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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
There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present.
Absolutely no transitional forms either in the fossil record or in modern animal and plant life have been found. All appear fully formed and complete. The fossil record amply supplies us with representation of almost all species of animals and plants but none of the supposed links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, amphibian to reptile, or reptile to birds and mammals are represented nor any transitional forms at all. There are essentially the same gaps between all the basic kinds in the fossil record as exists in plant and animal life today. There are literally a host of missing links in the fossil record and the modern world.
"There is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. No transitional links or intermediate forms between various kinds of creatures have ever been found." For example, "the evolutionist claims that it took perhaps fifty million years for a fish to evolve into an amphibian. But, again, there are no transitional forms. For example, not a single fossil with part fins...part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind." ([22], p.19) "Nowhere do we see animals with partially evolved legs, eyes, brains, or various other tissues, organs, and biological structures." ([22], p.19-20)
"If continuous evolution is a universal law of nature, as the evolutionist claims, then there should be an abundance of evidences of continuity and transition between all the kinds of organisms involved in the process, both in the present world and in the fossil record. Instead we find great gaps between all the basic kinds, and essentially the same gaps in the fossil record that exist in the modern world." ([18], p.34)
There are no links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, amphibian to reptile, reptile to birds and mammals. There are no links whatsoever.
"All of the present orders, classes, and phyla appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, without indications of the evolving lines from which they developed. The same is largely true even for most families and genera. There are literally an innumerable host of `missing links' in the record." ([18] , p.33)
"There is simply no evidence of partially evolved animals or plants in the fossil record to indicate that evolution has occurred in the past, and certainly no evidence of partially evolved animals and plants existing today to indicate that evolution is occurring at the present." ([22], p.20)
"...the outstanding characteristics of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution." ([11], p.50)
If there were links then they would have been found since the fossil record is "...quite ample to represent the true state of the ancient world. Most individual species of fossil plants and animals have been collected in considerable numbers, but the hypothetical intermediate species have never been represented at all!" ([18], p.33)
Darwin stated, "Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?" ([11], p.46)
Darwin admitted that the number of transitional links "must have been conceivably great." The fact that there are none prompted him to conclude that this fact is "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."
"The occasional suggested examples of missing links (such as the famous archaeopteryx - supposedly linking the birds and reptiles) can usually be recognized on closer study to represent merely another type of one of the basic kinds it supposedly links (the archaeopteryx was a true bird, by any reasonable definition, with feathers and warm blood)." ([18], p.33-34)
"Even if a creature shared characteristics belonging to two separate groups, however, this would not necessarily make it a transitional link as long as each of the characteristics themselves is complete and not in the process of transition from one type of structure or function into another type of structure or function." ([22], p.25)
"The point to remember...is that the fossil problem for Darwinism is getting worse all the time." ([11], p.57) [11] Johnson, Phillip. Darwin on Trial, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991; [18] Morris, Henry M. Evolution and the Modern Christian, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1988;[22] Ranganathan, B.G. Origins?, Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1988.
I post evidence, you rant.
Honest evolutionists admit this is problem.
As evidenced by your quote mine? Respond to ThinkPlease's analysis before you repeat the same drivel.
Evolution is your religion, a desperate attempt to deny that there is a God that you are accountable.
Science is not religion. Religion is not science. We aren't all doing the same thing.
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.
I'm not going to call in to Bob's show and get shouted down. Let him come here and we can post our evidence to the world, at leisure and with no time limit. I've been debating creationists on FR for almost three years. It's an easy and fun hobby when the evidence is with you. I've never run away from anybody. The notion that I refuse (from fear) to do what I've been doing this long is pretty amusing. Bring on Bob to FR.
It can be noted that natural selection as a driving mechanism for evolution is totally inadequate. Natural selection (along with mutation) is said to have caused organisms to evolve from one basic kind (animals which can reproduce with one another) into another basic kind. This is prohibited genetically since all of the information for the development of an organism has already been encoded in the DNA of its parent. Variation to organisms must remain within its basic kind. For example, genetically, a wide variety of dogs can come to exist, but a dog can never become anything other than a dog. It remains in its kind. It does not have the genetic ability to become anything more. Admitting this, evolutionists have tried to explain that natural selection happened in conjunction with mutations to the genetic code. This could not produce evolution, however, since mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter what is already there. Furthermore, mutations are small, random, and harmful alterations to the genetic code. This also makes evolution from mutations impossible. For example, a working wristwatch does not improve but is harmed when its inside parts are randomly altered. Natural selection also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics which states that, left to themselves, all things tend to deteriorate rather than develop, while evolution wants to go in the opposite direction. "Survival of the fittest" demonstrates only how an organism has survived, not how it has evolved.
Must've missed that one in Biology 101...
Only idiot would accept a theory with a fossil record that clear indicates evolution did not occur. Only a fool would accept a theory that contradicts thermodynamics and is based on the absurd idea of massive, beneficial mutations.
*There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
(Borrowed from that Punk Eek Page again.)Charles Darwin wrote in 1859:
Only a small portion of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic beings of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least in any great number. Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, -- both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species.
The Origin of Species, Chapter 14, p.439
"The occasional suggested examples of missing links (such as the famous archaeopteryx - supposedly linking the birds and reptiles) can usually be recognized on closer study to represent merely another type of one of the basic kinds it supposedly links (the archaeopteryx was a true bird, by any reasonable definition, with feathers and warm blood)." ([18], p.33-34)
Silly and wrong. But what do you expect from Henry Morris, the author of the following quote:
"...the main reason for insisting on the universal Flood as a fact of history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that God's Word plainly teaches it! No geologic difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture."Source.Henry Morris, Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science (1970) p.32-33 [emphasis added]
Let's just do archie, since Morris brought it up.
The Talk-Origins "All-About" Page With Refutation of Creationist Arguments.
The Creationist Argument from Hoatzin Refuted.
The Creationist Argument from Forgery Refuted.
Archaeopteryx's Relationship With Modern Birds.
You've been had, Sparks. When they trolled for suckers, you bit.
"Even if a creature shared characteristics belonging to two separate groups, however, this would not necessarily make it a transitional link as long as each of the characteristics themselves is complete and not in the process of transition from one type of structure or function into another type of structure or function." ([22], p.25)
This writer openly asserts his perpetual right to ask, when confronted by a transitional fossil, "Where are the transitionals to and from that?" You'd basically have to show the guy movie frames from the fossil record, or a dead fossil mutating before his eyes, or something.
"The point to remember...is that the fossil problem for Darwinism is getting worse all the time." ([11], p.57)
Here's a genuine lawyer (Johnson) lawyering brazenly in the same manner. Why is "the fossil problem" getting worse? Because every new transitional creates at least two new gaps on either side of it.
It's all a big Catch-22 game.
You keep saying this. But then, you keep saying everything.
I think it would be easier if sparky just said: "I'm repeating post #x." It would be less typing for him. Better still, he could just say: "I'm repeating my prior idiocy from all my prior posts." That would save us all a lot of time.
<a href="(URL here)">(Your Label Here)</a>
One of my favorite threads on Dinosar-Bird Transition.
A sample of the goodies there:
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| Fig. 1: Archaeopteryx | Fig. 2: Deinonychus |
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| Fig. 3: Hoatzin chick | Fig. 4: Hoatzin adult |
A hoatzin is a modern (if a bit primitive) South American bird. You know about Archaeopteryx. A Deinonychus is an unquestioned dinosaur.
Anything Bob Enyart can say on the radio, he can post. Well, maybe someone can help him with the computer mechanics. Needless to say, of course, I'm not worried about what an "Internet Radio" (not even a real station) host can do, but it's no less than whatever he can do on a radio broadcast.
By comparison, my act doesn't translate to radio. Let's say someone makes a post like this one.
. . . assuming you were to miraculously somehow or other develop the first of the baker's dozen features required, then by the time you developed the second, the first (having been disadvantageous the entire while) would have DE-EVOLVED.I like to answer with a post like this one.
You can't do that on radio.
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