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Posted on 01/26/2002 1:14:46 PM PST by Paul Ross
The Cross vs. the Swastika
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The Cross vs. the Swastika |
I vividly remember a high school conversation with a friend I’d known since we were eight. I’d pointed out that Hitler was essentially a pagan, not a Christian, but my friend absolutely refused to believe it. No matter how much evidence I presented, he kept insisting that Nazi Germany was an extension of Christianity, acting out its age-old vendetta against the Jews. Not that he spoke from any personal study of the subject; he just knew. He’d heard it so many times it’d become an article of faith — one of those things “everyone knows.”
Flash forward 25 years. A few weeks ago my last column (http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000528.html) refuted a number of familiar charges against Christianity, including the Christianity-created-Nazism shibboleth. Even though I only skimmed the subject, I thought the evidence I cited would’ve been hard to ignore; I quoted, for example, Hitler’s fond prediction that he would “destroy Christianity” and replace it with “a [pagan] religion rooted in nature and blood.” But sure enough, I still heard from people who couldn’t buy that.
Well, sometimes myths die hard. But this one took a hit in early January, at the hands of one Julie Seltzer Mandel, a Jewish law student at Rutgers whose grandmother survived internment at Auschwitz.
A couple of years ago Mandel read through 148 bound volumes of papers gathered by the American OSS (the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA) to build the case against Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. Now she and some fellow students are publishing what they found in the journal Law and Religion(www.lawandreligion.com), which Mandel edits. The upshot: a ton of evidence that Hitler sought to wipe out Christianity just as surely as he sought to wipe out the Jews.
The first installment (the papers are being published in stages) includes a 108-page OSS outline, “The Persecution of the Christian Churches.” It’s not easy reading, but it’s an enlightening tale of how the Nazis — faced with a country where the overwhelming majority considered themselves Christians — built their power while plotting to undermine and eradicate the churches, and the people’s faith.
Before the Nazis came to power, the churches did hold some views that overlapped with the National Socialists — e.g., they opposed communism and resented the Versailles treaty that ended World War I by placing heavy burdens on defeated Germany. But, the OSS noted, the churches “could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State.” Thus, “conflict was inevitable.”
From the start of the Nazi movement, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement,” said Baldur von Scvhirach, leader of the group that would come to be known as Hitler youth. But “explicitly” only within partly ranks: as the OSS stated, “considerations of expedience made it impossible” for the movement to make this public until it consolidated power.
So the Nazis lied to the churches, posing as a group with modest and agreeable goals like the restoration of social discipline in a country that was growing permissive. But as they gained power, they took advantage of the fact that many of the Protestant churches in the largest body (the German Evangelical Church) were government-financed and administered. This, the OSS reported, advanced the Nazi plan “to capture and use church organization for their own purposes” and “to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the German church by legal or quasi legal means.”
The Roman Catholic Church was another story; its administration came from Rome, not within German borders, and its relationship with the Nazis in the 1920s had been bitter. So Hitler lied again, offering a treaty pledging total freedom for the Catholic church, asking only that the church pledge loyalty to the civil government and emphasize citizens’ patriotic duties — principles which sounded a lot like what the church already promoted. Rome signed the treaty in 1933.
Only later, when Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, did his true policy toward both Catholics and Protestants become apparent. By 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced the Nazis for waging “a war of extermination” against the church, and dissidents like the Lutheran clergyman Martin Niemoller openly denounced state control of Protestant churches. The fiction of peaceful coexistence was rapidly fading: In the words of The New York Times (summarizing OSS conclusions), “Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.”
The Nazis still paid enough attention to public perception to paint its church critics as traitors: the church “shall have not martyrs, but criminals,” an official said. But the campaign was increasingly unrestrained. Catholic priests found police snatching sermons out of their hands, often in mid-reading. Protestant churches issued a manifesto opposing Nazi practices, and in response 700 Protestant pastors were arrested. And so it went.
Not that Christians took this lying down; the OSS noted that despite this state terrorism, believers often acted with remarkable courage. The report tells, for example, of how massive public demonstrations protested the arrests of Lutheran pastors, and how individuals like pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (hanged just days before the war ended) and Catholic lay official Josef Mueller joined German military intelligence because that group sought to undermine the Nazis from within.
There is, of course, plenty of room for legitimate criticism of church leaders and laymen alike for getting suckered early on, and for failing to put up enough of a fight later. Yet we should approach such judgments with due humility. As Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett write in their book Christianity on Trial (to repeat a quote used in my last column), “It is easy for those who do not live under a totalitarian regime to expect heroism from those who do, but it is an expectation that will often be disappointed. . . . it should be less surprising that the mass of Christians were silent than that some believed strongly enough to pay for their faith with their lives.”
At any rate, my point is hardly to defend every action (or inaction) on the part of German churches. In fact, I think their failures bring us valuable lessons, not least about the dangers of government involvement in — and thus power over — any churches.
But the notion that the church either gave birth to Hitler or walked hand-in-hand with him as a partner is, simply, slander. Hitler himself knew better. “One is either a Christian or a German,” he said. “You can’t be both.”
This is something to bear in mind when some folk on the left trot out their well-worn accusation that conservative Christians are “Nazis” or “fascists.” It’s also relevant to answering the charge made by the likes of liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.”
But it’s not Christianity that’s injected evil into the world. In fact, the worst massacres in history have been committed by atheists (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and virtual pagans (Hitler). Christians have amassed their share of sins over the past 2,000 years, but the great murderers have been the church’s enemies, especially in the past century. It’s long past time to set the historical record straight. 
The complete text of this article is available at http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000541.html
These are the footnotes for some of Dr. Gish's quote mining on the lack of transitional fossils. He's writing in 1994, but he's going as far back as 1955 to show there is no good fossil history of whales. I presume (although even that is not certain) that the quotes are word-for-word accurate, but his use of them is tantamount to lying about the state of the evidence in 1994.
I have already posted information about new finds since 1994. We've learned a lot about the history of whales in the last decade.
This is a jab at Mesonyx, whose candidacy for whale ancestry has been damaged by later evidence. Never mind, the nature of Dr. Gish's complaint, one that he aims at Pakicetus and other early fossils as well, is that the animal is terrestrial, or at least fresh-water aquatic.
Well, du-uh! Let's watch him some more.
They suggest that unlike modern cetaceans, Ambulocetus had a long tail, and that it probably did not possess flukes.Of course, if the fossils in question had been a recognizeably modern whales, they still wouldn't have been transitional fossils because they would have been recognizeably modern whales. But if they aren't recognizeably modern whales, we attack them for that. Praise the Lord!. . .
When some of the ICR staff looked at the picture with the knowledge that Thewissen and fellow workers called this creature a whale, they laughed . . .associating the word "whale" with a creature with large and powerful front and hind legs does seem a bit ludicrous to skeptics.
When computers start having little baby computers (the pitter-pat of tiny keyboards ...) then you'll have an analogy.
Oh, I have an analogy NOW. You simply don't agree that it is one, and, so, are reduced to setting arbitrary conditions as to what constitutes a viable analogy. Fortunately, you are not the arbiter of these things.
P.S. Reproduction (i.e. the pitter-pat of tiny ...) is simply an automated production process where the intelligence needed to drive the process is encoded in the product.
Speciation In Time. Real science, not creationist sillies.
You raised the platypus earlier. Here, more for the lurkers than for you, are some links:
The Natural History of the Monotremes.
Finally, who is this guy you're trying to trump mainstream science with? Ladies and gentlemen, Duane Gish!
From a web page on logical fallacies:
Bad Analogy:
Claiming that two situations are highly similar, when they aren't. For example, "The solar system reminds me of an atom, with planets orbiting the sun like electrons orbiting the nucleus. We know that electrons can jump from orbit to orbit; so we must look to ancient records for sightings of planets jumping from orbit to orbit also."
Or, "Minds, like rivers, can be broad. The broader the river, the shallower it is. Therefore, the broader the mind, the shallower it is."
Comparing man-made machines with animals is definitely a bad analogy.
The computers in question are built from scratch by a third party. Organisms are not built from scratch but rather come from earlier organisms (their parents). No third party is involved. Your analogy would be correct if every time two people wanted to have a baby they went down to the baby factory and picked one out from a catalog.
It simply has yet to be demonstrated to me WHY the comparison of machines to living beings is necessarily a BAD analogy. Webster's definition of analogy follows ...
... similarity or agreement between one thing and another; resemblance; comparison.
Now, of course, there are differences between machines and living beings. If there were no differences, any analogy would be meaningless. The point is, despite the differences, THERE ARE similarities in the form and function of machines and living things. Some of the similarities are ...
... the complex interaction of components and systems which provide for their respective functionality.
... the gradual wear and eventual breakdown of these same components and systems which eventually leads to the failure of function.
... the conversion of energy (provided by some type of fuel) to function.
... the existence of a control center (whether mechanical, electronic, chemical, etc.) which regulates and constrains function.
Of course, ultimately, the validity of any analogy is in the eye of the beholder. Some folks just won't get it.
The computers in question are built from scratch by a third party. Organisms are not built from scratch but rather come from earlier organisms (their parents). No third party is involved. Your analogy would be correct if every time two people wanted to have a baby they went down to the baby factory and picked one out from a catalog.
No third party needs to be involved in the production of a computer, either. Two necessarily enabled people (or even one such person) can gather the necessary resources for production and rely upon their own store of productive intelligence to produce a computer.
Such persons perform similarly in the production of a child. They make use of the intelligence they possess (or instinct, which can be considered as internalized intelligence) to initiate what is essentially an automated production process. Without this initial step, requiring the intelligent input of the parents, no child will be produced. The mother, herself, as a part of this automated process, becomes the factory herself. No catalog search is required, or even possible, ... yet.
No. For your analogy to work, two computers would need to be doing the reproduction -- each contributing to the final product. Bringing people into the picture introduces a third party that is not present in nature (unless you think God pops in and zaps new critters into existence inside their mothers, which would make Jesus entirely ununique).
Bringing people into the picture introduces a third party that is not present in nature.
... unless that third party is the one who originally encoded the codes for reproduction into the organism.
For, instance, ... if you asked me to feed your dog for a week while you were on vacation, ... and gave me the keys to your house to do so ... and, in so doing, I observe that one of your living-room lamps comes on every evening at 6:00 p.m., ... even though I see noone flipping the switch, ... rationally (our initial point of discussion), ... I would surmise that YOU had encoded this function into your living-room lighting system, ... rather than think that this functionality arose without any intelligence being involved.
Not quite true. Einstein did advocate developement ot The Bomb. It was probably his letter that finally convinced the Roosevelt adminstration to start what became the Manhatten Project.
But that still doesn't mean that Einstein woudl be to blame if Osama manges to detonate a nuke in some city. Osam would be to blame. In the same way, John M. Browning is not to blame if some gang banger kills a peaceable citizen with a 1911 or Hi-Power.
Boy, that bears repeating!
Congrats on a brilliant expose of the out-of-context quote-mining that Sparky has been providing on this thread. You have provided a great service to FR readers.
Punctated Equilibrium says that rapid species change takes place in "hotbed" areas where isolated populations are under pressure to find a new adaptation. For example, the Rift Valley of East Africa was a hotbed of human evolution.
The hotbed of whale evolution, the place where a line of freshwater aquatic mammals lost their land adaptations and went to sea, was long undiscovered. Certainly, it was completely unknown in 1955 when Colbert lamented that whales appear suddenly and stand quite alone.
The hotbed was along the shores of the Tethys Sea, long gone, but whose sediments remain in the high mountains ringing the Indian subcontinent. Until we looked there, Colbert's lament was true.
This is not unusual. Here's a similar case.
In one small locality, there is a 1.25 meter sedimentary layer where these fossils are found. In the narrow (10cm ) layer that separates the two species, both species are found along with transitional forms.Gish cannot plead ignorance. He is clearly aware of research far later than Colbert's lament. He is certainly aware of more modern models of evolution than his "billions of transitional species" claim. He is in fact being patently, cynically dishonest. He isn't arguing to convince the people with the resources not to be fooled. He's trolling for easy marks.In other localities, no transitional forms are found, and the species are not found together. The "sudden" transition in those rocks is explained as migration from the place where the transitional forms occur.
As opposed to the common sense that 86% of the nation instinctively knows is true -- there is God.
Evolution is your desperate attempt to deny that there is a Creator you will be accountable to. It doesn't matter that you have to throw out all intellect and accept ideas that purely insane.
Honest evolutionists admit this is problem. Those that accept evolution on blind faith demand no evidence, regardless of how little common sense or evidence that theory presents. Evolution is your religion, a desperate attempt to deny that there is a God that you are accountable.
And, given the fact you refuse to debate a Creationists, it's pretty obvious that you know just how weak this idiotic theory truly is.
Honest evolutionists admit this is problem. Those that accept evolution on blind faith demand no evidence, regardless of how little common sense or evidence that theory presents. Evolution is your religion, a desperate attempt to deny that there is a God that you are accountable.
And, given the fact you refuse to debate a Creationists, it's pretty obvious that you know just how weak this idiotic theory truly is.
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