plundered by Croatia's Nazi-backed Ustashe regime and using them to bankroll both the Nazi "Rat Line" to South America and various Western powers' anti-Soviet campaigns.

etc., etc.,..........................................

[AndrewL]

I am convinced that all people are inherently greedy more than they are religious.

And what could be more a symbol of their greed than a belief that they are unique and special in the universe, that god has chosen them personally to talk to, and that god will reward them when they die? Greed is always inseparable from a sense of personal entitlement.

Andrew

[ScottSA]

Among other claims, the suit charges the Vatican and Franciscans with accepting valuables plundered by Croatia's Nazi-backed Ustashe regime and using them to bankroll both the Nazi "Rat Line" to South America and various Western powers' anti-Soviet campaigns.

A class action suit initiated against the Ustashe is proof that Hitler was Christian?

[AndrewL]

Claiming that Hitler came to power as a Christian is just silly revisionism.

Claiming that the holocaust was a result of atheism is perhaps equally absurd.

But lets put the holocaust in perspective. There was deep seeded anti-semitism all throughout Europe at the time. This anti-semitism had its roots in the historical hatred Christians had for jews. What sort of historical revisionism would place the blame entirely on atheism, and ignore actual history.

Whether or not Hitler was a genuine Christian or just a political opportunist is not really important. How Christians all over Germany and Europe came to detest jews, how they became a convenient victim of Hitler is far more relevant and certainly is far more related to christianity than anything to do with atheism.

Andrew

[kuzadd]

nope, it adds up to 100's of millions.

100's and 100's of millions.

That is factually incorrect.

Possibly) The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other:

Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries

1 55 million Second World War 20C

2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine) 20C

3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C

4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C

5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C

6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C

7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C

8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C

9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C

[]10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C

11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C

12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C

13 15 million First World War 20C

14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C

15 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C

16 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C

17 7 million Thirty Years War 17C

18 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C

19 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C

20 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C

21 3 million French Wars of Religion 16C

annhilitation of the Native Indians 20,000,000

[ScottSA]

Claiming that Hitler came to power as a Christian is just silly revisionism.

Claiming that the holocaust was a result of atheism is perhaps equally absurd.

But lets put the holocaust in perspective. There was deep seeded anti-semitism all throughout Europe at the time. This anti-semitism had its roots in the historical hatred Christians had for jews. What sort of historical revisionism would place the blame entirely on atheism, and ignore actual history.

Whether or not Hitler was a genuine Christian or just a political opportunist is not really important. How Christians all over Germany and Europe came to detest jews, how they became a convenient victim of Hitler is far more relevant and certainly is far more related to christianity than anything to do with atheism.

Andrew

Now that is an argument with some merit. And you would more profitably point to various 19th century pogroms as evidence of it than try to paint Hitler as a Christian or as acting on behalf of Christianity. I would put this to you though: Anti-semitism has been alive and well in Islam as well. In fact the very genesis of Islam involves explicit anti-Semitism, and that anti-Semitism continues to this day in Islam. Yet Christianity hasn't sparked a pogrom in...well...a long time, anyway. And only the most fringe of fringe groups within Christianity would today adopt an openly anti-Semitic thesis, yet anti-Semitism is pandemic across all four schools of Islam and across the Sunni/Shia schism. Moral equivalency between the two just isn't on within the context of the current situation.

[AndrewL]

Claiming that Hitler came to power as a Christian is just silly revisionism.

Claiming that the holocaust was a result of atheism is perhaps equally absurd.

But lets put the holocaust in perspective. There was deep seeded anti-semitism all throughout Europe at the time. This anti-semitism had its roots in the historical hatred Christians had for jews. What sort of historical revisionism would place the blame entirely on atheism, and ignore actual history.

Whether or not Hitler was a genuine Christian or just a political opportunist is not really important. How Christians all over Germany and Europe came to detest jews, how they became a convenient victim of Hitler is far more relevant and certainly is far more related to christianity than anything to do with atheism.

Andrew

Now that is an argument with some merit. And you would more profitably point to various 19th century pogroms as evidence of it than try to paint Hitler as a Christian or as acting on behalf of Christianity. I would put this to you though: Anti-semitism has been alive and well in Islam as well. In fact the very genesis of Islam involves explicit anti-Semitism, and that anti-Semitism continues to this day in Islam. Yet Christianity hasn't sparked a pogrom in...well...a long time, anyway. And only the most fringe of fringe groups within Christianity would today adopt an openly anti-Semitic thesis, yet anti-Semitism is pandemic across all four schools of Islam and across the Sunni/Shia schism. Moral equivalency between the two just isn't on within the context of the current situation.

I see plenty of anti zionism coming from arab sources. But i don't see anti-semitism. Im sure it exists in some corners though, as it does in all parts of the western world still to this day.

Many arabs are also semitic peoples, anti-semitism from arabs makes little sense in this context.

Andrew