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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
You tell 'em, Spanky! Believing in hurricanes and the sun is absurd!
Hey, that's an interesting line of argument! If Sparky, Wallace, Morris, & friends are correct, then a perpetual motion machine should be possible - if only you put enough effort & design work into it. A simple perpetual motion machine won't work. Only a highly designed perpetual motion machine, with lots & lots of organizing principles behind it, will work.Let's suppose you wanted to build a water wheel where there was no natural stream. You want to divert some of your mill's output to pumping water back upstream to feed your mill continuously from an artificial reservoir which you will fill manually the first time, hauling the water by truck.
This scheme will not work. The first law of thermo (conservation of energy) says you can't win. The second law says you can't even break even; you're certain to come out behind with every cycle and rapidly grind to a halt. For all that this scheme has a Designer and lots of organizing input etc. etc. it can't work.
But when you site your mill on a natural stream, you have the sun raising your water back to the top of the mountains for you. Yes, your God would seem to be a Sun God here. Note that this version works because the earth is not a closed system.
It isn't having a Designer or an organizing principle or whatever that makes a difference, and no non-creationist version of the second law mentions any such thing ever. It's having an energy source to pay the entropy bill. The second law says you have to have that and we do. No miracles needed.
I see a multi-level marketing project here. We could get rich! =:-D
You did that on purpose! ;)
Obviously, if it's possible at all, we just haven't had a smart-enough designer yet! Too many hucksters are ready to take your money if you like that argument.
A variation: there's this huge zero-point energy (of the vacuum) and we can tap into that to do work. Every such scheme runs into either the first law or the second.
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nods of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record." (Gould, Stephen J. "The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 181)
"Large evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any." (Wesson, R., Beyond Natural Selection, 1991, p. 206)
"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95)
"It is, however, very difficult to establish the precise lines of descent, termed phylogenies, for most organisms." (Ayala, F. J. and Valentine J. W., Evolving: The Theory and Process of Organic Evolution, 1978, p. 230)
"Many fossils have been collected since 1859, tons of them, yet the impact they have had on our understanding of the relationships between living organisms is barely perceptible. ...In fact, I do not think it unfair to say that fossils, or at least the traditional interpretation of fossils, have clouded rather than clarified our attempts to reconstruct phylogeny." (Fortey, P. L., "Neontological Analysis Versus Palaeontological Stores," 1982, p. 120-121)
Liar. I challenge you to place these quotes in the context that they were originally taken by researching on the internet or in the original book or paper that they were quoted from. After all, you did research this work on your own, correct? Therefore you should have these original works on hand, right? No credible scientist or researcher would never accept someone else's work without at least researching it themselves to verify its veracity. I suggest you do the same. It would prevent embarrassments like my prior challenges to you. Best hop to it, Liar for Christ, your credibility has nearly run out on this group.
Did you see my post # 498 on that very issue! :)
Please, try to be more charitable. I really don't think he's deliberately lying. If that were so, he would make some attempts to appear credible. There is not even the hint of any duplicity involved here. What we are witnessing is a truly feeble mind at work. He's desperately copying, cutting, and pasting from his creationist sources, that's true, but it's all done without understanding. Much as some Hindoo spins the prayer wheel, unthinking, but with undying faith that this mindless activity will have its reward.
Probably not, but I can't help but notice that he hasn't addressed his prior quotes. I'm trying to imagine someone that deluded, but it is difficult. I suppose it is possible, even likely that he is that deluded. It is difficult to place someone in that type of mindset, however.
Yet it happens. I once knew a preacher (he was famous in my town when I was a boy) who answered all questions with quotes from scripture. He literally had no ideas outside of the bible. And he was sincere. He thought his quotes (his memory was prodigious) provided perfect answers, and even follow-up questions were futile. He would merely repeat the scripture. I think this is what we are witnessing here. A very Pavlovian mind, nothing more. Sort of a missing link, as it were.
I see a multi-level marketing project here. We could get rich! =:-D
They're way ahead of you, jenny. Did you ever see the promotional material on the "Cinncinati Group's" "Home Alchemy Kit" ($2999 ea. Satisfaction guaranteed.) A bunch of defrocked scientists, with links to some of "medved's" favorite "experts," working in their basement/garage laboratories discovered a method of Alchemy "based on scriptural principles" (I'm NOT making this up!) They were supposedly going to market Home Alchemy kits to "qualified" buyers.
Of course, all traces of the Alchemy system and the company that was developing/marketing it have completely disappeared without a trace from the web.
Who would have ever imagined such a thing? Or, to quote a favorite film:
"I'm shocked, shocked to discover gambling going on here! What's this? Oh, my winnings! Thank you very much." -- Prefect of Police, 1942, "Casablanca"
Glad you asked.
First, an apology to whomever started the thread, and to anyone genuinely interested in pursuing that topic. Sorry for going so far afield.
That said, the record will show that "Ol'Sparky" was Hell-bent on linking Hitler to Darwin, and sidetracked the entire discussion with his "out-of-context" quotefest to disparage the Theory of Evolution. The rest of us jumped on him to defend the science behind the Theory of Evolution, and to point out the egregious nature of his out-of-context quotes, which most often were actually written by people whose meaning was the exact opposite of what the quote appears to say when removed from its original context, and to point out his profound lack of understanding of Thermodynamics.
After 500 replies Sparky was reduced to denouncing us as "morons" and "idiots," while recycling is previously offered (and refuted) out-of-context quotes and mischaracterizations of what others had posted to him.
It was an interesting discussion, in a pathological sort of way.
Think infra-red radiation, the stuff to which those night vision goggles are sensitive. You're glowing strongly in IR right now and so is everything around you.
While it is considered bad form to cut in front of a lady, I will presume that "jennyp" will forgive me for responding before she does.
Obviously, she means that heat bleeds off into space on clear nights. That is exactly why the coldest temperatures are recorded when it is crystal clear. Radiational heat transport is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature gradient, and the sink into which the Earth's heat radiates is very cold indeed: 2.7°Kelvin (or about 5° Rankine, if you prefer a Farhenheit scale unit), the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
But she is also right that the heat loss to space constitutes an entropy decrease on Earth, which similtaneously produces an even LARGER entropy INCREASE in the Universe!
The change in entropy (delta S) is defined as the change in heat (delta Q) per unit Temperature (T):
IF you remove a unit of heat Q from the earth surface at a temperature of 0° Celcius (273° Kelvin), the entropic change for the Earth will be -Q/273°K (the minus sign denotes that the heat is leaving the system). BUT, when that unit of heat, Q, is absorbed by the Universe, which is at temperature 2.7°K, it's entropy INCREASES by Q/2.7°K. But note that:
This explains how the heat transfer from a warmer body to a colder body produces a NET increase in entropy of the entire system while a localized decrease is occuring in part of the system. All of which is in complete accordance with the 2LoT.
In conclusion, the earth radiates heat to space (because of the prodigious temperature gradient), producing a reduction in entropy where the heat is coming from (e.g., Detroit on a cler night in December), while concurrently produce an even LARGER increase in entropy of the Universe. So in effect, the earth is bleeding entropy off into space under the conditions "jennyp" described.
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