Last year, the intelligent design movement burst onto the national scene, causing all manner of outrage from the guardians of science and right thinking. All the major media covered this upstart idea challenging Darwinian evolution's theory of the origin of life. Everybody has been piling on, even conservative pundits like George Will and Charles Krauthammer. The cultural elites were appalled when the yahoos on the Kansas Board of Education voted to "teach the controversy" to high-school students. In Dover, Pa., a judge outlawed the mere mention of I.D. theory in school science classes. Like a fierce game of whack-a-mole, wherever I.D.'s politically incorrect head pops up, its opponents rush to smack it back down.
I am enjoying all this tremendously. What makes it so much fun to watch is that so far not one of the critics understands it. Without exception, they simply dismiss I.D. theory as nothing more than stealth religion – creationism by another name. They say that all I.D. does is insert God to explain what science has not yet figured out. While they all lose their collective minds about it, warning darkly that the fundamentalists are coming, support for I.D. theory will continue to grow because it is good science. I want to explain why, so that when you hear the intelligentsia loudly denouncing it, you, too, can have a good laugh. Even better, you will understand why intelligent design theory is going to become a major force for good in the battle to rescue our collapsing culture – because the way we think about origins affects the way we think about nearly everything. (More on that later.)
Meanwhile, the debate rages on, all the while opponents keep insisting there is no debate.
Despite its pretensions to objectivity, science has always been political. That's why scientific revolutions have often met initially with resistance and ridicule, because the old order stands to lose if the new becomes accepted. But the great thing about science is that eventually the weight of evidence breaks through. Think Galileo (opposed not only by the church but by fellow academics), or Lister (ridiculed for disinfecting surgical rooms to prevent infection), or the Wright Brothers (man will never fly). So all this hand wringing about intelligent design is a good sign that the revolution is under way. The old order is being challenged, and they are freaking out.
I.D. not religion
First, what I.D. theory is not: It is not creationism. Full disclosure here: I am a creationist. As a Christian, I believe God is the author of life. But I.D. theory is a science-driven enterprise. It is not a deduction from Scripture but an inference from observation. It says that the intricate design found in living things and in the universe itself is best explained by an intelligent cause. Darwinism, on the other hand, says that undirected natural processes led life to arise spontaneously; then evolution by natural selection (survival of the fittest) resulted in living things that appear to be designed, but really aren't. The question boils down to this: When considered objectively, where does the evidence actually lead?
Drawing heavily on Nancy Pearcey's great apologetic book "Total Truth," I'm going to focus on two of the most powerful arguments for intelligent design. Her book contains many more. I wish every Christian (and every thinking person) would read her masterful defense of Christianity as total truth about all of reality. But just reading this column will make you far more knowledgeable about I.D. than nearly all of its opponents.
It's true that by far the dominant theory of origins is the evolutionary one. It goes something like this: It all began billions of years ago in some sort of chemical soup (a "warm little pond," as Darwin put it) which, when zapped with an energy source, led to the chance formation of amino acids. These acids somehow self-organized into proteins and then morphed into the first living cell. All living things descended from that first cell, evolving from simple into increasingly complex organisms, all the way up to man.
In Darwin's time this was easier to imagine, because it was thought that cells were mere blobs of protoplasm. It fit in nicely with his idea that life could have first appeared as a simple cell. There's just one problem. We now know that there is no such thing as a "simple" cell. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that the cell is literally a miniature factory town, with its own chemical library containing blueprints that are copied and transported to molecular assembly lines that manufacture everything the cell needs. Nancy Pearcey compares it to "… a large and complex model train layout, with tracks crisscrossing everywhere, its switches and signals perfectly timed so that no trains collide and the cargo reaches its destination precisely when needed."
Just one cell is vastly more complex than anything ever created by human engineering. And your body contains 300 trillion of them, each one "knowing" exactly what it is supposed to do within itself and in relation to all the other cells.
Microbiologist Michael Behe has coined the term "irreducible complexity" to describe this. That is, the cell consists of coordinated, interlocking parts that must all be in place simultaneously, or it won't function at all. You can't improve the cell through one random mutation at a time because if you change any one aspect, the whole thing will crash. For evolutionary change to occur, every single piece of its Rube Goldberg-like factory would have to mutate at exactly the same time, and each single mutation would have to be beneficial, or the cell would just die.
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
That is exactly what Behe has done. As Pearcey puts it:
"An aggregate structure, like a pile of sand, can be built up gradually by simply adding a piece at a time. ... By contrast, an organized structure, like the inside of a computer, is built up according to a pre-existing blueprint."
Since living systems are organized wholes, they had to have been put together in the first place by a pre-existing design.
Darwinists cannot explain irreducible complexity. They keep saying that it poses no problem for evolution, as if repetition would make it so. They insist that just because we don't yet understand how evolution can work in light of this doesn't mean that we won't figure it out eventually. But they will never figure it out, because irreducible complexity makes evolutionary change at the cellular level logically impossible.
(Note: Natural selection clearly occurs within species as an adaptive mechanism. I.D. theory does not deny or even address this, nor does it address the question of whether natural selection could lead to the development of entirely new species. I.D. theory is concerned with the origin of life only.)
Even more powerful evidence comes from the genetic code. DNA is a kind of language consisting of four chemical "letters" that combine into an astonishing variety of sequences to spell out a message. It contains a mind-boggling amount of information. Where did it come from?
Darwinists say that DNA resulted from chance mutations operated on by natural selection. Really? As theologian Norm Geisler quipped:
"If you came into the kitchen and saw the alphabet cereal spilled out on the table, and it spelled out your name and address, would you think the cat knocked the cereal box over?"
In fact, chance events tend to scramble information, like typos in a page of text. Even if some kind of more complex molecule somehow did appear in the supposed chemical soup, the same random processes that produced it would continue to insert "typos," soon scrambling any coherent message that might have occurred. Again, it's not that we don't yet understand how chance could create complex information; it's that in principle this cannot happen.
If chance cannot do it, perhaps some yet-undiscovered physical law can. That's what scientists excited about complexity theory are hoping. They are studying self-organizing structures like snowflakes and crystals, searching for clues to how similar natural processes might also give rise to the complex information found in DNA. But they won't find any.
That prediction stems not from ignorance or hubris, but from the nature of physical laws, which by definition are regular and repeatable. Those properties enable the brilliant engineering students at MIT to enjoy shoving a piano off seven story high Baker House roof every year. They know that gravity makes things fall, every time.
But the information found in DNA is quite different. When you decode one section it tells you nothing about what comes next. The letters are free to combine into an unimaginably vast quantity of information. By contrast, the physical laws being explored in complexity theory are simple instructions, able to create complex patterns but not much information – certainly not enough to account for the fact that each cell in your body contains more information than the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.
This is not at all like saying man will never fly because God didn't give him wings. It's not that I.D. theorists can't imagine how a physical law could create information. It's because in principle, law-like processes cannot generate complex information. Some things really are impossible.
It turns out that life is not primarily about matter, but information. Commenting on the failed attempts to create life in the lab, astrophysicist Paul Davies writes:
"Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won't work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level."
Common sense tells us that information does not occur without an intelligence to organize it, any more than the hardware of a computer can create its own software. Even scientists know this. Otherwise, how could SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researchers ever hope to distinguish between radio signals generated by some natural process and those sent from the hoped-for aliens? Again, we see that the most plausible explanation for the information in DNA is an Intelligent Designer put it there.
But for Christians, we knew that, didn't we? "In the beginning was the Word (Logos)." Behind everything is the Logic, the Wisdom, the Intelligence of God.
Currently, only a minority of scientists holds to intelligent design theory, but the number is growing. To date, over 400 scientists have signed a document entitled "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism." Many of these scientists are not Christian, and some are outright hostile to it, which is further evidence that I.D. is not religion. A scientific revolution is just beginning, but almost nobody recognizes it, least of all its opponents.
And not a moment too soon, since evolutionary theory did not stay in the scientific realm but oozed into all the sciences, the liberal arts and out into culture, with horribly destructive results. The biblical view of man as a spiritual being created in God's image has been replaced by the view that man is nothing more than a highly evolved animal struggling to survive in a meaningless universe. Scratch any social ill and you will find Darwinism underneath.
One of the worst consequences has been the devaluation of human life. It is no exaggeration to say that Darwinism has led to the killing of untold millions of human beings. To highlight just a few examples: eugenics (philosophical Darwinism) inspired Margaret Sanger to found Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion movement. Eugenics helped Hitler convince an entire country to follow him in his attempt to wipe out the "inferior" Jews, not to mention the toll in blood it took to stop him. These days Peter Singer, a Princeton professor of bioethics, advocates that parents be allowed to dispatch their imperfect infants up to 30 days after birth. The misguided "right to die" movement is rapidly becoming the "right to kill" movement, as last year we watched severely disabled (but not dying) Terri Schiavo starve to death by court order, while a large portion of the country approved of it. Meanwhile, more than a million babies continue to be aborted every year. None of these horrors could have occurred in a culture that understood each human life to be a unique creation of God, stamped with his image.
Darwinism is also behind the sexual revolution (just doing what comes naturally), radical feminism, family breakdown and normalization of homosexuality (gender roles are social constructs we can discard as we "evolve" as a society). Darwinism removed the foundation for a transcendent moral Truth that stands outside of our personal preference. Now we make it up as we go, "re-imagining" everything. Even many Christians consider their faith to be purely personal. It's "true for me, but maybe not for you." No wonder assertions that Jesus is the only way to God meet with such outrage. And why so-called progressives are deeply offended when Christians try to bring into the public square what they view as nothing more than our particular rabbit's foot. Rejection of God is the root cause of our cultural degradation, but Darwinism has been its indispensable support, giving intellectual cover for all the evil we want to do.
But intelligent design is on the move, and this is a great gift to everyone, especially Christians. It's only a matter of time before it becomes accepted as a legitimate competing theory of origins, and as it does it will unleash enormous changes for good, not only in science but all of culture – because if people understand that there is (or at least could be) a Designer, then we can once more ask, what is the purpose of that design? What are things for?
For example, conservatives and Christians are having a difficult time making the case against homosexual marriage. Thousands of years of exclusively heterosexual marriage mean nothing to those with a Darwinist worldview. Why, they are far more evolved than those benighted cultures in the misty past. To them, tradition is oppressive; destroying it is progress. Why shouldn't people be able to "love" whomever they want? How will it hurt your marriage?
The truth is that homosexual marriage is wrong because it violates God's design and purpose for us, with inevitably negative consequences. But for an exercise in frustration, just try to discuss design with someone steeped in the evolutionary mindset. Point out the functional biological differences between male and female, and they will dodge, deny or change the subject. Press the issue, and they will become angry at your attempt to "impose" your personal values. What they will never do is engage the substance of your argument. They can't. Their worldview will not allow them to admit the obvious.
Multiple research studies documenting the need that children have for a mom and a dad are probably the best defense we've got, but in a nation full of divorced or never married single parents, and with a media quick to promote "gay" families, it's a tough slog. So far, a majority of the public opposes homosexual marriage, but it's mostly instinctive and traditional. People say things like, "I wasn't raised that way." But younger generations, raised on books like "Heather Has Two Mommies" and subjected to Darwinist dogma throughout their schooling, have no tradition left to hold them. And any common-sense instinct they might have to resist faces an incessant cultural onslaught that brands such thoughts as hateful prejudice.
For the older generations, watching defenders of marriage viciously attacked in the press is very confusing. Having never reasoned out something so basic as marriage, they, too, will begin to doubt themselves. Unless something dramatic changes, public opposition will eventually crumble, and we will see the destruction of marriage as one more nail in the cultural coffin we are building for ourselves.
--CONTENT GOES HERE (static)--
Hitler's religious beliefs and fanaticism
(Selected quotes from Mein Kampf)
compiled by Jim Walker
Originated: 28 Nov. 1996
Additions made: 07 July 2001
People often make the claim that Adolph Hitler adhered to Atheism, Humanism or some ancient Nordic pagan mythology. None of these fanciful and wrong ideas hold. Although one of Hitler's henchmen, Alfred Rosenberg, did undertake a campaign of Nordic mythological propaganda, Hitler and most of his henchmen did not believe in it .
Many American books, television documentaries, and Sunday sermons that preach of Hitler's "evil" have eliminated Hitler's god for their Christian audiences, but one only has to read from his own writings to appreciate that Hitler's God equals the same God of the Christian Bible. Hitler held many hysterical beliefs which not only include, God and Providence but also Fate, Social Darwinism, and ideological politics. He spoke, unashamedly, about God, fanaticism, idealism, dogma, and the power of propaganda. Hitler held strong faith in all his convictions. He justified his fight for the German people and against Jews by using Godly and Biblical reasoning. Indeed, one of his most revealing statements makes this quite clear:
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Although Hitler did not practice religion in a churchly sense, he certainly believed in the Bible's God. Raised as Catholic he went to a monastery school and, interestingly, walked everyday past a stone arch which was carved the monastery's coat of arms which included a swastika. As a young boy, Hitler's most ardent goal was to become a priest. Much of his philosophy came from the Bible, and more influentially, from the Christian Social movement. (The German Christian Social movement, remarkably, resembles the Christian Right movement in America today.) Many have questioned Hitler's stand on Christianity. Although he fought against certain Catholic priests who opposed him for political reasons, his belief in God and country never left him. Many Christians throughout history have opposed Christian priests for various reasons; this does not necessarily make one against one's own Christian beliefs. Nor did the Vatican's Pope & bishops ever disown him; in fact they blessed him! As evidence to his claimed Christianity, he said:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... 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.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
Hitler's anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Christian Austria and Germany in his time took for granted the belief that Jews held an inferior status to Aryan Christians. Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.
Hitler did not have to parade his belief in God, as so many American Christians do now. Nor did he have to justify his Godly belief against an Atheist movement. He took his beliefs for granted just as most Germans did at that time. His thrust aimed at politics, not religion. But through his political and religious reasoning he established in 1933, a German Reich Christian Church, uniting the Protestant churches to instill faith in a national German Christianity.
Future generations should remember that Adolph Hitler could not have come into power without the support of the Protestant and Catholic churches and the German Christian populace.
The following quotes provides some of Hitler's expressions of his belief in religion, faith, fanaticism, Providence, and even a few of his paraphrasing of the Bible. It by no means represents the totality of Hitler's concerns. To realize the full context of these quotes, I implore the reader to study Mein Kampf.
The purpose of this text intends to dispute the claims made by Christians that Hitler "was an atheist," or "anti-religious," and to reveal the dangers of belief-systems. This text in no way attempts to give endorsement to anti-Semitism.
Quotations from Mein Kampf
Volume 1, Chapter 1, In the House of My Parents
Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Note: "Their sword will become our plow" appears to paraphrase Micah 4:3 about beating swords into ploughshares, but his tears of war more resembles Joel 3:9-10 "Beat your plowshares into swords."
I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I thank Heaven that a portion of the memories of those days still remains with me. Woods and meadows were the battlefields on which the 'conflicts' which exist everywhere in life were decided.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 2, Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna
Fate must bring retribution, unless men conciliate Fate while there is still time. How thankful I am today to the Providence which sent me to that school!
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Thus my faith grew that my beautiful dream for the future would become reality after all, even though this might require long years.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions.... For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought.
At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Note: Karl Lueger (1844-1910) belonged as a member of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Party, he became mayor of Vienna and kept his post until his death.)
The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.
-Adolf Hitler speaking about Dr. Karl Lueger of the Christian Social Party (Mein Kampf)
How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement!
My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 3 General Political Considerations Based on My Vienna Period
A man does not die for something which he himself does not believe in.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result of upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his soul, the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be 'discovered' by an election.
-Adolf Hitler with his twist on Mark 10:25 (Mein Kampf)
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For by employing religious force in the service of its political considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at that outset it had not considered possible.
-Adolf Hitler on the state of Rome (Mein Kampf)
For when a people is not willing or able to fight for its existence-- Providence in its eternal justice has decreed that people's end.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
But the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time to immemorial been the magic of power of the spoken word, and that alone.
Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The hard struggle which the Pan-Germans fought with the Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient understanding of the spiritual nature of the people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Protestantism as such is a better defender of the interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later tradition; it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some reason rejected.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement of all Germans as such, as long as matters of inner purity or national deepening as well as German freedom are involved, since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Verily a man cannot serve two masters. And I consider the foundation or destruction of a religion far greater than the foundation or destruction of a state, let alone a party.
-Adolf Hitler speaking like Jesus in Matthew 6:24 (Mein Kampf)
Heaven will smile on us again.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people.
-Adolf Hitler speaking about the leader of the Christian Social movement (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 4, Munich
But the people on top made a cult of the 'ally,' as if it were the Golden Calf.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The Golden calf occurs in Exodus 32:1-4)
Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
We must, therefore, coolly and objectively adopt the standpoint that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...a man does not die for business, but for ideals.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 5, The World War
Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Indeed, nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine and its organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation, are doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite of the desired result...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 6, War Propaganda
I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Certainly we don't have to discuss these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the Lord's image.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 7, The Revolution
More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Providence had put me in the place of the incapable of criminal incompetents or scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken a different turn.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
...we must pray to the Almighty not to refuse His blessing to this change and not to abandon our people in the times to come.
-Hitler recalling a priest's speech after the defeat of WWI (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 8, The Beginning of My Political Activity
As soon as the theoretician attempts to take account of so-called 'utility' and 'reality' instead of absolute truth, his work will cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will become a prescription for everyday life.
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
The thinking of the one, therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the absolute abstract soundness of his idea...
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings...
If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For the greater a man's works for the future, the less the present can comprehend them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only the brow of the dying hero.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The metaphors of marathon runners, and the wreath (crown) of the present to achieve works for the future parallels the thought in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27: "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that you may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.")
To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 10, Causes of the Collapse
Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the crown on the brow of the heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise character like William I.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hastily and indifferently, people tried to pass by the unpleasant truths, as though by such an attitude events could be undone. No, the fact that our big city population is growing more and more prostituted in its love life cannot just be denied out of existence; it simply is so.
...it is said with such terrible justice that the sins of the fathers are avenged down to the tenth generation. But this applies only to profanation of the blood and the race.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Avenged to the tenth generation appears in Deuteronomy 23:2-3)
Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How truly wretched was the attitude of pre-War Germany on this one very question! What was done to check the contamination of our youth in big cities? What was done to attack the infection and mammonization of our love life? What was done to combat the resulting syphilization of our people?
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Mammonization refers to the New Testament word "mammon" [Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:9,11,13] which alludes to riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god)
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles.
The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(See Genesis 1:27 for man created in God's image.)
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...
Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
-Adolf Hitler sounding like the Moral Majority (Mein Kampf)
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The works of Mortiz von Schwind, or of a Bo:cklin, were also an inner experience, but of artists graced by God and not of clowns.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How widespread the general disunity was growing is shown by an examination of religious conditions before the War. Here, too, a unified and effective philosophical conviction had long since been lost in large sections of the nation. In this the members officially breaking away from the churches play a less important role than those who are completely indifferent.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply so their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and , as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 1, Chapter 11, Nation and Race
The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following:
(a) Lowering of the level of the higher race;
(b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness.
To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator. And as a sin this act is rewarded.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Here, of course, we encounter the objection of the modern pacifist, as truly Jewish in its effrontery as it is stupid! 'Man's role is to overcome Nature!'
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Man's dominion over earth appears in Genesis 1:26)
...the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(See Genesis Chapter 3)
...that is why the prophet seldom has any honor in his own country.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
("For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country." John 4:44)
The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Great founder here, of course, refers to Jesus. The "whip to drive from the temple" comes from John 2:15, "And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple..." Interestingly, Hitler often carried a whip with him. There's at least one photograph with him posing with a whip in hand in Werner Maser's "Hitler's Letters and Notes.")
At times of the bitterest distress, fury against him finally breaks out, and the plundered and ruined masses begin to defend themselves against the scourge of God.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(For one example of God's fury and anger, see Isaiah 63)
This game is repeated again and again, and in it the role of the so-called 'German princes' is just as miserable as that of the Jews themselves. These lords were really God's punishment for their beloved peoples and find their parallels only in the various ministers of the present time.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
They [German princes] made a pact with the devil and landed in hell.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
First, therefore, he goes about making up to the people for his previous sins against them. He begins his career as the 'benefactor' of mankind. Since his new benevolence has a practical foundation, that the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth; no, whether he likes it or not, he must reconcile himself to letting as many people as possible know how deeply he feels the sufferings of the masses and all the sacrifices that he himself is making to combat them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The left/right hand paraphrase derives from Matthew 6:3)
But even more: all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Christian who marries a Jewess.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century.)
With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Peoples which bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Providence did not bestow her reward on the victorious sword, but followed the law of eternal retribution.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Eternal retribution comes from Christian doctrinal thought as referring to eternal hell when one who physically dies in his sins without Christ. Christians to this day take Hell or the "Lake of Fire" (Rev. 19:20) as real and literal.)
Volume 1, Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of the Nationalist Social German Worker's Party
Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanaticism, yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations of a similar sort.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...absolute intolerance also provides long growth.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Faith can remove mountains appears in 1 Corinth. 13:2)
The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(The above statement refutes the common impression that Hitler admired ancient Nordic customs.)
A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has the duty and obligation, by God, not to work 'silently,' but to stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 1, Philosophy and Party
Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles-- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles-- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 2, The State
We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which not only assures the preservation of its nationality, but by the development of its spiritual and ideal abilities leads it to the highest freedom.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
the task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high mission.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
World history is made by minorities when this minority of number embodies the majority of will and determination.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
There is only one holiest human right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation, to wit: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving the best humanity, to create the possibility of a nobler development of these beings.
A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Hitler's concept of holy blood comes right out of the Bible. The Bronze-Age Bible authors thought that the spirit of life consisted of blood. (See Leviticus 17:11, 14). In the New Testament, God made of one blood all nations of men..." (See Acts 17:24-26). The Biblical Paul saw himself as "pure from the blood of all men." (Acts 20:26). Hitler here sees blood (life) preservation as a holy right to produce images of the Lord. This clearly forms a religious justification for racial purity and contradicts any notion of Darwinism.)
It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church.
Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
("Beings such as He Himself created," shows that Hitler believed in creationism.)
A sharp difference should exist between general education and specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained as a counterweight.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Mammon, a New Testament word [Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:9,11,13] refers to riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god. Hitler uses "mammon" or "mammonization" four times in Mein Kampf.)
For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 5, Philosophy and Organization
Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure?
...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 7, The Struggle with the Red Front
I must frankly admit that... I should probably lose all interest in life and would rather not be a German at all. But since, thank the Lord, this cannot be done, we have no need to be surprised that the health, unspoiled people avoid 'bourgeois mass meetings' as the devil holy water.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
This, it may be that centuries, dissatisfied with the form of their religious life, yearn for a renewal, and that from this psychic urge dozens and more men arise who on the basis of their insight and their knowledge believe themselves as prophets of a new doctrine, or at least as warriors against an existing one.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The main fighter for the DSP [Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei or German Socialist Party], as I have said, was Julius Streicher, then a teacher in Nuremberg. At first he, too, had a holy conviction of the mission and the future of his movement.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 10, Federalism as a Mask
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated.
For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(Here again Hitler shows his belief in a creationist model of human's origin.)
In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 13, German Alliance Policy After the War
... the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'
-Adolf Hitler's prayer (Mein Kampf)
Volume 2, Chapter 14, Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy
...we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitles on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and or German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.
Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent...
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(devils through Beelzebub comes from Luke 11:15-19)
Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
(till the ground: see Genesis 3:23)
Volume 2, Chapter 15, The Right of Emergency Defense
Viewing all this from a higher vantage-point, we can speak of one single piece of good fortune in all this misery, which is that, though men can be befuddled, the heavens cannot be bribed.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
But in the great hour Heaven sent the German people a great man, Herr von Cuno.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
References (click on a blue highlighted book title if you want it):
Helmreich, Ernst Christian, "The German Churches Under Hitler," Wayne State University Press, 1979
Hitler, Adolf, "Mein Kampf," translated by Ralph Manheim, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 1" Fortress Press, 1977
Scholder, Klaus, "The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol 2" Fortress Press, 1977
Toland, John, "Adolf Hitler," Anchor Books Doubleday, 1976
Macfarland, Charles S., "The New Church and the New Germany," Macmillan Co.
Note, some nefarious web site operators, like those from "jews-for-allah," for example, have copied this web page without permission and removed all references to NoBeliefs.com and its compiler. Needless to say, this kind of practice reflects the very questionable nature of their morals and belief system. NoBeliefs.com does not condone or authorize these web sites in any manner. Nor does NoBeliefs.com condone or authorize this material for use on other religious, racist, or Neo-Nazi web sites. On the other hand, those who ask permission and include a citation or link to NoBeliefs as the originator of this compilation, have full welcome to use it.
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Oh, that's even more hilarious.
You copy/paste some carefully cherry-picked quotes from an atheistic web site.
Very clever.
You know nothing of Germany 1918-1945 and you know nothing of Hitler and his religious beliefs.
For instance, did you know that Hitler called the Apostle Paul "the most dangerous Jew?"
Did you know that Hitler planned on exterminating practicing Catholics and other Christians after he had eliminated the Jews?
Do you know anything about Hitler's attempt at co-opting the Protestant and Catholic churches in 1934? Do you know how that turned out? Do you know what he said about it?
I'll try again, as I really am looking for some differing answers. How else can I gather information to formulate my hypothesis. Fair enough.
I AM WRITING IN CAPITALS TO GET AS MUCH ATTENTION AS POSSIBLE SO THAT I WILL HAVE MORE RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW MY OBSERVATION. BOTH EVO"S AND CREATIONIST ARE EQUALLY ENCOURAGED TO REPLY.
WELL OKAY THEN.
My observation to date. Scientist object to ID because they say it's hypothesis are "untestable" as defined by the scientific methods.
...which amounts to untestable by *any* methods. Science adopts any testing methods which are workable and effective.
And it's not quite accurate to say that "Scientist [sic] object to ID because" it's untestable, they object to ID claiming that it's a SCIENCE, because ID has failed to meet the requirements of *being* a science. If someone wants to believe or argue ID, go right ahead, scientists won't object. They don't "object to ID" in general, they object to FALSE CLAIMS about ID, especially those concerning ID trying to pretend to be a science when it isn't.
They view it as resorting to "someone else did it".
That's just *one* of the many problems of "ID".
Which is an unacceptable answer in their ideology.
This is an inaccurate description of the problem with the "someone else did it" objection. It's not that it's "an unacceptable answer in their ideology" -- science has no problem acknowledging the actions of "others", as for example in archeology. The problem, however, is that ID wants to try to pass the buck of "explanation" off to an unknown "designer" using unknown methods for unknown purposes via unknown processes at unknown times to unknown degrees, etc. First, this doesn't "explain" a damned thing. Saying "an unknown designer did it" is no more of an "explanation" than "it happened by magic" or "the unicorns wished it into being". It "explains" things with a wave of the hand, which is no explanation at all. Furthermore, presuming the action of an (unknown) "designer" is fraught with epistemological perils, having nothing to do with it being an "unacceptable answer" in anyone's "ideology". For a full discussion, see: The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance.
Dissenting scientist have come up with testable hypothesis, to which scientist then return to their laboratories to test until they can disprove. Once they have they declare that the evidence for ID is false.
Actually, the "dissenting scientists" have tested the ID proponents *own* hypotheses (the very few that have been put forth), and demonstrated that those "ID hypotheses" are easily falsified.
Dissenting scientist then claim that due to statistical probabilities it is not false.
Huh? Which scientists dissenting with what, and what is the "it" in this sentence referring to?
Then the mathematicians began calculating until they can say, "You did the math wrong." However, the mathematicians are not able to arrive at the same answer, but that's okay because all of them did arrive at an answer that suggested the evidence to disprove was possible.
Again, you're being really vague here.
But in any case, yes, all the "probability calculations" I've seen offered to date in supposed support of "ID" have been laughably wrong in various ways, usually via the hubris of trying to model all possible natural processes with a childishly simplistic mathematical model. For example, calculating that a specific 200-amino-acid protein would be unlikely to form from scratch all at once totally by random, then ludicrously trying to use that to claim that such a protein couldn't have formed by ANY other natural process whatsoever. That's childishly naive.
Once again, dissenting mathematicians come up with different answers that show the likelihood of the organized occurrence is statistically impossible. But, since their math is "wrong" according to the other mathematicians, it doesn't count.
The IDer's math usually is wrong, either in execution, or in conception. If you think you have an example of one which is not, I'll be glad to have a look at it, but the ones I've seen to date (and there have been hundreds) have been foolishly inadequate for the purposes the IDer attempts to employ them.
So, once again scientist say that ID can not come up with one testable hypothesis that they can't disprove,
Wrong -- the scientists say that ID *has* not come up with one testable hypothesis that doesn't fall flat on its face. No one's foolish enough to say that they "can" never do so, although certainly the IDers track record doesn't inspire confidence.
and dissenting scientist claim that they have, and it has not been disproved.
Yes, the IDers are fond of refusing to accept when their material has been shot down.
So it simple terms it boils down to: Who is the Designer.
No, you're jumping the gun and presuming an answer. The question boils down to, "*WAS* there a designer"?
A question that supposedly can have no testable hypothesis.
Wrong. The question *can* have testable hypotheses, but in order to do so "the question" is going to have to be a *lot* more specific than the IDers are willing to be. Instead, the IDers want to remain wildly vague and not put themselves or their notions on the block for actual testing and examination.
Where did it all come from? A question that can be "tested" until it gets to a place where it is "untestable".
Say what?
Leaving both ideologies in the same boat, and us left to battle it out by our wits.
What "both" ideologies are you talking about here? The only one you've mentioned so far is "ID". If you mean evolutionary biology, it is hardly in the "same boat" with "ID". Evolutionary biology is a legitimate field of science (i.e., it meets all the requirements and standards of science), and it has vast amounts of positive evidence and research findings, along multiple independently cross-confirming lines, to back it up. It has made vast numbers of predictions which have born fruit, and has produced countless practical techniques which have become useful tools in science and technology.
"ID", meanwhile, has produced *zip* in the way of useful results or positive evidence in its favor.
To which I have made this observation. The main principle's of Conservative Texan Mom's theory of the evolution of wits
Please don't misuse the word "theory".
1.Conservative NeoDarwinist show a tremendous range of variation of wits
Fair enough.
2.Conservative Creationist, old, young, and middle-aged, show a similar range of variation of wits.
...but hardly the same distribution or mean...
3.All wits are engaged in a struggle for existence
In what sense?
Now here are some questions to ponder.
Okay...
When scientist continue tests until they have favorable conditions to produce positive results.
Could we have that again in the form of a complete sentence? Plus, it wasn't a question.
I know, all the conditions are found in nature. There is still a scientist working within the laboratory to create the conditions. Is this taken into account, and could it be called the ID factor, since an intelligent source is creating the conditions?
No, except in the trivial sense that it demonstrates that something we call "intelligence" now exists, and and that it can design things. But no one disputes that. This, however, fails to help the IDers support the belief which they are attempting to find evidence for: That some sort of similar "intelligent design" existed long ago and was responsible for the origin of *our* intelligence (and all/most other life now on Earth).
Even if these conditions can be found in nature, who is to say that scientist are not merely reproducing a smaller version of a previously performed experiment, and verifying it's results?
Could you be more vague?
When scientist come up with a result that "disproves" a theory, do they take into account the statistical likelihood of all things coming together they way they do as a result of purpose, or chance.
Yes, they do, in great detail.
Or, is this not considered because they have their "possibility under the right conditions" evidence and therefore have disproved the theory.
No.
Why is it that when a hypothesis is not provable it is discounted as invalid.
First, nothing in science (nor in the real world by any other method) is "provable". "Proof" is only possible in artificial realms like mathematics.
Did you mean "testable", or "capable of validation", perhaps? If so, the reason that an untestable hypothesis is ignored (not "discounted as invalid") is because pretty much by definition, an untestable hypothesis is one which has no real-world consequences. It's an utterly useless hypothesis. It doesn't matter whether it might actually be true or not. Example: "Hypothesis: Odin exists, but he now and forever takes pains to ensure that he doesn't interfere in any way with our Universe." Okay, fine, but so what? Whether this hypothesis is true or not, it doesn't freaking matter. This is the case for any untestable hypothesis. If the thing being hypothesized has measurable effects of some sort on our reality, it'll be testable. Conversely, if it's untestable, the reason will be that it has no measurable effect of any sort on our reality. Literally, it doesn't matter. It's useless.
Thus the lesson: An "ID hypothesis" SPECIFIC enough to be testable would be, by its nature, also useful. It would allow us to make valid predictions, and use it technologically, etc. But the IDers usually don't make those kinds of hypotheses (and when they do, they quickly are shown to be false) -- instead they want to make vague, broad, unspecific "hypotheses" which are so "open" that they are utterly untestable, and thus utterly useless even if they *did* happen to be true.
Perhaps we lack the means with which to prove.
There you go with that "proof" thing again...
One hundred years ago, if someone suggested that we might have instructions within our cells that determine how we are made, would they have been ridiculed because it was not "testable" since we lacked the means in which to do so?
No, anyone's free to "suggest" anything. And that's a bad example, since there *was* positive evidence at that time for such a conclusion, even though its exact mechanism had not yet been discovered.
But even if you had chosen a better example, the point is that no, people are not ridiculed for "suggesting" various things (unless those suggestions are clearly already contradicted by the available evidence -- try "suggesting" that the Earth is flat and see how much respect you get). They do, however, get ridiculed for making *false* claims about things that are already known (e.g. IDers making false accusations about evolutionary biology), or for *falsely* claiming that their "suggestions" are on par with established science or that their "suggestions" *are* themselves a science. This too the IDers frequently do, and frequently (and rightfully) get snickered at for it.
Further more, AND THIS IS NOT MY BELIEF, it is merely a hypothesis that I am wondering whether or not has the possibility for testing. If space aliens did do it, and we developed the technology to go there and learn the science by which they did it, what would we call this?
We would call it science, for then it would be.
And is it theoretically testable?
Sure. That doesn't mean, however, that "unknown aliens of unknown abilities and unknown motivations using unknown processes did an unknown 'it' at an unknown time and an unknown place" is a testable hypothesis, because it's not. And unfortunately, that's the state of the "ID hypotheses" today. And this, you'll note, is after SEVERAL CENTURIES of trying to find positive scientific evidence or a testable scientific hypothesis of some sort of "designer" -- contrary to the silly claims that "ID" is some kind of "new" idea, it's actually one of the *oldest* notions in the world. People thousands of years ago believed it. And millions of people throughout the entire history of science have tried to find support for this "ID belief" via scientific methods (including for example Isaac Newton), and come up empty. In the almost 150 years that evolutionary biology has existed, it has achieved ENORMOUS results in the form of vast amounts of evidence and research findings, countless useful tools derived from it, huge numbers of successful predictions used to uncover further knowledge, etc, while over the same period of time "ID" is in such a poor state that it's still claiming today, "just give us a little more time, we'll come up with *something* any day now, just you wait!"
Is science's main objection regarding ID that if it is considered to have as much merit as "it just happened" then it will have to be taken into equal consideration when evaluating other aspects of evolution that evolution has trouble explaining,
The difference is that evolutionary biology does not make the mistake the IDer's make -- they don't presume a specific answer in areas where all evidence is lacking, nor do they try to overstate the support for whatever personal notions they might have about the possible answers.
even though evolution would deny such trouble exists?
Horse manure. We freely acknowledge areas where more research is needed. We do, however, deny that "such trouble exists" to the degree the anti-evolutionists claim, for the simple reason that the anti-evolutionists wildly over-inflate such claims, and often just make them up entirely.
In such an event that they are regarded as equals, how will Occam's razor be applied?
It will be applied by pointing out that they are *not*, to any degree, "equals".
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too.
This does not follow.
If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.
...and that's *really* off base. Even if the rise of intelligence was an "accident", as Lewis put it (and that's a really poor word choice), that does *not* mean that our present thoughts are "mere accidents", since they are based on actual analysis of reality.
And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's.
No, it does not.
But if their thoughts - i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.
This is a common argument from people who don't understand evolution, but frankly, it's rather an idiotic one and I never grasped how anyone could find it even remotely convincing.
Look, by whatever means anything worthy of the name "intelligence" arose, even if by "accident", the mere fact that it *does* qualify as intelligent indicates that it is able at least to some degree to discern sense from nonsense, to test its ideas, to learn from reality, etc. I just never grasped the (il)logical leap required to accept the goofy "argument" that an intelligence which originated from "chaotic" processes would itself have to have "chaotic thoughts". Nonsense. If it did, it wouldn't be intelligent. Even the idea itself is obviously false: Snowflakes arise from chaotic motions and configurations of water vapor molecules, but the result is a highly ordered, non-chaotic end-product. Chaotic processes *can* and *do* give rise to non-chaotic results.
Furthermore, speaking of evolutionary processes specifically, it is grossly inaccurate to describe them as merely being "accidents". It's no "accident" that the faster cheetah survives more often than the slow cheetah. Evolution and natural selection aren't mere "accidents", they are processes which produce ever more effective organisms tuned for survival. And an intelligence produced by evolution would be finely tuned for making *accurate* conclusions about the reality around it. The whole point of intelligence in an animal is to better be able to grasp reality, so as to better survive in it (through better prediction of circumstances, better understanding of how to acquire food and avoid dangers, etc. etc.) The production of an effective, discerning, accurate, insightful intelligence by evolution is no "accident", and a workable, reliable intelligence -- able to extract an understanding of the world around it -- is exactly what one would expect evolutionary processes to produce.
It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset." C.S. Lewis
Lewis was a fine novelist and a decent theologian, but was lousy when he tried to take on topics such as this one. No, it's *not* like expecting that, because a) milk jugs are not intelligent, b) milk jugs do not reproduce and thus are not subject to evolutionary refinement, and c) the kind of "accident" that produces a splatter of milk on the floor is a laughably ludicrous and inappropriate parallel to the kind of stochastic processes at work in evolution.
It is my observation that Hitler was a cunning and manipulative man who used Christianity to gain support of the German people, and then twisted it to justify his treatment of the Jewish population. Observation of his later atrocities and life bring me to the conclusion that he was either disingenuous regarding his faith, or he had a gross misinterpretation of it.