Pee Pee Poodle

Starboy

Looks like god couldn't loose.

Shake

Haven't I seen it posted on another thread where even the Catholic Church has now come to accept evolutionary theory (at least in some form)? I'm pretty sure I've read that somewhere here. So, to thus say that Hitler's acceptance of Darwinian ideas was pro-science and therefore anti-church is not fully true. I've even come across opinions that god just set things in motion, and yes, let evolution happen!

Starboy

Not that this really matters to the argument, but at the time of Hitler it was so. The church's acceptance or allowance of evolution is a recent event along with apologizing for putting Galileo under house arrest and suppressing his ideas.

Starboy

Rusting Car Bumper

Regarding National Socialism and Evolution...

What people forget is that National Socialism forwarded a kind of Lemarckian evolution which had pretty much already been dumped by that time. Essentially the Nazi views were held in spite of Darwinian thinking.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

Point #2 is very important.

However, point #1 leaves something to be desired. Don't try to take Hitler's "ideology" so seriously. Other than hatred of Jews, he is often contradictory and his alleged justification is often confusing. Some Holocaust scholars have done good textual analysis showing that some of Hitler's themes in Mein Kampf are borrowed. Further, he wanted to appear as an original thinker so he simply didn't give credit and disguised the ideas as best he could. In some passages he appears to distance himself from contemporary ideas.

I think Hitler's thinking is more an expression of a pathology. It's more of a way to rationalize a psychological hatred.

As far as the God and Christian link to the events of the Holocaust, I think its more important to stress that the role of religion, and its make up at that time, set people up to not oppose Hitler's message. The moderates simply accepted it and of course the already true believers in the hatred of the Jews gained fervor in it.

DC

Amos

Hello Starboy, nice bunch of quotes but don't you think they sound awfully protestant? Do you ever hear Catholics boast about "Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior?" and is it not because Catholic are "not saved" that protestants just love to get their hands on a Catholic so they can save them?

You may call Hitler a Catholic if you wish but then it will be just another reformer who wanted to reform the world around him instead of himself. These kind of Catholics have always been the cause of wars throughout the history of Catholicism and they still are today. They, in fact, are the reason why protestants can and do claim apostolic tradition of the anathema side of the church.

The Catholic church holds that the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews was the greatest thing Judaism has ever achieved because it was needed for resurrection to follow. You should always remember that it was a divine comedy and not a tragedy. Only those who are stuck in their own journey of life that falls short of resurrection see it as a tragedy and the Catholic Church is not one of those. In fact, they built their empire on the resurrection of Christ and neither Luther nor Hitler will ever remove this from the Church.

Starboy

Hi Amos, how you been? Sorry to mislead you. I have no idea if Hitler was a Christian or a Catholic. I have heard that he was into the occult and in that sense he was a spiritualist or super naturalist if you will. I am sure that he was a sadistic murdering bastard. As I said before the only thing you can conclude from these quotes is that Hitler had no problem using Christianity to achieve his goals. He had no problem invoking Christian moral principles as justification for his atrocities. It is interesting that god was on both sides of that conflict. Indeed a divine comedy.

I also wanted people to know, both Christian and atheist alike, to be alarmed by anyone who invokes Christian morals to support their cause. Our current president comes to mind.

Starboy