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The red part is a hypocrisy on your behalf.
On one hand you say he did what did regardless of his faith but you quickly go on the back foot when we say he was an Atheist.
Why don't you say he would done what he did even if he was an atheist?
It's a possibility but then he would never have thought that god was on his side so probably would have have made a difference in how he proceeded
The red part is a hypocrisy on your behalf.
On one hand you say he did what did regardless of his faith but you quickly go on the back foot when we say he was an Atheist.
Why don't you say he would done what he did even if he was an atheist?
Perhaps he would. After all, Stalin was an atheist - I won't claim he wasn't - and look what he did. The point about Hitler is not that we cannot face his being an atheist, but that examination of his views shows that he wasn't. He believed in a guiding divine force - many including Nelson and Napoleon have believed that divine force was guiding them.
Without that, I am not sure that Hitler would have acted with the ruthless determination that he did. so maybe he would have thought and behaved the same as an atheist, but maybe it mneed that god -belief to really allow he to become what he became.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TroutDude
Hitler was the ultimate Narcissist.
He believed in nothing but himself.
He was insane.
Some have said that religious faith is a kind of insanity. That is too easy an out. I don't believe that Hitler was insane. I believe that he reasoned things out and acted as he did on those reasons. I also think that he was irrational for the same reason that Stalin was irrational: he preferred the dogma of Aryan supremacy, the need to rid Western society of Jews and his conviction that he was guided by 'Providence' as Shirina put it in her excellent post, meant that he was reluctant to listen to anyone else , he expected unquestioning obedience and was utterly convinced that what he did was right.
It takes a supreme self -belief, either is a god or a more loose 'destiny' (as Napoleon called it) to do that. I think that Stalin also had that almost religious belief in the destiny of Marxist Dogma (which is why I say that for him Marxism was almost a religion rather than an atheism) and atheism, placing logical reasoning and validated evidence above faith and dogma is nothing to do with either Hitler or Stalin.
P.s It occurs to me that a result of faith in the rightness of this supreme destiny meant that lying, again and again, was perfectly justified in order to achieve the desired end. Factual truth was irrelevant. It also reminds me of debates that we have had about lies being ok if it makes things better and atheists arguing that the truth is important. It is better whenever possible, to tell the truth and perhaps this is why, and it indicates how much more like a religion Nazi and Stalinist dogma was.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-21-2014 at 06:36 AM..
The red part is a hypocrisy on your behalf.
On one hand you say he did what did regardless of his faith but you quickly go on the back foot when we say he was an Atheist.
Why don't you say he would done what he did even if he was an atheist?
It's not a hypocrisy. When I said religious affiliation I didn't mean he wouldn't have done what he did if he were an atheist. I meant he would have done what he did regardless of whether he was a theist or atheist. Being religious or atheist wouldn't have made him more or less likely to commit those atrocities.
I think the most important aspect in assessing Hitler and Stalin is not determining what they were but rather if their religious beliefs are the cause for their behaviors.
After all, Hitler was also a very big champion of animal rights. Believe it or not, part of SS indoctrination was a kindness to animals. As one Berlin resident wrote in a private letter, an SS officer was walking down the street and saw a boy throwing rocks at a cat. The officer zoomed over to that boy, grabbed him by the ear, and said, "How would you like it if I threw rocks at you!"
So ... does that mean Hitler's love of animals caused his behavior? Perhaps he thought Stalin was cruel to animals and thus dubbed him his mortal enemy. I guess that also means the SPCA and the Humane Society are all Neo-Nazi organizations.
Well, of course that idea is nonsense - just like blaming religion or atheism for the behavior of the worst men in history. Even Hitler's hatred of Jews was not religiously motivated - some have argued that, because the doctor who treated his mother for breast cancer was Jewish, Hitler blamed the entire Jewish ethnicity for his mother's death. (For those who don't know, Hitler had an unhealthy attraction for his mother, the quintessential "mama's boy.")
The admissions board for the Vienna Academy of Art could be just as much to blame for refusing to admit Hitler - twice. You have to wonder, once WWII was underway, how the members of that admissions board must've felt. I bet the words "if only ..." echoed in their heads for the rest of their lives.
(And some say that members of the board were Jewish, further enraging Hitler against the Jews).
One thing is for sure - it had nothing to do with religion. It wasn't because Hitler was a theist or because the Jews were Jewish. Much of it was just personal hatred over petty injustices, real or imagined. Hitler's psychological make-up is fairly complicated, but by and large, this is what it ultimately comes down to.
But others can be most informative. I have noted that there is far less tendency for Theists to pull oput the 'hitler was an atheist' jivbe. The message is getting through - he wasn't. He was not your regular Christian of course, - he was the boss, not any church, but he believed not only in a providence that was Biblegod with a shave, but I think Jesus, too. But it was always on his own terms.
The Jew thing..It's debatable. Anti semitism popped up in Germany in the late 19th c with some bearded fanatic in Gustav Mahler speccies ranting about how they were some kind of social bindweed and this spread where up to them Jews had been pretty much equal participants in German and Austrian life. But I know in Mahler's time he couldn't get a job conducting until he had converted. Anti semitism had become widespread in Austria even before the 1st world war.
Jews of course, fought for Germany and Austria in WWI just as Asians fought in WWII on the British side - but that didn't prevent prejudice in the homeland (1) and I suspect Hitler, reading some dodgy books on Aryan theory and anti semitism in Weimar times became convinced that it was Jews who had been to blame for Germany's defeat. (He already Knew that the Communists were to blame - it is too often forgotten that his hatred for communism was as bitter as his antisemitism; he was determined to eradicate both).
(1) "They can fight alongside us, but they needn't expect to have a drink alongside us!"
Hitler believed in a Supreme Being and he wasn't any crazier than many of today's evangelists who twist beliefs in an imaginary being to suit themselves. There have been many religious people through history that were evil. They have used their beliefs in a God as an excuse to kill others who had different beliefs. It's still happening today. Sane people don't hear voices talking only to them.
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