Atheist Myth: “No One Has Ever Killed in the Name of Atheism”

[ecco]

That's nice, but if you read properly you'll notice that the post doesn't say it was the official song.

Are you weaseling?

You posted

Hitler youth Song:
We are the joyful Hitler Youth
We need no Christian virtue
For our Führer Adolf Hitler
Is ever our Mediator...​

Why did you call it "Hitler youth Song"? Why did you try to give the false impression that this was the real Hitler Youth song?

Oh, wait. You didn't write that, you just blindly copied and pasted from your biased source. Did you ever think to see for yourself whether or not the song was even real?

If you Google Hitler Youth Song, you get the official song with the lyrics I posted. If you Google your lyrics, you get references to Weikart's book. Where did he get the lyrics from? Does he give any references?

Or did he just make them up for his adoring readers?

 

[ecco]

Perhaps you don't really know what you are talking about. If you want to know what I think then you can ask rather than jumping to very irrational conclusions.

I don't have to ask. You make your views very clear by blindly copy and posting from a book or article that was written by a man with a very biased point of view.

When Creationists blindly copy and quote Behe, I don't need to ask how they really feel.

Your views about Hitler and Nazi Germany's religious views are plain to see. You haven't specifically stated anything about Evolution/Creationism in this thread, but I'm willing to bet that you are a Creationist/IDer.

 

[ecco]

Which of the following do you generally think is more likely to be closer to the truth?

a) The overwhelming consensus of scholarly experts from all backgrounds
b) Non-experts with a superficial knowledge of the topic who are emotionally invested in believing something which conforms with their deeply-held ideological prejudices

I'm going to guarantee you usually ridicule group b) whenever it doesn't actually include you

That's really funny coming from someone who believes the fringe views of a person who came to a conclusion and then set out to gather evidence to support that conclusion.

That's really funny coming from someone who does not accept the "overwhelming consensus of scholarly experts from all backgrounds".

My emphases

Gliboff on Weikart, 'From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany' | H-German | H-Net
Reviewed by Sander Gliboff (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University) Published on H-German (September, 2004)

Darwin on Trial Again

The American creationist movement has been waging war against Darwin and modern science for decades, but their strategy is evolving. Instead of pitting only the Bible against the biology, they are cultivating their credentials in a variety of academic disciplines and attacking from many new directions. On the history front, Richard Weikart's book appropriates the Holocaust and indeed the entire course of Western civilization for the creationist side, as it traces a decline in Western morals from the Origin of Species to the origin of National Socialism. It is being sold at a big discount by the Discovery Institute, one of several organs of the religious right that is touting it as an argument against teaching evolution. It may also prove instrumental in making a case against reforming marriage and legalizing abortion or assisted suicide, because it includes comparable proposals among the links between Darwin and Hitler.
​

...

Richard Weikart - RationalWiki
Weikart's most infamous work is his book-length argumentum ad Hitlerum entitled From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004). The book has been universally panned by the academic community.[11] Regarding the thesis of Weikart's book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards concluded that "Hitler was not a Darwinian" and "calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution."[12] Scholars Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky wrote that "numerous reviews have accused Weikart of selectively viewing his rich primary material, ignoring political, social, psychological, and economic factors" that shaped the Nazi ideology and policies.[13] Since there is no clear and unique line from Darwinian naturalism to Nazi atrocities, useful causal relationships are difficult to infer; thus, as Robert J. Richards observes, 'it can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis'."[14] Historian Peter J. Bowler was likewise direct writing that Weikart's book reflects a "simple blame game in which (for example) Darwin and Haeckel are accused of paving the way for Nazism," and denounced his efforts to connect evolution "with distasteful social policies" using a "remarkably simple-minded approach".[15]


​

 

[ecco]

Can I explain why Martin Luther didn't believe in scientific racialist theories that emerged in the late 19th/early 20th C?

I suppose I could give it a whirl...

It went right over your head, didn't it?

You were the one who talked about immutable characteristics compared to heretical beliefs.

Oh, wait. My apologies. That wasn't something you wrote. That was something you blindly copied and pasted. I see now that you didn't really understand. When you copy and paste something, you really need to read it and understand what the original author was saying. That way you won't be confused when someone comments on it.

 

[Tambourine]

Can I explain why Martin Luther didn't believe in scientific racialist theories that emerged in the late 19th/early 20th C?

I suppose I could give it a whirl...

Those beliefs emerged largely in reaction to Jewish conversions to Christianity in the 18th century, as an attempt by educated middle class Jews to blend in with mainstream German society, and an atmosphere of increased tolerance towards the Jewish faith.

It's almost as if religion and politics can't be neatly separated in either case.

 

[Augustus]

I'm willing to bet that you are a Creationist/IDer.

I'm an atheist. The problem is that "New Atheist" type atheists are so badly out of step with historical scholarship and so thoroughly enmeshed in their own circle-jerk groupthink that they believe anyone who doesn't reflexively blame every historical evil on religion like they do must be an agenda driven fundie.

The problem is that you jumped to a very wrong conclusion and have thus been barking up the wrong tree for the whole post. It also seems to be interfering with your reading ability and critical thinking faculties.

As such you whine about me not linking to a book, me not giving references for songs that I gave 2 references for in the post you replied to, etc. then you commit fallacy after fallacy all while completely failing to provide any evidence in support of your claims, or any arguments against the substance of the posts.

How can we tell?

Ask politely?

If it was all his writing and none of your own, then that says a lot about your actual knowledge (or lack thereof) of history.

If you think about this for a few minutes, you might realise quite how vacuous a comment it is.

It went right over your head, didn't it?

You were the one who talked about immutable characteristics compared to heretical beliefs.

Oh, wait. My apologies. That wasn't something you wrote. That was something you blindly copied and pasted. I see now that you didn't really understand. When you copy and paste something, you really need to read it and understand what the original author was saying. That way you won't be confused when someone comments on it.

Jesus wept Playing the "OMG you're, like, really dumb" card while repeatedly failing to read basic English

Me:
Luther: Hated Jews, wanted them to become Christians. Being Jewish was due to what you believed, and thus you could stop being a Jew and become a good member of society.
Nazis: Hated Jews, Jew was a 'scientific' racial designation and thus immutable. A Christian 'Jew' was still a Jew.
Thus, while anti-semitism in Nazi Germany drew significantly on a Christian legacy, as well as factors deriving from WW1 and Communism, it also drew heavily on scientific racialist theories.

Ecco: Then please explain why Martin Luther believed he could eliminate this immutable characteristic by converting people from the Jewish religion to the Christian religion.

Me: Because ML saw Jewishness as religious, not a racial, which is unsurprising as he lived nearly 400 years before scientific racialism was invented. That's kind of the point

Ecco (still failing to grasp the point):

Please tell me that you don't need a 4th bite at the cherry...

I can't be bothered going through all 7 of your posts correcting the the errors, fallacies and misunderstandings in all of them. Rest assured they are all pretty much as bad as this one.

 

[Augustus]

That's really funny coming from someone who does not accept the "overwhelming consensus of scholarly experts from all backgrounds".

To dismiss out of hand a book you have never read, yet has been acknowledged as a credible text in credible peer-reviewed journals, you are quoting "rationalwiki" discussing a completely different text

If you are so insistent, your view is the consensus and mine is "fringe", then feel free to move past the ad homs and actually refer to some scholarship.

For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall's Holy Reich, is one of the better known revisionist works (in the sense that it ascribes a greater role of Christianity than has traditionally been the case).

Even then he still concludes the following:

The contradictions and inconsistencies found in Table Talk on many issues make it impossible to claim to know Hitler's mind. Nonetheless, certain tendencies in his thought are discernible. Even though he never converted to paganism, Hitler nonetheless became increasingly opposed to Christian institutions and, on the face of it, to the Christian religion as well. However, the process was not as clear as historical analysis generally suggests. In fact, Hitler's professed hatred of Christianity was shot through with ambiguity and contradiction. Even as he accused Christianity of being Jewish and Bolshevik, at all times he carefully protected the Jew Jesus from his attacks. According to Hitler, Christ's "original message" could still be detached from what was later called Christianity. In other words, Hitler continued his long- held belief that the unfettered ideas of Christ were different from the ideas of the churches. Elsewhere, Hitler went further, indicating an appreciation for aspects of Christian teaching and even a remorse that the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped. Although increasingly anticlerical, Hitler put limits on his apostasy...

Whereas Hitler insisted as late as 1938 that he still believed in the party's positive Christianity, on other occasions his tone was very different. In December 1939, for example, Goebbels noted in his diary that "The Fuhrer is deeply religious, but entirely anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay"...

As Hitler's secretary, Bormann had control over Hitler's appointments, deciding who could see the Fuhrer and who could not. One of Bormann's biographers has gone so far as to suggest that it was Bormann, and not Hitler, who ran Nazi Germany in its last years...

Bormann was also in the forefront of attacks on religious instruction. By incremental measures he sought to remove Christian influence. As he wrote to Rosenberg in February 1940, "Christianity and National Socialism are phenomena that originated from entirely different causes. Fundamentally both differ so strongly that it would not be possible to conduct a Christian teaching which would be completely compatible with the point of view of the National Socialist ideology."

 

[Augustus]

Alternatively, Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler:


“In February 1937 Hitler made it plain to his inner circle that he did not want a ‘Church struggle’ at this juncture. The time was not ripe for it. He expected ‘the great world struggle in a few years’ time’. If Germany lost one more war, it would mean the end. The implication was clear: calm should be restored for the time being in relations with the Churches. Instead, the conflict with the Christian Churches intensified. The anti-clericalism and anti-Church sentiments of the grass-roots party activists simply could not be eradicated. The activists could draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the Churches for their encouragement. Goebbels’s orchestrated attacks on the clergy through the staged ‘immorality trials’ of Franciscans in 1937 – following usually trumped-up or grossly exaggerated allegations of sexual impropriety in the religious orders – provided further ammunition. And, in turn, however much Hitler on some occasions claimed to want a respite in the conflict, his own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the licence they needed to turn up the heat in the ‘Church struggle’, confident that they were ‘working towards the Führer’.

Hitler’s impatience with the Churches prompted frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937, he was declaring that ‘Christianity was ripe for destruction’, and that the Churches must yield to the ‘primacy of the state’, railing against any compromise with ‘the most horrible institution imaginable’. In April, Goebbels reported with satisfaction that the Führer was becoming more radical in the ‘Church Question’, and had approved the start of the ‘immorality trials’ against clergy. Goebbels noted Hitler’s verbal attacks on the clergy and his satisfaction with the propaganda campaign on several subsequent occasions over the following few weeks. But Hitler was happy to leave the Propaganda Minister and others to make the running. If Goebbels’s diary entries are a guide, Hitler’s interest and direct involvement in the ‘Church struggle’ declined during the second half of the year. Other matters were by now occupying his attention.

 

[Tambourine]

And yet, such a "destruction" never came, despite the NSDAP's near-unopposed rule until 1945.

Meanwhile, parts of Germany's Evangelical Landeskirchen actively courted Nazi support with the "German Christian" movement.

 

[ecco]

I'm an atheist. The problem is that "New Atheist" type atheists are so badly out of step with historical scholarship and so thoroughly enmeshed in their own circle-jerk groupthink that they believe anyone who doesn't reflexively blame every historical evil on religion like they do must be an agenda driven fundie.

Well, that's a really confusing comment. You claim to be an atheist, yet you copy and paste and quote from a book written by a Creationist with an agenda to further the greatness of his god. Can people who believe in god also be good scholars and researchers? Yes. Can people who believe in the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood be unbiased scholars and researchers? Definitely not. Especially if they work for and support the Discovery Institute.

I am not a New Atheist nor an Old Atheist nor any other adjective you want to put in front of "atheist". I'm an atheist - period. I don't hang out and "circle jerk" with New Atheists - whatever the h**l you or anyone thinks that may be. I form my own opinions and have done so for a very long time.

I don't blame every historical evil on religion. However, I do blame religion where religion is the root cause. Examples would be the European witch hunts, the Inquisitions, the Crusades the desire to exterminate Jews. The latter predates Christianity but Christianity gives many good reasons/excuses to do so. This didn't start with Martin Luther and it didn't end with Hitler. But to suggest that Martin Luther and Christianity didn't have a big influence on Hitler's motives and means is beyond ridiculous.

On the other hand your Weikart admitted has an agenda. And, as someone working for the Discovery Institute, is not above bending the truth to promote the cause.

Where did the Hitler Youth Song you quoted from his book come from? Do you know? Do you care?

I have found that most atheists usually dig a little rather than take writers at their word. It's our skepticism that made us atheists in the first place. You seem to have put that aside entirely when it comes to Weikart.

 

[Augustus]

III. THE "URIAH LAW": NAZI HOSTILITY TO MILITARY CHAPLAINS

As Leonhard's experience in the hospital ward suggests, chaplains in Hitler's military faced problems particular to Nazi Germany. Servants of both church and state, they nevertheless encountered considerable hostility from military, state, and party authorities. Hitler and his inner circle made no secret of their contempt for Christianity, a religion they considered nothing but diluted Judaism propagated in a conspiratorial effort to weaken the so-called Aryan race.4

Any form of Christianity, even the national religion of the chaplaincy, threatened Nazi claims to spiritual monopoly. Like the churches, the chaplains were to be allowed to survive until the war was over; Nazi leaders considered it too risky to attack Christian institutions when the full support of the homefront was needed to avoid the "stab-in- the-back" they believed had lost them the previous war.

Attempts to confine and ultimately destroy the chaplaincy many forms.42 Neither the Luftwaffe nor the SS had chaplains assigned to their units.43... A 1942 command announced that no new chaplains would be appointed; chaplains who died, left due to illness, or were take were not replaced...

A 1942 order even required chaplains to situate themselves in areas of heaviest action, where their morale-boosting effects—and presumably the risk to their lives—would be maximized. "In combat," the order stipulated, "the military chaplain will be found in the hottest part of the battle and at the main dressing station, unless—and this will be the exception—he has received a special assignment from divisional command." Chaplains called this the "Uriah Law," after the general in the Bible whom King David sent on a suicide mission so that David could have his wife Bathsheba.

Totalitarianism: German Military Chaplains in World War II and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy - Doris L. Bergen
doi: 10.2307/3654452

 

[Augustus]

And yet, such a "destruction" never came, despite the NSDAP's near-unopposed rule until 1945.

Was anything else happening at the time that may have been seen as more important?

 

[ecco]

The problem is that you jumped to a very wrong conclusion and have thus been barking up the wrong tree for the whole post. It also seems to be interfering with your reading ability and critical thinking faculties.

As such you whine about me not linking to a book, me not giving references for songs that I gave 2 references for in the post you replied to, etc. then you commit fallacy after fallacy all while completely failing to provide any evidence in support of your claims, or any arguments against the substance of the posts.

Well, let's look at your post #252.


The post starts off with two paragraphs. Are these your writing? They are not in quotes, so let's judge they are your own writing.

Then there are two paragraphs that are in quotes but there is no attribution for them.

Then, again without quotes, the post states:
From the unpublished follow up to Mein Kampf:
This is followed up by a paragraph of writing, again in quotes. So, are you posting a quote that you got from an unpublished followup to Mein Kampf? How did you get information from an unpublished source? Is this from Weikart? How did he get information from an unpublished source? Did it ever occur to you to wonder?

That paragraph is immediately followed by "Hitler Youth Song" and some lyrics purporting to be what young Germans sang. Again, is that from Weikart's book or did you come up with it on your own? Where did Wiekart get it from? Do you know or care?
Then there is another long paragraph - without quotes/ This is followed by the tagline...

Richard Weikart - “Hitler's Religion”

Should the reader of your post assume everything above the "attribution" is from the book? Hard to tell as some is in quotes and some is not? If it's all from the book, it doesn't say very much about your ability to express your own thoughts.

What wrong tree have I been barking up? Is it the tree that made your post #252 very confusing in terms of authorship? Is it the tree that shows that Weikart is very biased against atheists and works for organizations whose Mission Statement praises their own works and states (in part)...

Mission
In contrast, the contemporary materialistic worldview denies the intrinsic dignity and freedom of human beings and enfeebles scientific creativity and technological innovation.​

I don't know about atheists like you, but atheists like me kinda resent it when Better-Than-You-Holy Rollers tell me that I deny "the intrinsic dignity and freedom of human beings" and enfeeble "scientific creativity and technological innovation".

This coming from people who disparage science constantly and who want their religious fables taught in public schools.

I guess you are OK with people like that. I guess you trust them to be on the side of truth.

 

[ecco]

I'm an atheist. The problem is that "New Atheist" type atheists are so badly out of step with historical scholarship and so thoroughly enmeshed in their own circle-jerk groupthink that they believe anyone who doesn't reflexively blame every historical evil on religion like they do must be an agenda driven fundie.

The problem is that you jumped to a very wrong conclusion and have thus been barking up the wrong tree for the whole post. It also seems to be interfering with your reading ability and critical thinking faculties.

As such you whine about me not linking to a book, me not giving references for songs that I gave 2 references for in the post you replied to, etc. then you commit fallacy after fallacy all while completely failing to provide any evidence in support of your claims, or any arguments against the substance of the posts.



Ask politely?



If you think about this for a few minutes, you might realise quite how vacuous a comment it is.



Jesus wept Playing the "OMG you're, like, really dumb" card while repeatedly failing to read basic English

Me:
Luther: Hated Jews, wanted them to become Christians. Being Jewish was due to what you believed, and thus you could stop being a Jew and become a good member of society.
Nazis: Hated Jews, Jew was a 'scientific' racial designation and thus immutable. A Christian 'Jew' was still a Jew.
Thus, while anti-semitism in Nazi Germany drew significantly on a Christian legacy, as well as factors deriving from WW1 and Communism, it also drew heavily on scientific racialist theories.

Ecco: Then please explain why Martin Luther believed he could eliminate this immutable characteristic by converting people from the Jewish religion to the Christian religion.

Me: Because ML saw Jewishness as religious, not a racial, which is unsurprising as he lived nearly 400 years before scientific racialism was invented. That's kind of the point

Ecco (still failing to grasp the point):

Please tell me that you don't need a 4th bite at the cherry...

I guess the obvious sarcasm was not that obvious to you.

 

[Augustus]

Well, that's a really confusing comment. You claim to be an atheist, yet you copy and paste and quote from a book written by a Creationist with an agenda to further the greatness of his god. Can people who believe in god also be good scholars and researchers? Yes. an people who believe in the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood be unbiased scholars and researchers? Definitely not. Especially if they work for and support the Discovery Institute.

You are speaking from a position of total ignorance, given you have zero idea about the content of the book, the sources it relies on, or the arguments it makes. Few scholars consider Hitler a lifelong Christian, so it's not exactly a radical work of revisionism.

I have provided a review from a secular, peer reviewed journal that notes the work has merit. Can you explain why this is the case if the book, which you haven't read, is simply a ludicrous work of apologetics?

Better yet, can you actually find fault with anything that was said, and make a rational case as to why it is wrong which doesn't rely on ad hominem?

Are you saying the following are fabricated (all are cited to other scholarly sources)? Out of context?

"In August 1920, Hitler viciously attacked the Jews in his speech, “Why Are We Anti-Semites?” One accusation he leveled was that the Jews had used Christianity to destroy the Roman Empire. He then claimed Christianity was spread primarily by Jews”

"In August 1924, while he was in Landsberg Prison, Hitler privately told Hess about having to camouflage his opposition to religion, just as he had to hide his enmity toward alcohol. Hitler had remained silent while Hess and fellow Nazis discussed their positions vis-à-vis the Protestant Church, but later he told Hess how he felt. Even though Hitler found playing a religious hypocrite distasteful, he dared not criticize the church, because he knew this might alienate people.”
[Cited to: Hitler, “Warum sind wir Antisemiten?” August 31, 1920, in Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jäckel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 191.”]

From the unpublished follow up to Mein Kampf:

"A philosophy [Christianity] filled with infernal intolerance will only be broken by a new idea, driven forward by the same spirit, championed by the same mighty will, and at the same time pure and absolutely genuine in itself. The individual may establish with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered in to the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the fact that since then the world has been afflicted and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion, and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created."

I don't know about atheists like you, but atheists like me kinda resent it when Better-Than-You-Holy Rollers tell me that I deny "the intrinsic dignity and freedom of human beings" and enfeeble "scientific creativity and technological innovation".

Atheists like me try to judge things on their merits rather than based on prejudices and ignorance. As I have the advantage of actually having read the book, and read other books on the subject, I can make my own mind up.

You have wasted hundreds of words trying to explain why you can dismiss a source out of hand as it goes against your personal ideological biases.

If it is so self-evidently wrong, attack the content with your superior wisdom and intellect.

 

[Augustus]

Where did the Hitler Youth Song you quoted from his book come from? Do you know? Do you care?

Yes I know. It's actually 2 sources. You should know too as I have told you already what the 2 sources were. This is now the 3rd time. You can go back and find the information in this thread where I posted it the first time, it's not difficult.

Please try to read more carefully as you seem to miss quite a lot.

I have found that most atheists usually dig a little rather than take writers at their word. It's our skepticism that made us atheists in the first place. You seem to have put that aside entirely when it comes to Weikart.

Many atheists suffer from the conceit that they are sceptics on all issues, because they are sceptical about the existence of god.

For many of them, their emotional animus against religion makes them incredibly ignorant on anything historical to do with religion though.

I went through this phase, I grew out of it when I started actually reading what scholars said on the issues, rather than what passes for 'scepticism' in 'celebrity atheists' and online atheist communities.

Maybe one day, you can too

Anyway, do you have anything substantial to say yet that isn't an ad hom or based on you getting the wrong end of the stick?

 

[ecco]

I can't be bothered going through all 7 of your posts correcting the the errors, fallacies and misunderstandings in all of them. Rest assured they are all pretty much as bad as this one.

I broke my responses to your very long attempt at a defense into little pieces to make it easier for you to follow and respond.

If it's still too hard - oh well.

As far as errors are concerned, let's look at a couple that you criticized me for.

I stated that your post# 252 was without attribution and links. You called me out asserting that you showed it was from Weikart's book. I explained in detail in post #293 why your criticism was unwarranted because of the sloppy composition of post #292.

You posted lyrics with the title Hitler Youth Song. I easily found that the Hitler Youth did indeed have a song, but it's lyrics were nothing like the lyrics you posted. When I asked you about it, you blustered that you never said the lyrics you posted were the "Official" lyrics. When pressed further, you could not say where the lyrics came from. Perhaps from the fertile imagination of Weikart. That seems to be a safe bet since the only thing Google comes up with for those lyrics are Weikart's book.

Am I in error for having a hard time understanding how an atheist believes anything that a Discovery Institute Creationist has to say?

 

[ecco]

To dismiss out of hand a book you have never read, yet has been acknowledged as a credible text in credible peer-reviewed journals, you are quoting "rationalwiki" discussing a completely different text

You have not shown any credible peer-reviewed journal article supporting Weikart's book. Should I just take your word for it?

Some comments were from wiki,

The book has been universally panned by the academic community.​

some were not...

Reviewed by Sander Gliboff (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University) Published on H-German (September, 2004)​

You posted nothing. Nothing!

 

[ecco]

For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall's Holy Reich, is one of the better known revisionist works (in the sense that it ascribes a greater role of Christianity than has traditionally been the case).

Oh Goody. You have now dropped all pretense at trying to justify Weikart's book. You now want to go down a different road entirely. Sorry, Charlie. It's not baseball.

 

[ecco]

Alternatively, Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler:

See post #299.