Hitler, Evolution, and Christianity

Well, the USA is The Imperial Power in the world today. I'd call that achieving our place in the sun. Empire with all the perks is addicting but like all addictions it's very expensive and it won't last. All empires have exhausted themselves, most recently it was the British. It will happen with us. That is not such a bad thing really, but it does mean living more soberly with out the power rush and some people will be bitter about that.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 06-07-2005 07:38 PM

Jar, I ran across something in my reading that would support your idea that Hitler was a genuine Christian (by "genuine" I mean someone who believes that Jesus was the Son of God).It's so odd (to me), that I tend to accept it. It sounds like something Hitler would believe:This comes from an interview with somebody named Erich Kempka, who knew Hitler (I haven't pinned down exactly who Kempka was yet):These are not Kempka's words but the author's: "Hitler did not consider Jesus a Jew but a Mischling (a half Jew who did not adhere to the Jewish religion and therefore was free of the Jewish virus) on the grounds that, with immaculate conception, he only had two Jewish grandparents" (233).If he believed in the immaculate conception, then he had to believe that Jesus was divine.But one runs across some odd comments, like this: "Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews . . . The work that Christ started but could not finish, I--Adolf Hitler--will conclude" (Hitler's words,from a speech Dec. 18, 1926, qtd. in Toland 233).Christ did not finish his work? It gives one the impression that Hitler's view of the work of Christ was rather unorthodox, to say the least.Work cited: Toland, John. "Adolf HItler." Vol. 1., Doubleday, 1954.

"Immaculate conception" refers to the virgin Mary being born without sin. I fail to see what that has to do with Jesus' parentage.I presume that your source means "virgin birth" (and I wonder about the reliability of a source who doesn't know the difference). If Joseph wasn't Jesus' father, then Mary's parents would have been the only Jewish grandparents.It is possible that Jesus rationalized away Jesus' Jewishness, as you suggest, but it doesn't quite ring true. Jesus' grandparents were Jewish. Having Jewish grandparents - or great-grandparents, for that matter - would certainly make you Jewish in Hitler's eyes.Hitler's reference to Jesus "fighting" the Jews might refer to Jesus preaching against the scribes and Pharisees, driving the moneychangers from the temple, etc. It's a bit of a stretch to extend that to Hitler's activities against the Jews.If that's what Hitler was thinking, it's just another indication that he wasn't thinking clearly.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Good point. And according to the paraphrase of Hitler's speech, your idea about the moneychangers is right on. Here is this author's paraphrase of the speech (I don't have the actual speech): "He was not the apostle of peace. His life's purpose and life's teaching was the battle against the power of capitalism, and for this he was crucified on the cross by his arch-enemy, the Jews" (233).I forgot about the difference between vigin birth and immaculate conception. But if the interview with Kempka is reliable, then that slip doesn't matter.

I've been looking through Hitler's second book, the one that remained unpublished for so many years. It's got plenty of pseudo-Darwinian stuff. I want to study it more closely, but here's a couple of examples: He's blending his idea about "living space" in with the "survival of the fittest." "Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf,"
trans. Krista Smith, Enigma Books, 2003.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-08-2005 07:41 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-08-2005 07:43 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-08-2005 07:44 AM

Kempka was Hitler's Chauffeur. He split time with someone else between 1930 and 1936, from then to Hitler's death he was the sole driver. The last service he gave the Fuehrer was supplying the gasoline used to burn Adolf and Eva's corpses and watching over the fire.So he certainly knew Hitler well. How reliable he is... I have no idea.Chris

After some study, I submit the following summary of Hitler's world view:Life on earth is set up in such a way that each individual and each group of individuals must struggle against each other in order to survive. In the evolution of humanity, distinct races have formed in different parts of the globe. The banding together of individuals of the same race into tribes helps that tribe to survive.What matters is the inner strength of a people, not its material wealth. The more materialistic a people are, the worse they are.
The tribe with the best quality of human beings will, through natural selection, dominate, enslave, or destroy the lesser tribes. It is natural for the superior tribe to do this, and being natural, it is also morally correct.The way a tribe survives is to have living space, land on which to populate and grow food. So the struggle among tribes is always the struggle for more land. Hence, war between tribes is inevitable.A successful tribe will increase its population to the point that more land is necessary. Any attempt to limit the growth of population artifically is unnatural and detrimental to that race, for a tribe will suffer if its numbers decrease. The superior tribe is made up of the Aryan race, who are the makers of high culture.There is another tribe, the Jews, which is unlike any other tribe in that it has no land of its own. The Jews, though a unified tribe, are scattered into various other tribes, and therefore are by their very nature parasitic. The Jews have various strategies for survival, but one of their main strategies is the bastardization of other tribes while keeping their own tribe pure. They do this through the support of internationalist causes, chiefly Marxism and the idea of the "equality of man." The Jews are not a religious tribe. They are a racial tribe.A superior tribe must never mix its blood with an inferior tribe, since the inevitable result will be a weakened race.There is no such thing as "conquering nature." This is a perverse Jewish idea. One must live according to nature. This is what God wants us to do.To live according to nature is to breed only with one's own people, one's own race. This is seen in the animal world, where each species has its own gene pool.What I conclude from this:1. There is a strain of pseudo-Darwinism running through this "world view." I am not sure where Christianity fits in.
2. This tells us that scientific ideas, misunderstood or willfully misused, can be dangerous. They are especially dangerous because scientific ideas, being scientific, have prestige. Therein lies the danger.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-09-2005 10:29 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-09-2005 10:35 PM

Can you substitute some other basic subject for 'scientific ideas'? How about religious beliefs or political ideology or messianic vision?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Of course. But the influence of such ideas depends on their prestige.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the first half of the 20th century, science was king. Its spectacular accomplishments gave it such prestige that everyone was thinking in scientific, or rather pseudo-scientific, terms. This includes Nazism but also communism. Probably the area in which it was most impressive to the masses of people was medicine, where for the first time one could actually cure a disease. Medical doctors were put on a pedestal.And then what happened? Science got misused. Ideas from science entered into fields that had nothing to do with the original scientific idea--psychology, for example. It got mixed up with politics.As a result of this misuse, there was a backlash.Now medical doctors are sued right and left. They have almost gained the reputation of lawyers (not quite).There is also, of course, the effect on the imagination of the mushroom cloud.The backlash led to fundamentalism--and creationism.

I'm still interested in the dichotomy between what Hitler thought - i.e. what he wrote in his books - and what he said in his public speeches. From what has been quoted here so far, it seems that Hitler used Christianity more than science when appealing to the masses.I would suggest that in the 1920s and 1930s, Christianity was still king, not science. That is why Hitler appealed to Christianlty, not science, when speaking in public. There was more political weight in Christianity.I would probably agree that today's fundamentalism is partially caused by a backlash to the "science-is-king" mentality. But I don't see how that relates to Hitler.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Good point.I'm interested in that question myself but don't have enough info. yet to come to any conclusion.The above remarks I made about the 20th century were very speculative, obviously.

MangyTiger:
In the specific case of the Jews I think they also suffered from being identified as 'the murderers of Christ' - which always seemed odd to me as if they hadn't got the Romans to crucify Jesus there wouldn't be any ChristianityExactly!!! Christ being crucified was a fulfillment of prophesy. If he had not been crucified AND then rose from the dead, christianity most assuredly would not exist.But getting back more on topic to this thread: Hitler was schrewd and used whatever means necessary to rise to power, including capitalizing on human beings' fallicies such as hate for "others" and selfishness.There were so many variables that fell into place during his rise to power: poverty, low national esteem, week minds, etc. He played upon all of these as well as anti-semitism and survival of the fittest. The former being an incorrect interpretation and application of biblical teaching (similar to the curse of ham used for racist purposes against blacks) and the other, though said to be a misapplication of science in an unscientific area by some on this thread, I believe, a logical consequence and application of evolutionary findings and understanding.

There was nothing logical about Hitler's pseudo-Darwinian notions.He spoke of "races" as though they were species, and we all know what the result was of that kind of thinking.By the way, since I've been reading this Nazi stuff, a question has entered my mind that maybe somebody out there can answer:From a scientific point of view, what is the status of this categorization of humans according to race?

It's totally bogus. There's no genetic basis for race; no reliable genetic markers that can distinguish race.What there is are a set of a few traits, geographically distributed, that are culturally associated with different ethnicities. Race has about the same biological basis as your astrological sign.