Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms.
That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state.
Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy.
It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought in a conference speaker to argue that American abortion was a more horrible atrocity than the Holocaust.
One year it disinvited Cal Thomas as a conference speaker after Brother Cal got too liberal. You're thinking I must be kidding. But I kid you not. Brother Cal had displayed the utter audacity to co-author a book contending that American Christian conservatives ought to worry a little more about spreading the gospel from the bottom of the culture up rather than from the top of politics down.
Now this: Coral Ridge is airing a couple of cable installments of a "documentary," called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," that seek to make a case that, without Darwin, there could have been no Hitler.
Authoritative sources for the program include no less than columnist Ann Coulter, noted scientist, who says she is outraged that she didn't get instructed in Darwin's effective creation of Hitler when she was in school. She says she has since come to understand that Hitler was merely a Darwinist trying, by extermination of a group of people he considered inferior because of their religion and heritage, to "hurry along" the natural survival of the Aryan fittest.
Also quoted is Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Project, who tells the Anti-Defamation League that his comments were used out of context and that he is "absolutely appalled" by the "utterly misguided and inflammatory" premise of Coral Ridge's report.
The documentary's theme is really quite simple: Darwin propounded the theory of evolution. Hitler came along and believed the theory. Hitler killed Jews. So, blame Darwin for the Holocaust. Blame, too, all others who agree with or advance Darwin's theory. Get back to God and Adam and Eve and all will be right again with the world.
"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," said Dr. D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries. "The legacy of Charles Darwin is millions of deaths."
Obviously, the theme is breath-taking nonsense. You can't equate academic theory with murderous practice. You can't equate a thinker and a madman, or science and crime.
And you can't ever blame one man for another's actions. That once was a proud conservative precept. In a different context, you'll no doubt find Coral Ridge fervently preaching personal responsibility. Except, apparently, for Adolf Hitler, to whom these religious kooks issue a pass. Ol' Adolf, it seems, just fell in with a bad crowd.
By Coral Ridge's premise, Mohammed is to blame for Osama bin Laden. Actually, Coral Ridge might not argue with that. So how about this: The pope is to blame for the IRA. And Jesus is to blame for Mel Gibson, not to mention Coral Ridge Ministries.
[Omitted some author detail and contact info.]
All religions entreat people to become followers first and thinkers second; history treats the believer and the atheist the same in turn generations hence.
Only the hermits escape unscathed.
I don't have any idea what you are on about here.
But, once again, whether or not folks are ultimately condemned by God has nothing to do with your untruth that the Bible tells Christians to execute that condemnation.
And yet again, this is not the question before the house. The question before the house is: did Hitler (& christian etc) effectively and repeatedly condemn jews to the masses of Germany on the basis of darwinian evolutionary theory, or on the basis of traditional christian teachings about jews?
Makes me wonder about what the source of your beliefs is...
Hmmm...
Snick, snick, snick, eh, ms. DeFarge? If have the facts, pound on the facts, if you haven't the facts, pound on the arguments, if you haven't the arguments, make sniggering remarks and gestures.
Do any of these trump the doctrine of salvation, the betrayal's place in the Passion, or obviate Matthew 27:25? Did the existence of these parts of the bible prevent, for example, the stoning of witches on account of this commandment from God: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"? Did the existence of these parts of the bible prevent the 1st Crusaders from burning down every jew in their path? Might one not legitimately wonder why not?
You, exactly like those you condemn, have a twisted misunderstanding of the Bible, and what it clearly teaches.
Obviously, nothing I can say is going to change that fact.
Does it, or does it not teach, as a central tenate of christianity, that to know of Jesus and not accept Him as savior is to be condemned? Does it or does it not contain Matthew 27:25? Has or has not Matthew 27:25 been preached at us continuously for 1000 years from the pulpit, and no small number of enormous theaters every easter sunday, as the Passion of Christ?
Obviously, nothing I can say is going to change that fact.
Obviously, no fact, no matter how gruesome, is going to penetrate the soft security blanket of christian doctrinal infallibility that you've tucked securely around yourself.
The New Testament instructs Christians to preach the good news to the Jews and to all the nations, not to kill and to destroy them. It teaches us to serve, not to rule like a tyrant with a rod of iron. It teaches us to give, not to plunder and to slaughter your neighbors, as Hitler did.
Does it, or does it not teach, as a central tenate of christianity, that to know of Jesus and not accept Him as savior is to be condemned?
It really bugs you that God set such a a simple standard of faith and belief in His Word, doesn't it...
Take it up with Him, not me.
Huh. So why did christian countries mistreat jews as a matter of public law for 1400 years? Why was the building used to kidnap jewish children to be raised christian allowed to stand in the middle of the vatican for hundreds of years? Could it be because all this fine-sounding rhetoric amounts to doodly squat in the face of a fundamental tenate that condemns jews as unsaved unless they abandon the principles of their own faith, which considers worshipping Jesus to be idolotry?
If christians misbehaved toward jews for a decade or so, your theory might hold some water. For the church to tacitly condone, and occasionally cheerlead the persecution, torture and murder of jews, force their religion down jewish throats, and engage in the kidnapping of jewish children for 1400 years is a matter of bad policy, not bad faith, or erroneous judgement.
And if the jews refused to listen, the christians forced them into ghettos, and required them to accept priests in their temples on sabbath to ram it down their throats at swordpoint, or apply thumbscrews and iron maidens and racks to them until the good news leaked out of their mangled bodies, or kidnapped their children so that the good news could be poured into them away from the pernicious influence of their parents. Yes-sir-e-bob, the good news travels slowly, but to the tune of anguished cries of jewish mothers in the night. What a proud record of accomplishment.
"no beating slaves, unless they survive the night,--then it's ok"
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"
"His blood be upon us, and upon our children's children"
"Kill every midieanite save the virgin children,--them you shall take for slaves"
"Every first born son of egypt I shall slay"
Yea, what a fine set of even-handed, consistent, merciful instructions.
Take it up with Him, not me.
He's not contending that Darwin, or blue-painted tree worshippers caused the holocaust, you are.
Again, it's clear that your controversy is with God.
Was someone in authority mean to you as a child?
My controversy remains, just as it has throughout, to point out how absurdly oblivious it is for a christian to argue that Darwin is the obvious primary motivation for the holocaust.
Was someone in authority mean to you as a child?
They all were--that's the point of having adults raise children, rather than the other way around.
Good idea. What you'll find in Mein Kampff (and Hitler's entire published and orated output) is a very large and varied set of references to Christ, God, and the Bible, and almost no references to Darwin or evolution.
Where Hitler got his insane ideas from is not relevant to the truth of the theory of evolution or to the truth of Christianity, but anyone who buys into the "argument from consequences", dislikes evolution, and purports to be a Christian, should really stay away from the "inspiration of Hitler argument"; it is far worse for Christianity than it is for evolution.
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