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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
Scholars have long surmised that triploid endosperm characterized the ancestors of flowering plants. But the new study, conducted by University of Colorado biologists Joseph Williams and William Friedman, suggests otherwise.Your silly evolutionist scientists can't even agree. This proves evolution is a crock. This proves there is NO EVIDENCE.
</Sparky_mode>
Young Earth And Flood Geology A library for idiots from ICR.
Creation Education Center More books for idiots.
Evidences for a young Earth A veritable Creationist padded cell.
While you're at it start researching Jewish historical failings too. Oh wait, there aren't any. Never mind. Just dig up as much dirt on Gentiles as you can. Since we're not perfect there will be plenty to find.
If you have a point to make about my post, make it without the sniveling. It only makes you more contemptable.
How much delusion and how much money-grubbing fraud? I still don't know.In only a few years, the star has changed from a white dwarf star about the size of Earth to a bright yellow supergiant 80 times wider than the sun. This means the diameter has increased by a factor of 8000, and the volume by a factor of over 500,000 million. The astronomers expressed great surprise at the rapidity at which this change had occurred.. . .If this had not been observed to happen, evolutionists would have undoubtedly claimed that millions of years were necessary. We should remember they have never actually observed stars taking millions of years to change. We should trust God who was there and has revealed that the universe is much younger.
How is one supposed to take a theory seriously when it is half-baked that those promoting can't even complete it?
A severe problem for evolutionists is the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. By transitional forms, we mean intermediate forms of life appearing in the fossil record that are "in-between" existing types of organisms found today or in the past.
If slow, gradual evolution occurred, you would expect to observe a continuum of change in the fossil record. After all, if life took millions of years to arrive at its' present state of development, the earth should be filled with fossils that could be easily assembled into a number of series showing minor changes as species were evolving.
The opposite is true - no continuum! When fossils are examined they form records of existing and extinct organisms with clearly defined gaps, or missing transitional forms, consistent with a creationist's view of origins. Below are some of the gaps in the fossil record.
Consider...
The Cambrian explosion - At the bottom of the geological column in the so called Cambrian rocks are found highly complex creatures: trilobites, worms, sponges, jellyfish, etc., all without ancestors. It's as though you "turned the light on" in the fossil record. These are highly complex life forms appearing on the scene without forerunners. Trilobites for example, have compound lenses in their eyes that make use of Fermat's principle and Abbe's Sine Law. This is like entering the highway of life without an entrance ramp.
Insects - When found in the fossil record, they are already developed without ancestors. Dragonflies are dragonflies, cockroaches are cockroaches. Instead of an evolutionary tree, we have only the leaves without the trunk or branches. To compound this problem the question of flight arises... when did they develop the ability to fly? There are no fossil intermediates in the record.
Invertebrates and vertebrates - Transitional forms leading to vertebrates are absent even though the transition supposedly took millions of years. It is theorized that life passed through a stage where a creature possessed a simple rod-like notochord. This has not been found.
Fish to Amphibian - Fin to feet... Evolutionist glibly cite a Fish --> Amphibian --> Reptile --> Mammal progression in their theory, however there is a large gap in the fossil record between fish and amphibians. Among other differences, fish have small pelvic bones that are embedded in muscle and not connected to the backbone unlike tetrapod amphibians which have large pelvises that are firmly connected to the vertebral column. Without this anatomy, the amphibian could not walk. The morphological differences in this gap are obvious and profound.
Amphibian to Reptile -The skeletons of amphibians and reptiles are closely related which makes this an ambiguous case.
Mammals - Mammals just appear in the fossil record, again without transitional forms (Gish notes 32 such orders of mammals).
Marine Mammals - whales, dolphins, and sea cows also appear abruptly. It has been suggested that the ancestors of the dolphins are cattle, pigs, or buffaloes.
Also consider the enigma of flight - supposedly, insects, birds, mammals (bats), and reptiles, each evolved the ability to fly separately. In each of the four cases there are no series of transitional forms to support this assertion.
The primates - lemurs, monkeys, apes and man appear fully formed in the fossil record. The proverbial "missing link" between man and ape remains elusive and periodically changes with the thinking of the day.
And finally, dinosaurs. Again there is the absence of transitional series leading to these giants.
The most often cited "example" of a transitional form is the Archaeopteryx which has been touted as a reptile to bird transition. However, this creature is controversial and enveloped in dispute.
Sometimes evolutionists suggest that the transitional forms haven't been found because there has not been enough fossils unearthed to accurately portray life as it existed long ago. However, since Darwin's time there has been a hundred-fold increase in the number of fossils found and a systematic problem still remains. There are fewer candidates for transitional forms between major divisions of life than for minor divisions, the exact reverse of what is expected by evolutionary theory.
The theory is incomprehensible to anyone looking at it objectively. The theory isn't credible enough to be anywhere near being complete, let alone have evidence in the fossil record. In summary, instead of getting a phylogenetic "tree" in the fossil record, you get vertical patterns indicative of creation, conflicting with the notions of gradual evolution and supporting the creationist position.
But, of course, this continuous chain is nowhere to be seen. In the world today, bears and beavers and bats are all quite distinct. There are clear gaps between major biological categories, with no blurring of the boundaries.
Darwin knew this, of course, so he appealed to the past. He suggested that the missing links have died out and would one day be found in the fossil record. The history of paleontology is largely a history of the search for the missing links. If Darwin was right, the fossil record should show literally millions of transitional forms. But that's precisely what it does not show.
So Jewish "historical failings" should be equated with pogroms?
Shouting that for the nth + 1 time doesn't make any more true than the first time. Why do you refuse to discuss the numerous explanations that have been offerred to you in good faith on this thread as to how Evolution does NOT violate the 2LoT?
I see you also forgot to respond to my other question: Have you ever studied Thermodynamics at a collegiate level?
Can you explain how weather systems can spontaneously form and NOT violate the 2LoT the way you and Morris think Evolution does?
"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23)
"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101)
"There are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups - between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65)
"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524)
There are no Jewish historical failings. Only Gentile. End of discussion.
Evolution is based on the reverse idea that the earth is becoming more orderly and evolving. That totally contradicts Second Law.
With this understanding of entropy, then, we can better state the second law of thermodynamics. First, entropy measures disorder. Second, the universe always goes from order to disorder; the entropy of the universe always increases. Now, one of the first questions is whether entropy in an "open" local system can ever decrease. The second law only requires that the entropy for the entire universe always increases. If a local system undergoes a decrease in entropy, the surroundings must undergo an increase in entropy. Thus, either an increase or a decrease of entropy can occur in a local system. The issue is not whether a decrease in entropy can occur, but rather, what is occurring in the surroundings to cause the decrease in entropy?
Re: Your comments on the Cambrian Explosion. Check out the following Free Republic Thread:
Ah! So now you DO admit that entropy CAN spontaneously decrease locally, at the expense of the entropy of the surroundings. Very good. So there's no problem with Evolution versus the 2LoT, right?
The issue is not whether a decrease in entropy can occur, but rather, what is occurring in the surroundings to cause the decrease in entropy?
Well, that's not exactly correct. The surroundings simply receive and diffuse energy, hence the entropy of the surroundings goes up. This doesn't "cause" the entropy of the local system embedded in the surroundings to experience a decrease in entropy. The system experiences a entropy decrease because whatever happens within the system results in a local increase in the available free energy; the surroundings are just a thermodynamic junk yard, a source or sink for energy, depending on the nature of the thermodynamic process.
So how much collegiate study of Thermodynamics have you had?
ASIDE: Evolutionists commonly object that the Second Law applies to closed, or isolated systems, and that the Earth is certainly not a closed system (it gets lots of raw energy from the Sun, for example). However, all systems, whether open or closed, tend to deteriorate. For example, living organisms are open systems but they all decay and die. Also, the universe in total is a closed system. To say that the chaos of the big bang has transformed itself into the human brain with its 120 trillion connections is a clear violation of the Second Law.
Now you're being unfair, by deliberately and publicly asking the guy whether he knows anything about the subject at hand. Be gentle with him. All he's got is a 32-page pamphlet, probably titled "25 Guaranteed Sure-Fire Arguments to Use Against Those Durn Eeee-vooo-luuuu-shunists"; and all he can do is keep using those arguments over and over again. Hey, they're guaranteed to work. Why don't you just fold in the face of such wisdom?
The idea that Second Law doesn't apply to life on this planet is utterly absurd. Any physical system (life) will decay, lose energy and organization. In other words, ALL life forms on this earth are becoming more disorderly, losing energy and organization and will eventually die. That does contradict the Second Law.
This is what happens when you get your science from (apparently very old) creationist pamphlets. The Cambrian is nowhere near the bottom of the geologic column and contains nowhere near the oldest known fossils.
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