Posted on 05/12/2006 12:13:47 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
After WW1 that's quite true but before the war there were countries where antisemitism was far worse.
"So far, however, the notion that life exists anywhere else at all seems rather unlikely-- thus all of the multiple universe theories."
I think you might be ahead of yourself in this respect. We have very very little available data regarding life on other planets. We do not even have access to a near complete data set on the items within our solar system let alone galaxy (billions of solar systems) or our universe (multiple billion galaxies). I would say we do not have the information available to us to say life elsewhere is unlikely. In fact it is highly likely just given the numbers we are dealing with but really, at this time we just can't know.
Now I am not necessarily saying, "intelligent" life here, just life.
You're playing the 'No True Scotsman' game. Hitler may have been an unorthodox Christian - he thought Jesus was an Aryan and Paul had corrupted the whole enterprise, and he was skeptical about transsubstantiation and the resurrection of the body - but not of the spirit - but he fell well within the very wide range that we normally allot to Christian belief.
But I'm not going to engage in a quote mining competition with you. I'm working on a translation of the entire chapter in the Picker version that deals with religion. We can then consider it in toto.
Glad to see you're judging material on its merits, not on its source.
The mention of AIG and the emoticon were intended to convey Sarcasm.
My point was that, as a spinter group, Freedom From Religion might be inclined to, say, shade the fine points, as AIG has been observed to do.
I don't know about the German Language Historical Society, or whatever their name was, because I haven't gotten around to reviewing the material yet. You will notice that I responded to donh by Googling on Red Queen Strategy and answering enthusiastically. It might just take a bit for me to look things up.
I don't have any specific dog in that fight, because I never read Speer or "Plain Talk". Check out my post 476 (or thereabouts) for the title and ISBN number of a book I remembered when treating of the topic. (I read the book at least 10 years ago, before I had ever heard of Free Republic or of crevo threads...)
Thanks for the description of your reasoning. It seems somewhat facile though, if your Roman Catholic background might remind you of the parable of the wheat and the tares.
Cheers!
"The thing that penetrates the fog to my way of thinking is the fact that Hitler was Roman Catholic and Rome embraces Darwinism. Darwinism is, bottom line, racist as Darwin's original title for 'origin of the species' shows. Rome and Hitler both supported Darwin. Rome and Hitler both supported replacement theology. And Hitler was a dyed in the wool racist just as Darwin *appears* to have been. Rome had already much earlier in History been a plague to the Jews." Darwin just Gave Hitler another excuse. Go figure." (Havoc)
Game, Set, and MatchTM to you on this one, Freedom2003.
Cheers!
The article is a monograph by Carrier; a more popularized version of his article in German Studies Review. FFRF merely published it.
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."
or
"Beam me up, Scotty, there is no intelligent life here."
Cheers!
Fair 'nuff.
I don't sprechen any deutsch, however.
BTW this would make a fascinating segue into pseudepigraphy and conformity of the Bible to the original texts over time, given that even in the enlightened 20th century we apparently couldn't get quotes right, and yet still manage to not throw the baby out with the bath about accepting sources. Tolkien's Tree and Leaf and On Fairy Stories contain good passages about the philosophical considerations therein.
Cheers!
You have heard of the Cretan Liar's paradox, haven't you?
Trust me--- it was well known in those days.
look up the word "eugenics". Your usage is simply wrong. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&defl=en&q=define:eugenics&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
Eugenics without a qualifier always means human eugenics.
Being "unrighteous" is not a genetic predisposition according to the Bible. Why claim it is?
Popes and the like were merely following the science of the day when asking themselves whether Blacks were human, etc. See Jefferson's Notes On Virginia for an example of the science of the day on this issue.
Okay, you say that "They never saw posters enflaming the population on Crystal Night to hurt Jews because of evolution. The name placed on them was Jew, Juden, Sabbath-keeper, line of Cain, and Christ-killers which was, whether perverted or true, a biblical creation."
And yet you're the one saying they followed a barbaric and evil God, if I understand you correctly. I'll agree with your statement that it "wasn't because of evolution" is warranted, because, like I said, all of this Hitler was Christian, Hitler was a Darwinist stuff bring more heat than light.
But it seems to me really indisputable that the eugenics movement had a hand in the intellectual framework that sustained and justified the Holocaust to those who executed it. You probably know abput this sort of thing--- H.G. Wells, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Oliver Wendall Holmes all bought into eugenics here in America. Luther Burbank took his ideas from plant husbandry and appleid them to humans, becoming a eugenicist (according to the dictionary). G.K. Chesterton was, the Catholic thinker, was a lonely voice against this movement.
i think it's fair to say that historically, the Jews are a pretty civilized bunch. How is this possible, given the brutality of the Old Testament God they worship? I think they interpret the Torah differently than you. The fact that God kill someone or even destroys a nation doesn't mean it's okay for you or I to do so because we're not God.
Quoting David Horowitz again,
"All radicalisms are variations on the story of Babel. They are people trying to reach heaven (or build a heaven on earth) by human means. That is why they end in such misery and horror. Leftism is a form of idolatry in which human beings worship themselves as though they were gods and saviors.
I am an agnostic. I don't know whether God exists or not, but I do know that man is not God and that makes me a conservative."
I didn't know "Gladiator" was a remake! Thanks--- I'll check that out!
Well, I think you're alloting a wider range to Christian belief than do most, but that's semanics. On substance, we seem to agree.
My only request is that next time you pull a gotchya on a creationist about Hitler's religion, include the above caveats.
Let me know when you are finished with the translation. I'll be interested in taking a look.
To some, Bishop Spong is a 'Christian' as well.
Cheers!
Why? Many sects of Christiantity have very odd beliefs. Look at the Mormons and the Christian Scientists (not that transubstantiation isn't an odd belief, either).
Thanks, whiskers :)
That's fair. I hedged on Plato because he states that, while its pattern may exist in the stars, the Republic is not a place that can ever be realized on Earth. i don't think "The Laws", which, being for the real world, is much more restrained, includes similar ideas about eugenics.
The other examples you bring up-- and Aristotle could in some measure be added to it-- show what an exception and great man Hippocrates must have been to reject what was standard in his culture.
But it's no gratuitous dig at Darwin to say that Francis Galton (a brilliant man in his own right and the father of modern statistics) wa sthe father of modern eugenics and was inspired by Darwin, especially the Descent of Man, who had been inspired by Malthus.
My point is noty to hust hop up and down on Darwin. I think the relationship between the theory of natural selection and eugenics is one that should be investigated, just as the conservative consequences of the theory we all like that Freeper Arnhart writes about in his book, Darwinian Conservatism, should be investigated (speaking of which, there's a generally positive review of his book in the normally anti-Darwinism Weekly Standard by James Seaton, who I think is an awesome literary critic, here http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=12157&R=EC5A29952 )
The reason why I say that is that some would say professor Arnhart is wrong in his interpretation of Darwin, and Galton was right, and I'm interested in which is correct.
I think blood lust gets tired after awhile. Just look at how many Americans are now tired of wiping out Iraqis and Afghans.
Or if you've graded hundreds of papers like I have, after awhile you tend to get more lenient. I used to try to counteract that by grading them alphabetically and then the next time backwards. Don't know if it worked, though.
I certainly might be!
However, it seems to me that the same Copernican Principle Sagan uses to claim the Earth is nothing special and life exists on tons of planets in its weaker more widely accepted version implies that the universe is uniform and therefore we shouldn't expect it to be vastly different than it is in our observable neighborhood. A fortiori, if we accept the strong claim we must accept its weaker version, which nonetheless seems to provide evidence against it.
But, I kind of hope you're right.
Because most conservative Christians only use the word to refer to sects that are fairly orthodox, i.e. who at least subscribe to the Nicene Creed.
If you don't include caveats, they'll interpret you to mean that Hitler was a Christian in the same sense they are. No one wants to be put in the same group as Hitler; it will turn them off to your argument, especially if they realize that Hitler's religion is fundamentally different from what they consider Christianity.
In addition, the argument that Hitler perverted Darwinian theory just as he perverted Christianity makes for good rhetoric.
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