As a follow up on the question of Christianity and Adolf Hitler, I refer you to this 2003 article in Free Inquiry. I don't agree with all of it, nor do I really put the blame for Hitler on Christianity (we must bear in mind that a great many Christians both risked and gave their lives to fight against Hitler and to protect his victims and hide them from Nazi soldiers). But I don't think any reasonable person familiar with the history could deny that centuries of Christian anti-semitism, found in both Catholic and Protestant traditions and advocated by prominent church fathers and theologians, created a fertile ground in which the Final Solution could take root.
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In the recent hubbub concerning the use of the Nazi analogy, there are two seemingly unrelated statements that have struck me. The first was from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, while giving a talk at the oldest Jewish synagogue in the United States. The AP reported on November 22, 2004:
In…
The Anti-Defamation League has joined the chorus blasting D. James Kennedy's flagrantly dishonest TV special about Darwin and Hitler. They issued a press release that addressed the Francis Collins issue as well:
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Joseph Farah, grand poobah of the Worldnutdaily, is once again peddling the "evolution leads to Hitler" nonsense. I know this has all been said before, but let's say it all again just to make sure no one misses it. Farah is making a big deal out of an article that shows that German archaeologists,…
Religious right fraud D. James Kennedy has a special coming up called Darwin's Deadly Legacy (which, naturally, the Worldnutdaily is pimping). In it, he will make the standard "evolution leads to naziism" argument that creationists have tried to peddle for decades (they also claim it leads to…
Whether christianity had any causal effect on the Hitler regime, the most significant conclusion is that the modern practice of christianity is consistent with virtually any behavior. In other words, don't count on religious belief to keep people behaving "morally."
FYI: Kennedy made a 30 minute version of Sunday's "documentary" and broadcast it on his radio show this morning. Collins and Behe are both featured -- Collins at length -- at about 20 minutes in (was still in bed so wasn't keeping close track) on the usual ID talking point about the cell containing a whole library of information which is far too complex to have evolved naturally. Ann Coulter is also featured and even quoted the word "phyla" - I wonder if she knows what it means?
The audio link is at the top of this page.
http://www.truthsthattransform.org/
Anti-semitism was undenyably fostered and used by the European christian hierarchies for centuries leading up to WWII. To have a christian group blame the holocaust on the theory of evolution is like a murderer blaming the gun manufacturer for the crime. Another broken irony meter.
A lot of German Christians signed up for the Hitler program, which may be evidenced in this document (PDF) from the Presbyterian Church, USA. See p. 246 of the text (p. 272 of the PDF window) about the 1934 Barmen Declaration.
In all, while I fully recognize that great evil has been committed and much blood has been spilled in the name of Christ, it should be said that (1) Hitler's anti-Semitism is at least as derived from ethnic bigotry as religious bigotry, (2) anti-Semitism in Europe predates Christianity, (3) the fascist movements that were in vogue at the time don't seem to have religious foundations, but misguided philosophical foundations; political and intellectual leaders were involved in a massive reaction against all the premises of the Enlightenment, and even against the notion that reason could help to solve the problems of mankind. That said, it is of course obvious that Germany was a predominantly Christian country, but the British Commonwealth and the U.S. were largely Christian, too. Japan was fascist and racist in those years, too, but it hardly follows that Shintoism is to blame.
Back around 1994, when anti-gay initiatives were appearing on the Oregon ballot, it was homosexuality that was being blamed for Hitler, WWII, and the Holocaust.
EVERYTHING I DON'T LIKE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HOLOCAUST!
See? It's easy.
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Read Luther "On the Jews". He makes Hitler sound moderate.
How so? Except for perhaps the odd trader or adventurer, Jews hardly appeared in Europe in significant numbers until the destruction of Jerusalem, beginning circa 66 C.E. - by which time the Jesus cult, with its ongoing vicious verbal feud against the group from which it was trying to distinguish itself, was in full cry. The minor frictions with which Roman religion coped in regard to Jewish monotheistic practices, and the military campaigns as Republican/Imperial legions swept through Palestine, are nothing like the anti-Jewish intolerance fostered by early (and later) Christianism.