In some creationist video seminars I've seen and in some recent posts here at Raw (A)Theology anti-evolutionists have either explicitly or by implication referenced the Holocaust as the result of Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Hiter's atheism. There are three major problems with this:
1. Darwin's theory did not cause nor even play a part in the Holocaust.
2. Hitler was not an atheist.
3. Using Hitler as an example of what you're arguing against is (almost always) a bad tactic.
The foundations of many of Hitler's beliefs can be found in the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who he would eventually meet. Chamberlain's book, "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" (1899) was the source of many of Hitler's ideas and beliefs, like that of an Aryan race which Chamberlain saw as being at the top of the supposed hierarchy of races. Chamberlain himself based much of his ideas on the writings of Arthur de Gobineau's "Inequality of the Human Races". Gobineu's book was published in 1855, four years before Darwin's "Origin of Species".
Hitler may have been aware of Darwin's Theory, but if so he never mentions it in his magnum opus Mein Kampf. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and volume 2 in 1926, four years after forming the Nazi party.
The term "Social Darwinism" is interestingly not in reference to a social theory created or held by Darwin himself, though that's the implication because his name is used. The phrase "survival of the fittest" pre-dates Darwin and was coined in relation to social and economic theory by English philosopher and economist Herbert Spencer in his book "Social Statics" in 1855. When "Origin of Species" was introduced in 1859 many social theorists mistook it for biological evidence of their social and economic survival of the fittest ideas. Before long these sociologists came up with the term "Social Darwinism", though to reiterate, Darwin had nought to do with it. This notion was unitentionally strengthened by Darwin when he introduced Spencer's term of "survival of the fittest" as an alternative phrase for "natural selection" in the 5th edition of The Origin of Species. He subsequently rejected the term. Darwin saw much evidence of empathy and altruism as evolved traits.
"Social Darwinism" was glommed onto by many political philosophers of the day to try to lend a modern scientific air to their age old racist and imperialist ideologies.
The biological Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the idea of so called "Social Darwinism."
Anti-Semitism in Germany and throughout Europe has a long history, mostly associated with Christian governments.
The Yellow Badge, the infamous Star of David patch the Jews were required to wear is widely believed to be the product of Nazi Germany. This is false. Governments requiring Jews to wear identifying clothing can be found as far back as 717 a.d.. In 1228 Spainish king James I decrees Jews must wear the Yellow Badge. The first mention of the Badge in Germany was is 1294.
The Rintfleisch-Pogrom (or Rintfleisch-Persecution) was the most egregious of a number of mass murders of Jews in Franconia (an historic region of Germany) in the year 1298. Spearheaded by "Lord Rintfleisch", depending on sources either a former knight or a butcher, he claimed to have received a "mandate from heaven" to avenge the sacrilege and exterminate the Jews. He led a mob that slaughtered the Jews of Röttingen on April 20th.
Anti-Jewish attitudes prevailed in much of the predominantly Christian society of Germany and Austria.
Hitler was raised a Catholic and is in fact still officially in good standing with the church. Thought never officially leaving the Catholic church, he did change to Protestantism.
Though possibly self revisionist propaganda, Hitler wrote that as a young man he believed anti-semitism was wrong. Despite it being a broadly acceptable common attitude in Europe at the time, he thought of it as faith-based discrimination, which he opposed. Upon moving to Vienna in 1913 he would question his belief and begin to think that beyond just religion, Jews were a different, inferior race.
"There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.
Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?"
-Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, vol. 1, chap. 2: "Years of study and suffering in Vienna"
Soon Hitler would come to greatly admire Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, Austria from 1897 to 1910 and founder of the Christian Social Party. Though considered by many historians to be a great administrator, Lueger was overtly and loudly anti-semitic and implemented many racist policies.
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on April 12th 1922
He would also be influenced by the teaching of Protestant reformer Martin Luther.
"Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world ... So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem ... We are at fault in not slaying them."
- "On the Jews and Their Lies" by Martin Luther (1543)
As Hitler's power over Germany increased he continued in his faith and in 1933 he established a German Reich Christian Church, uniting the Protestant churches and promoting national German Christianity.
"Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement of all Germans as such, as long as matters of inner purity or national deepening as well as German freedom are involved, since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established."
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf vol. 1)
Many people have mistakenly assumed Hitler was an atheist because the fact that he was actually a very religious man is willfully overlooked by many documentaries about him for fear of offending their predominantly Christian audience. This impression of him being indifferent or even antagonistic towards religion was magnified during the cold war when those speaking on our side were never able to mention Communism without also mentioning it's "godlessness" and official Soviet state position of atheism. Because Communist leaders were often lumped in with the Nazis in speeches by politicans during the cold war, it was natural for people to confuse their ideologies.
Point of fact: Hitler hated Communists. He believed that Marxist and Communist political forces within the German government were pivotal in Germany's decision to surrender in World War I. He despised the Communist party for having Jews in their upper ranks.
The horrors of the Holocaust were motivated by a culture of long standing Christian views on the Jewish people. As you can see, Hitler was very Christian. Speaking of seeing, they say a picture's worth a thousand words.
This buckle, part of the standard uniform for Nazi soldiers, bares not only the Nazi party emblem but also it's motto:
"Gott Mit Uns", or in english, "God With Us".
The Nazi oath of allegiance.
I have personally not read it, but this book has gotten good reviews.
Finally, as an argument tactic comparing or associating something with Hitler is sometimes called the Reductio ad Hitlerum argument. It's a logical fallacy the results from inverting the causality. To wit:
The wholesale slaughter of innocent people and anti-semitism are not evil because Hitler did them, but rather Hitler was evil because of his wholesale slaughter of innocent people and anti-semitism.
If you assert that something is a bad idea because it associated with Nazism then necessarily all things associated with Nazism become bad ideas. This would include wearing khakis, trying to improve the economy, promoting stable family life, encouragement to exercise and yes, even Christianty.
Hitler is such a loaded subject to which most people have such an immediate and visceral reaction, that to use him even when he is a valid example of what you're arguing against (ex. to show where racism and intolerrance can lead) is to risk demagoguery.
-Chris
post script - The Stalin Thing.
Russian tyrant Josef Stalin was in many ways as bad if not worse than Hitler. He certainly killed as many of his own citizens as there were victims of the Holocaust. In fact by some counts he may have killed twice as many. Oh and Stalin? He was an atheist.
Richard Dawkins has said, "Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn't, but even if he was… the bottom line is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism."
Stalin was pursuing Marxism/Leninism in it's most extreme form. He was acting in the name of Communism not atheism.
"Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to reform capitalism from within, such as Fabianism and non-revolutionary forms of democratic socialism, are doomed to fail. The goal of a Leninist party is to orchestrate the overthrow the existing government by force and seize power on behalf of the proletariat, and then implement a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. The party must then use the powers of government to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism."
-from Wikipedia
That last sentence may have caught your eye. Marx posited that religion is used by the many to lessen the pains of their oppession as they are exploited for the profit of few. This is best illustrated the famous quote of Marx's, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (The more ubiquitous misquote, "religion is the opiate of the masses", doesn't capture the subtlety of Marx's meaning.) Marx, and by extention Lenin, believed religion to one the "false consciousnesses". This meaning something people believed to be a true motivating force in there lives (ex. the desire to please God or wanting expensive luxury goods) but which is in fact the very thing keeping them oppressed. Lenin went further and stated the religion was foisted on the working class by the powers that be to keep them content with their lot in life. It was Marxist/Leninist ideals that led Stalin to "free" people from religion by force. They were still attached to their false contiousness so they were upset when he burned down the churches, but in time they'll realize and cherish their new found freedom.
Here's the thing; Stalin was operating under Marxist political ideas, not atheism. Atheism has no ideals. Atheism has no official doctrine. Atheism has no political view point. Atheism is simply not-believing in God.
It was Marxist and Leninist ideology that was behind Stalin's actions. A political philosophy not a religion. As Stalin's megalomania grew I believe he cared less about whether there was a God or not and more that many of his subjects believed in God. For him this was a problem. You see, this meant God was a rival for the loyalty of the people. He would not have people believing anything was greater than him. Not only that but the church was taking in money and hoarding valuable tresure (sacred artifacts) that rightfully belong to the Communist party. After he had destroyed his mortal political opposition, God was next on the check list.
You may be thinking in paraphrase of Dawkins, "Individual Christians may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of Christianity." But we know this is not true. The Crusades and Hitler's Holocaust were directly inspired by things written in the Bible. You may feel they were based on misinterpretations of the Bible but none the less, they were actions based on a belief in God and in doing his will.
I don't mean this to indict all of Christianity, I know it has done good in society as well. My point is simply that I don't know of an instance where not believing in religion has prompted someone to start a war. People fight for beliefs, not because of lack of beliefs. Lenin and Stalin were fighting for Marxist Communism, not because they where atheists.
My favorite quote for the day:
"I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world."
-from "The Dignity of Difference" by Rabbi Jonathan Stacks (paraphrased)
6 comments:
You are 100% right in calling us out on this and schooling us about Hitler. Thank you.
"If you assert that something is a bad idea because it associated with Nazism then necessarily all things associated with Nazism become bad ideas. This would include wearing khakis, trying to improve the economy, promoting stable family life, encouragement to exercise and yes, even Christianty."
Brilliant.
I have a thousand reactions to this post. Which is funny because I've been avoiding this blog like the plague. I'm not really up for arguing. I haven't read the argument that spurred on your response, but I think under any circumstance, for any reason whatsoever, to argue that Darwinism/evolution is bad because of Hitler makes no sense. But like I said, I haven't read it, so I'm not going to say anything else about it. Just my initial reaction to the idea of that. There is absolutely no connection. I mean, even if there were a connection between Hitler and Darwin, let's say that Hitler founded the entire Third Reich on Darwininan principles, whatever the argument may be, then thus it follows that anytime something or someone takes one thing (say a book) and then acts badly, thus the book is bad. But is it inherently bad or is the person bad for taking it the wrong way?
Which is I guess what I thought was so strange about your response. I know many atheists and agnostics who don't like Christianity because look at the way Christians act. I know a lot of Christians struggle with this. I would be a liar if I said I had not struggled with the disconnect between faith and action (in fact, this is just the thing that makes me lose sleep at night and i stopped writing for a year because of it). Between ideal and real. But just because someone kills someone in the name of the idea doesn't mean necessarily that the idea is bad. Sometimes it is-the idea that Jews are lesser than White people and should be exterminated: bad idea. But I don't think that having faith in something is bad if it "causes" you to do wrong. What if you are just not walking your own talk? More often than not, this is the case.
Like here's an example. In the early nineteenth century, in Russia there was a pogrom-I mean, there were many pogroms but this one was especially terrible. It was in Kishinev. It was Easter Sunday and a bunch of Christians got drunk and ate a lot of food in celebration, and hyped up on the "excitement" and "fervor" of seeing their Lord crucified in church, went out and killed a bunch of Jews. Pretty foul. Especially on Easter. But what no scholars ever realize or talk about is the fact that those Christians were eating and drinking because they had just broken the Lenten fast. And the whole point of fasting is to cleanse yourself of your passions and your sinful desires and to disconnect you from material desires, such as food. Also, because the church was teaching them that to eat and drink too much makes it difficult to have self-control. In their wickedness which is so contrary to Christian teachings, they were actually proving why the Christian ideas and teachings are so important. It was as if to say "this is exactly why you should read your Bible and the part about Christ saying to love everyone as yourself" and that one cool part about "Thou shalt not kill" and to take seriously something they had been doing for forty days.
In this light, it is difficult for me to reconcile the criticisms many people have against having faith. Effectually, I think it's a flawed argument and kind of a cop out. The truth is no matter what the idea there will always be a disconnect between the ideal and the real. And I think throwing out the ideal just because people screwed it up is absolutist and a far cry from the peace of moderation. There are a lot of people who do good in the world and who actually live the life that everyone wants to but you don't notice them because they're so busy loving everyone that they don't trumpet themselves. You only hear about the screw-ups, because like most idiots, they talk too much.
The problem, Chris, isn't religion. It's freedom.
And I'm glad you pointed out the common misquote of Marx. You have no idea how much it gets on my nerves when people throw that quote around. completely out of context. I must admit however that I do get really irritated at anyone who suggests that the import of religion is solely its social function. As a materialist argument compared with the evidence of history...well the evidence just isn't there. I don't think having emotional stability from praying to your gods and its role in unification of cultures is enough to balance out the havoc that "religion" has caused. Like I said, I don't think "religion" itself has caused the problem. I just think that if you really hold to the idea that religion is bad because it causes religious people to kill in the name of their religion, and it causes absolutism, well then I just don't think that maybe religion is "good for society". Call me crazy but that just doesn't make any sense.
At any rate, I enjoyed your post immensly. Except for the part about you using wikipedia as a source. But I digress. I mean, I was too lazy to go and get my pogrom book that's literally three feet from me right now so I guess I have no room to criticize.
As a side note: Hitler was involved with (though possibly never officially a member of) the Thule society, who helped him develop his rhetorical skills, and instructed its members to pose as Christians to get followers.
That Nazi ideals carried significant anti-Christian dogma is no secret, and neither Hitler nor the Nazi's ought to be categorized as "Christian" in the actual sense.
According to Wikipedia, "Hitler and other Nazi leaders clearly made use of both Christian and Pagan symbolism and emotion in propagandizing the Germanic public, and it remains a matter of controversy whether Hitler believed himself a Christian, a heathen, or something else entirely. Some historians have typified Hitler as a neo-Pagan, whereas other writers have referred to Nazism's occasional outward use of Christian doctrine, regardless of what its inner-party mythology may have been...
The level of ties between Nazism and the Protestant churches has been a contentious issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a vast number of religious bodies many of whom had little relation to each other. Added to that, Protestantism tends to allow more variation among individual congregations than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which makes statements about "official positions" of denominations problematic. Still, many Protestant organizations or denominations were solidly opposed to Nazism and many Protestants died fighting it."
The Bible says that people like Hitler are liars:
"If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also." (1 John 4:20-21)
Genesis teaches that all men are made in God's image, and authors throughout the Bible continually cite this as a reason for not taking human life, for not cursing humans, and for not even hating humans in your heart. It is precisely because even human is an image of God that it is literally impossible to say that you love God, and yet hate humans.
Christianity grounds human rights for every single human, not genocide.
Even if Hitler sincerely thought he was a Christian, he demonstrated no clear understanding of God's word, perverted truth, and showed himself a liar.
But your point remains: just because Hitler is associated with X, doesn't make X wrong.
For several other accounts of Hitler and the Thule society see:
http://www.answers.com/topic/thule-society
http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-2/adolf-hitler.htm
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Thule_Society
"I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world."
This is not an accusation (or an endorsement of the following URL), but I just wanted to pass along an interesting blog post I came across:
http://www.constitutionallycorrect.com/archive/2006/10/17/170.aspx
*every
"Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?"
(Adolf Hitler, cited in Joachim Fest's 1975 "Hitler")
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