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

From your link, noting the proclivity of creationists to cite authorities like Alan Fiducia who go against the mainstream:

This quote demonstrates a creationist committing many of the bad uses of authority that I detailed above. Notice the author is citing Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There is no mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. In short the creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument from authority." . . .

Been there with Sparky on this thread, for sure!

. . . It is also very inconsistent. Feduccia also says that evolution occurs so if this argument is to be followed to its logical conclusion, this creationist must accept the evolution of birds from non-birds! One could also cite many more authorities that say birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs. This is why one should not pick and choose authorities.

Yep!

What makes this problem worse in creationist literature is that many creationist writers do not actually read what they are quoting in the original but copy it from another writer, usually (but not necessarily) another creationist who himself might have copied it from yet another creationist. This is often revealed by multiple creationists having the same error in the quote or citation. . . . If a quoter has not read the original work he should not cite the original as if he did but rather indicate in his citation that the quote was taken from a secondary source.

You can hardly have a thread without having to wade through a bunch of these creationist quote salads. How many of the posters have actually read the material they appear to quote? Zero.

Finally, a creationist may indeed not be quoting honestly.

Sad to say, but very very very very very true. The link has A Good Link on it, concerning the deliberate misquotes of one of Sparky's favorite creationist sources, Henry Morris.

Here Morris quotes a prominent paleontologist:

One of the outstanding problems in large-scale evolution has been the origin of major taxa, such as the tetrapods, birds, and whales, that had appeared to arise suddenly, without any obvious ancestors, over a comparatively short period of time.

He omits what followed immediately after:

Increased knowledge of the fossil record has greatly increased our understanding of these and other transitions, and show that they do not necessarily require processes that differ from those known to occur at much lower taxonomic levels . . .

In short, Morris has transformed the guy 180 degrees. It's not the only example on that page, either.

Morris concludes his article saying "most everything they [evolutionists] say…seems potentially something that can be used against them." (Morris 1999:c). Well, if one is willing to rip the words of scientists completely out of context and twist them to imply the exact opposite of their original intent, then I suppose Morris might be correct.

Creation Science is Quote Science!

Finally, (another link from your link), we have Sparky's other favorite Duane Gish on transitional hominid skull 1470 analyzed here. Cafeteria science at its worst. Just the stuff that helps my side, Ma'am!

Glenn Morton (a former published creationist) has just come up with an apt metaphor for people like Sparky:

        Maxwell suggested that  a  famous demon which could violate the laws
of thermodynamics. The demon, sitting between two rooms, controls a gate
between the two rooms. When the demon sees a speedy molecule coming his way
(from room A), he opens the gate and lets the speedy molecule leave the room
and when he sees a slow molecule coming at the gate (from room A), he holds
it closed. Oppositely, when he sees a speedy molecule coming at the gate
from room B he closes the gate but when he sees a slow molecule from room B
coming toward the gate he opens it.  In this way, the demon segregates the
fast moving molecules into one room from the slow ones in the other.  Since
temperature of a gas is related to the velocity of the molecules, the demon
would increase the temperature of room B  and  cool room A without any
expenditure of energy. And since a temperature difference can be used to
create useful work, the demon would create a perpetual motion machine.
         Maxwell's demon was shown to fail by Szilard who showed that the
demon needed to use light (and expend energy) to determine a fast molecule
from a slow one. This energy spent to collect information meant that the
demon couldn't violate the 2nd law.
         The reason I mention this is because I realized tonight that the
YECs have a demon of their own. In a conversation with a YEC, I mentioned
certain problems which he needed to address. Instead of addressing them, he
claimed that he didn't have time to do the research. With other YECs, I have
found  that this is not the time (like with sds@mp3.com who refused my offer
to discuss the existence of the geologic column by stating "It's on my short
list of topics to pursue here. It's not up next, but
perhaps before too long." Message-ID: a3bv4t$v2m$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net )
And with other YECs, they claim lack of expertise to evaluate the argument
and thus won't make a judgment about the validity of the criticism. Still
other YECs refuse to read things that might disagree with them.
        Thus was born the realization that there is a dangerous demon on the
loose. When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that
Maxwell's demon did for thermodynamics. Morton's demon was a demon who sat
at  the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if when he saw supportive
evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data
coming in, he closed he gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe
that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data. Unfortunately, I
eventually realized that the demon was there and began to open the gate when
he wasn't looking.
However, my conversations have made me aware that each YEC is a victim of my
demon. Morton's demon makes it possible for a person to have his own set of
private facts which other's are not privy to, allowing the YEC to construct
a theory which is perfectly supported by the facts which the demon lets
through the gate. And since these are the only facts known to the victim, he
feels in his heart that he has explained everything.  Indeed, the demon
makes people feel morally superior and more knowledgeable than others.
        The demon makes its victim feel very comfortable as there is no
contradictory data in view. The demon is better than a set of rose colored
glasses. The demon's victim does not understand why everyone else doesn't
fall down and accept the victim's views. After all, the world is thought to
be as the victim sees it and the demon doesn't let through the gate the
knowledge that others don't see the same thing. Because of this, the victim
assumes that everyone else is biased, or holding those views so that they
can keep their job, or, in an even more devious attack by my demon, they
think that their opponents are actually demon possessed or sons of Satan.
This is a devious demon!
        He can make people think that the geologic column doesn't exist even
if one posts examples on the internet. He can make people believe that
radioactive dating doesn't work even if you show them comparisons of tree
rings compared to radiocarbon dating. It can make people ignore layer after
layer of footprints and burrows in the geologic column (see
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/burrow.jpg ) and believe that burrowing can
occur and animals can walk around unimpeded during a global flood. He can
make people think that the sun is shrinking, that the stars are all within
6000 light years of the earth, or that God made pictures in that light of
events which never happened. He can make people believe that fossils aren't
the remains of animals and are 'petrifactions' placed their by the devil. He
can make people ignore modern measurements of continental motion, stellar
formation, or biological speciation. It can make people believe that 75,000
feet of sediment over an area 200 by 100 miles can be deposited in a few
hundred years, and he can make people believe that Noah trained animals to
poop into buckets on command. It can make people deny transitional forms
which have traits clearly halfway between two groups. This is a dangerous
demon.
        But one thing that those unaffected by this demon don't understand
is that the victim is not lying about the data. The demon only lets his
victim see what the demon wants him to see and thus the victim, whose
sensory input is horribly askew, feels that he is totally honest about the
data. The victim doesn't know that he is the host to an evil parasite and
indeed many of their opponents don't know that as well since the demon is
smart enough to be too small to be seen.
        But unlike Maxwell's demon, Morton's demon doesn't expend any
energy-he gets his victim to expend it for him. He can get his victim to
expend massive amounts of intellectual energy figuring out how to convince
the world that they are wrong. The victim will spend hours reading
supportive books or searching through scientific literature noting only
those portions which support the  YEC position. And the victim will spend
lots of energy trying to convince others to come see things the way they do.
Thus, the demon gets its victims to spend energy to help it spread the
infection.
        The demon drives his victim to go to YEC conventions so that the
demon can rest. By making his victim  be with those equally afflicted, the
demon doesn't have to shut the door or even be watchful. This is because it
allows the demon time to rest when all that is in the room is supportive
data. For the victim, there is comfort in numbers even if they are few.
        Those who try to help the poor victims escape the ravages of Morton'
s demon, wear themselves out typing e-mails explaining data and facts which
never get through the demon's gate.  After years of weariness, the
philanthropic individual dies of fatigue. This is oh so devilish a
situation!

Actually, the Law of Entropy operates in regard to all systems anywhere. It applies to open systems as well as closed systems. That is why physicists maintain that even the universe itself is slowly running down in terms of treadle energy, and so is the sun. Thus, for Darwinists to claim that living systems are excluded from the workings of the Law of Entropy because living systems are open systems does not make sense." —Lester J. McCann, Blowing the Whistle on Darwinism (1988), pp. 77-78.
"Entropy is a property which is defined for and true of each and every part of the universe. There is no evidence whatever than there is a region of the universe where the second law does not apply. Laws of science are universals and the denial of this fact is question-begging." —*J.P. Moreland, Universals, Qualities, and Quality Instances: A Defense of Realism (1985).

"Evolutionists . . [say that] the Earth, in particular, is an open system; and that in an open system strange things may happen to the entropy, and to everything else. . Some [evolutionists) say that there was a great increase in entropy in the Sun, or in outer space, or somewhere; so that a spontaneous decrease in entropy on the Earth [therefore occurred] and is not surprising. The idea seems to be that an increase in entropy in one place can atone, so to speak, for a decrease in another. It is rather as if one were to expect a small pot of water, put onto the fire, to freeze, provided a larger pot put beside it boil . . But, surely an increase in entropy in one place has to do with an (alleged) decrease in another only if there is some connection of cause and effect between them. And, needless to say, such a connection has not been demonstrated." —H. L Armstrong, "Evolutionistic Defense Against Thermodynamics Disproved," . in Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1980, p. 227.

"'The evolution of life is an anti-entropic process, running counter to the second law of thermodynamics with its degradation of energy and its tendency to uniformity:" —*Julian Huxley, Introduction, Teilhard de Chardin, Phenomenon of Man, (1959), p. 27.

Arnold Sommerfel, , "...the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot be negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not." Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, p.155

"As far as we know, all changes are in the direction of increasing entropy, of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of running down." —*Isaac Asimov, "Can Decreasing Entropy Exist in the Universe?" in Science Digest, May 1973, p. 78.

"No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we end no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles." —*Harold Glum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (1962), p. 119.

"Man has long been aware that his world has a tendency to fall apart. Tools wear out, fishing nets need repair, roofs leak, iron rusts, wood decays, loved ones sicken and die.. We instinctively resent the decay of orderly systems such as the living organism and work to restore such systems to their former or even higher level of organization." —*V.R. Potter, "Society and Science," in Science, November 20, 1964, p. 1018.

"There is a general natural tendency of all observed systems to go from order to disorder, reflecting dissipation of energy available for future transformation—the law of increasing entropy." —*R. B. Kindsay: "Physics—To What Extent is it Deterministic," in American Scientist, Vol. 156 (1973), p. 100.

"As far as we know, all changes are in the direction of increasing entropy, of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of running down." —*Isaac Asimov, "Can Decreasing Entropy Exist in the Universe?" in Science Digest, May 1973, p. 78.

Funny, whoever extracted this quote failed to record Asimov's actual answer to the question posed by his article title. But we have him on record elsewhere on this thread, don't we? Or try here:

You must remember that the laws of thermodynamics apply to closed systems only. If we consider an open system, it is only too simple to find examples of apparent decreases in entropy.
In a refrigerator, for instance, heat is constantly being pumped from the cold objects within to the warm atmosphere outside in apparent defiance of the second law. A warm object, placed within the refrigerator, cools down; therefore, the available energy (represented by the temperature difference between the air outside and the object within the refrigerator) increases.

From Thermodynamics by Isaac Asimov (a whole chapter extracted from one of his books).

How many of the quotes in your salad would prove similarly dishonest? You don't know, yourself. You cluelessly paste.

Another section addressed the term "closed."

In other words, if we include within our system all the activities that affect the system, then it turns out that the net change in entropy is always an increase. When we detect an entropy decreases it is invariably the case that we are studying part of a system and not an entire one.
In actual practice we can never be sure that we are dealing with a closed system. No matter how we insulate, there are always influences from outside-energy gains and energy losses from and to the outside. All processes on the earth are affected by solar energy, and even if we consider the earth and sun together as one large system, there are gravitational and radiational influences from other planets and even other stars. Indeed, we cannot be certain that we are dealing with a truly closed system unless we take for our system nothing less than the entire universe.

You said:

*Harold Glum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (1962), p. 119.

That's a typo in your uncredited source. It's Blum.

A Yahoo! on "Time's Arrow and Evolution".

Your source uses the correct spelling in most of its other quotes of Blum, various editions of the same book. And why various editions? Observe the wandering years:

*H.F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution, (1982), p. v., 16.
*Harold F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution, (1982), p. 14.
*Harold F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution, (1962), p. 15.
*Harold F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (1951), p. 87.

Not to mention your "Harold Glum," same book, back to 1962.

What's going on here?

What makes this problem worse in creationist literature is that many creationist writers do not actually read what they are quoting in the original but copy it from another writer, usually (but not necessarily) another creationist who himself might have copied it from yet another creationist. This is often revealed by multiple creationists having the same error in the quote or citation. Thus if a single creationist is dishonest, sloppy, or incompetent in his quotation the error becomes widespread.

From ThinkPlease's Quote-Mining Reference.

Why all those edition numbers? The author of the web page probably hasn't read even one edition of Blum's book. He just picked up a bunch of quotes already extracted by other ingenious idiots and slammed them together. He probably hasn't read Asimov or any of his mainstream ~~victims~~ sources either. And you, Sparky, are just parroting this clown, claiming his mangled "quote plagiarism" as your own.

Not to pile on, but I thought of a nice analogy to explain what's wrong with all those tendency citations.

Laws produce tendencies. The laws are inexorable; the tendencies are not.

There's an inexorable law called Newton's Law of Gravitation. Objects with mass are attracted to each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. There's another factor, the strength g of the force which was unknown to Newton himself but measured later by Cavendish. Anyway, it's the law and there are no exceptions.

(OK, there have only recently been some funny large-scale observations that there may be a repulsive force out there somewhere, perhaps operating at long distances. That doesn't affect my analogy.)

This inexorable law produces a tendency for objects on earth to fall or roll downhill whenever they are unsupported. But it doesn't mean an object can't go uphill. It just means that energy input is required.

The wind blows objects uphill all the time in reversal of this tendency. A really strong wind (a tornado) can blow big trucks or trailers from trailer parks "uphill," lifting them high and dropping them with a great release of energy which is unfortunate for anyone in or under the falling object. All of this is solar powered, undesigned, and counter to the interpretation of the Second Law urged by your quote-miners.

All that talk about tendencies in thermodynamics is the same thing in another arena. Temperatures tend to equalize, but expenditure of energy from some outside source can be destabilizing and create inequalities that make other things happen. Chaotic pheomena like weather and life, for instance.

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