Two Questions for Atheists

[forkup]

I think I can answer for rightwinger. Why do you think you need to disagree with certain moral teachings if you disagree with a book? I think Aesop's fables have some decent morals, it doesn't mean I think animals can talk.

He said all religions suck. I guess he hates the teachings of Christ too. After all, Christianity is a religion, right?

If you aren't prepared to answer my question why should I answer you? "Why do you think you need to disagree with certain moral teachings if you disagree with a book?", simple enough question.

 

[K9Buck]

Well, that would be SOP for you.... just as in other threads, when you point out "the number killed by atheists"... etc etc

I only go that route when atheists begin pontificating on how many people died at the hands of Christians. I'm simply trying to remind them that many non-Christians have also done horrible things. Does it bother you?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Well, that would be SOP for you.... just as in other threads, when you point out "the number killed by atheists"... etc etc

I only go that route when atheists begin pontificating on how many people died at the hands of Christians. I'm simply trying to remind them that many non-Christians have also done horrible things. Does it bother you?

Of course not, people who say stupid things don't bother me, they just make themselves seem stupid.

 

[K9Buck]

Which you guessed out of convenience, because arguing against someone who doesn't agree with "love my neighbor" is low hanging fruit.

I made no guess. He made the statement.

 

[K9Buck]

If you aren't prepared to answer my question why should I answer you? "Why do you think you need to disagree with certain moral teachings if you disagree with a book?", simple enough question.

You're rhetoric meter needs an adjustment. I don't believe such a thing. He made a rhetorical statement and I gave a rhetorical response.

 

[Meriweather]

And who decides the "correct" conclusion? The Christian army with the most soldiers?

I believe it should be each person who decides for him/herself. However, through research and investigation--not through reading an account and jumping to conclusion. Let's take the story of Noah's Ark. Investigate what science tells us. Research the Hebrew language. Did it use the word for entire planet when it said the earth was covered with water, or did it use the word synonymous with ground? (During some winters I can say the earth (outside my backdoor) is covered with water without meaning the entire planet. Study other Biblical references, especially the two which state that in the beginning when land and water separated, the planet was never entirely covered with water again. Start here, and discover other fun avenues along the way which deserve a look as well.

All I am asking is that people not read a Biblical account, misinterpret it based on the English language and modern thought--and form their conclusions based on their own misinterpretations.

 

[K9Buck]

Of course not, people who say stupid things don't bother me, they just make themselves seem stupid.

Atheists constantly engage in that behavior. You've certainly never spoken up.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Which you guessed out of convenience, because arguing against someone who doesn't agree with "love my neighbor" is low hanging fruit.

I made no guess. He made the statement.

Your interpretation was the guess, a convenient guess for the reasons stated. He can still think some of Christ's teachings were decent and also think Christianity sucks in general. He also might think some of Christ's teachings suck. Like this one:

"And that servant, who knew his lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes "

Pretty evil stuff, dude.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Of course not, people who say stupid things don't bother me, they just make themselves seem stupid.

Atheists constantly engage in that behavior. You've certainly never spoken up.

Because they weren't wrong. they were pointing out Christians killing to honor Christianity. Not, "killers who happened to be christian". That's was your spin, in order to have something easier to argue against.

 

[Meriweather]

Can I ask how you believe studying the bible for years makes you capable of providing better answers? The bible itself is an interpretation. People not God decided what to include in it. The bible as you know it, is a translation of a translation of a translation of several books and as the saying goes," stuff gets lost in translation" Furthermore people who study the bible for years do nothing more then interpret it themselves. Studying the bible is nothing more then learning justifications to dismiss certain aspects of a book that in itself has been edited and translated several times too make it fit in your worldview.

This is why it is necessary to study books and sciences outside the Bible as well. Also, very important, is discovering who was the author, and who was his original audience. What was his original intent and message. This takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Unfortunately today, most don't have the time and bypass these steps.

 

[K9Buck]

Buck is now snipping posts to change their meaning

White flag of surrender

Where did I do that?

Hey Mark! Where did you go? Back up your mouth, chump.

 

[K9Buck]

Your interpretation was the guess, a convenient guess for the reasons stated. He can still think some of Christ's teachings were decent and also think Christianity sucks in general. He also might think some of Christ's teachings suck. Like this one:

"And that servant, who knew his lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes "

Pretty evil stuff, dude.

What "interpretation" is there to make to the statement "all religions suck"? LOL. Have a good night. I'll check back later.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

And who decides the "correct" conclusion? The Christian army with the most soldiers?

I believe it should be each person who decides for him/herself. However, through research and investigation--not through reading an account and jumping to conclusion. Let's take the story of Noah's Ark. Investigate what science tells us. Research the Hebrew language. Did it use the word for entire planet when it said the earth was covered with water, or did it use the word synonymous with ground? (During some winters I can say the earth (outside my backdoor) is covered with water without meaning the entire planet. Study other Biblical references, especially the two which state that in the beginning when land and water separated, the planet was never entirely covered with water again. Start here, and discover other fun avenues along the way which deserve a look as well.

All I am asking is that people not read a Biblical account, misinterpret it based on the English language and modern thought--and form their conclusions based on their own misinterpretations.

Wouldn't the author of "the word of god"....be god?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Your interpretation was the guess, a convenient guess for the reasons stated. He can still think some of Christ's teachings were decent and also think Christianity sucks in general. He also might think some of Christ's teachings suck. Like this one:

"And that servant, who knew his lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes "

Pretty evil stuff, dude.

What "interpretation" is there to make to the statement "all religions suck"? LOL. Have a good night. I'll check back later.

I just answered your question in the post you quoted, there.

 

[forkup]

If you aren't prepared to answer my question why should I answer you? "Why do you think you need to disagree with certain moral teachings if you disagree with a book?", simple enough question.

You're rhetoric meter needs an adjustment. I don't believe such a thing. He made a rhetorical statement and I gave a rhetorical response.

Ok then. Then my answer would be, I don't have the foggiest. I'm not rightwinger so I wouldn't know his stance on Christianity.
-I can speak for myself though and tell you that I think religion sucks. I don't hate any of them but I do believe the world would be better off without them. Your Christian belief is a good example why. I pretty sure I had a run in with you a few days ago, talking about gays. I was making the point that there was a lot of stuff in the NT that spoke to not judging people, yet your position was that in the case of gays the OT took precedent. If I'm wrong about this conversation or your position you can correct me. This to me is why religion sucks. It can be interpreted to say whatever you want it too say but typically it's used as a justification to impose your moral views onto others. Morals should flow from the principles of humanism. Not books that were written in times when people got stoned to death for adultery.

 

[forkup]

Can I ask how you believe studying the bible for years makes you capable of providing better answers? The bible itself is an interpretation. People not God decided what to include in it. The bible as you know it, is a translation of a translation of a translation of several books and as the saying goes," stuff gets lost in translation" Furthermore people who study the bible for years do nothing more then interpret it themselves. Studying the bible is nothing more then learning justifications to dismiss certain aspects of a book that in itself has been edited and translated several times too make it fit in your worldview.

This is why it is necessary to study books and sciences outside the Bible as well. Also, very important, is discovering who was the author, and who was his original audience. What was his original intent and message. This takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Unfortunately today, most don't have the time and bypass these steps.

I'm sorry to tell you but you gave a good example. Noah's ark wasn't a biblical account at all. It's the epic of Gilgamesh, who was Sumerian. Sumerians were polytheistic. How can you get answers from a myth that was written by people who didn't even believe in a monotheistic God? You don't get meaning from the bible. You superimpose your own views and make the bible mean what you want.What similarities are there between the Gilgamesh flood account and the biblical flood account?

 

[JoeB131]

LOL. There you go again. Here, try this.

Buddy, you guys don't have evidence of your magic sky man.

None whatsoever.

Deal with it.

 

[JoeB131]

In a mother’s womb, two twins were chatting.

“Do you believe in life after delivery?”

More religious wank fantasies...

 

[Weatherman2020]

... that devout Christian Hitler, who killed Jews for Jesus...

LOL that Hitler was a "devout" Christian. Thanks for the laugh!

“We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” – Adolf Hitler

Hitler was religious

Religious views of Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia

That why he ordered all churches closed and pastors to be executed?

LIAR!
In the 1920s, Hitlers German Workers Party (pre Nazi term) adopted a Programme with twenty-five points (the Nazi version of a constitution). In point twenty-four, their intent clearly demonstrates, from the very beginning, their stand in favor of a positive Christianity: We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession...

Dude, cut and paste from your hate websites all day long. German government and the church had no separation. Hindenburg's picture was in every church right next to a picture of Jesus. That was fine when it was Hindenburg, but then Hitler took power. The German people now considered Hitler to be like Jesus. You are an idiot who requires lies to push a stupid position discounted by everyone with an ounce of knowledge of history.

No matter how you spin it, Hitler and the Nazi party were never Christians, they closed the churches in Germany and occupied lands, and murdered over 6,000 clergy.

My turn to cut and paste:

Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of the church to the state.[26] Although the broader membership of the Nazi Party after 1933 came to include many Catholics and Protestants, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, and Heinrich Himmler saw the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.[27]

Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, saw an "insoluble opposition" between the Christian and Nazi world views.[27] The Fuehrer angered the churches by appointing Alfred Rosenberg, an outspoken pagan, as official Nazi ideologist in 1934.[28] Heinrich Himmler saw the main task of his Schutzstaffel (SS) organization to be that of acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a "Germanic" way of living.[29] Hitler's chosen deputy, Martin Bormann, advised Nazi officials in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."[28]

Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the conflict with the Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer,'" according to Kershaw.[27] In public speeches, he portrayed himself and the Nazi movement as faithful Christians.[30][31] In 1928 Hitler said in a speech: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity ... in fact our movement is Christian."[32]

As a measure in the struggle for power against the influence of the churches (Kirchenkampf) the Nazis tried to establish a "third denomination" called positive Christianity, aiming to replace the established churches to reduce their influence. Historians have suspected this was an attempt to start a cult worshipping Hitler as the new Messiah. However, in a diary entry of 28 December 1939, Joseph Goebbels wrote that "the Fuhrer passionately rejects any thought of founding a religion. He has no intention of becoming a priest. His sole exclusive role is that of a politician."[33] In Hitler's political relations dealing with religion he readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes."[34]

Christianity remained the dominant religion in Germany through the Nazi period, and its influence over Germans displeased the Nazi hierarchy. Evans wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run National Socialism and religion would not be able to coexist, and stressed repeatedly that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science. According to Evans: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition." Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope, and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs,' abortions in black cassocks.'"[35]

During Hitler's dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed.[36] The same measures were taken in the occupied territories; in French Lorraine, the Nazis forbade religious youth movements, parish meetings, and scout meetings. Church assets were taken, Church schools were closed, and teachers in religious institutes were dismissed. The Episcopal seminary was closed, and the SA and SS desecrated churches and religious statues and pictures. Three hundred clergy were expelled from the Lorraine region; monks and nuns were deported or forced to renounce their vows.[37]

The Nazi leadership made use of indigenous Germanic pagan imagery and ancient Roman symbolism in their propaganda. However, the use of pagan symbolism worried some Protestants.[39] Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler,[36] subscribed either to a mixture of pseudoscientific theories, and also Social Darwinism[40] as well as mysticism and occultism, which was especially strong in the SS.[41][42] Central to both groupings was the belief in Germanic (white Nordic) racial superiority. The existence of a Ministry of Church Affairs, instituted in 1935 and headed by Hanns Kerrl, was hardly recognized by ideologists such as Alfred Rosenberg or by other political decision-makers.[43] A relative moderate, Kerrl accused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the Nazi doctrine of "Race, blood and soil" and gave the following explanation of the Nazi conception of "Positive Christianity," telling a group of submissive clergy in 1937:[38]

Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."

— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:

• The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
• The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
• The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
• The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
• On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.[44]

When exploring the Nazi party's public speeches and writings, Steigmann-Gall notes that they can provide insight into their "untempered" ideas.[45]

We are no theologians, no representatives of the teaching profession in this sense, put forth no theology. But we claim one thing for ourselves: that we place the great fundamental idea of Christianity in the center of our ideology [Ideenwelt]- the hero and sufferer Christ himself stands in the center."[46]

— Hans Schemm, Nazi Gauleiter
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained the "temporary" dictatorial powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise.[47][48] Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches.[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.

William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists."[59] During a speech on October 27, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany. FDR declared:

Your Government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.[60]

But according to Steigman-Gall, some Nazis, like Dietrich Eckart (d.1923) and Walter Buch, saw Nazism and Christianity as part of the same movement.[61] Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.[62]

Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'".[62] According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."[63]

In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".[64][65] Bullock wrote:[64]

In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.

— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal.[66] According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war.[67] In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites.[68] Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.[69]

Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists, but that Hitler courted and benefited from fear among German Christians of militant Communist atheism.[70] (Other historians have characterised Hitler's mature religious position as a form of deism.) "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the National Socialists becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions".[70] Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer’s complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: Hitler is an atheist.[71]

According to Kershaw, following the Nazi Takeover, Race policy and the 'Church Struggle' were among the most important ideological spheres: "In both areas, the party had no difficulty in mobilizing its activists, whose radicalism in turn forced the government into legislative action. In fact the party leadership often found itself compelled to respond to pressures from below, stirred up by the Gauleiter playing their own game, or emanating sometimes from radical activists at a local level".[72] As time went on, anti-clericalism and anti-church sentiment among grass roots party activists "simply couldn't be eradicated", wrote Kershaw and they could "draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the churches for their encouragement.[73] Unlike some other Fascist movements of the era, Nazi ideology was essentially hostile to Christianity and clashed with Christian beliefs in many respects.[74] The National Socialists seized hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria and removed clergymen and laymen alike.[75] In other cases, religious journals and newspapers were censored or banned. The Nazi regime attempted to shut down the Catholic press, which declined "from 435 periodicals in 1934 to just seven in 1943."[76] From the beginning in 1935, the Gestapo arrested and jailed over 2720 clerics who were interned at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp, leading to over 1,000 deaths.[77] Nazism saw the Christian ideals of meekness and conscience as obstacles to the violent instincts required to defeat other races.[74] From the mid-1930s anti-Christian elements within the Nazi party became more prominent; however, they were restrained by Hitler because of the negative press their actions were receiving, and by 1934 the Nazi party pretended a neutral position in regard to the Protestant Churches.[

Alfred Rosenberg, an "outspoken pagan", held among offices the title of "the Fuehrer's Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction for the National Socialist Party".[59] In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930), Rosenberg wrote that the main enemies of the Germans were the "Russian Tartars" and "Semites" - with "Semites" including Christians, especially the Catholic Church:[80] Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, was among the most aggressive anti-Church Nazi radicals. Goebbels led the Nazi persecution of the German clergy and, as the war progressed, on the "Church Question", he wrote "after the war it has to be generally solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".[62] Martin Bormann became Hitler's private secretary and de facto "deputy" fuhrer from 1941. He was a leading advocate of the Kirchenkampf, a project which Hitler for the most part wished to keep until after the war.[81] Bormann was a rigid guardian of National Socialist orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible".[82] He said publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable".[59] In a confidential message to the Gauleiter on June 9, 1941, Martin Bormann, had declared that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."[83] He also declared that the Churches' influence in the leadership of the people "must absolutely and finally be broken." Bormann believed Nazism was based on a "scientific" world-view, and was completely incompatible with Christianity.[83] Bormann stated:

When we National Socialists speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naivety or else upon shameless professional self-interest.[84]


The Kirchenkampf Church struggle[edit]
Further information: Kirchenkampf
As the Nazi Party began its takeover of power in Germany in 1933 the struggling, but still nominally functioning Weimar government, led by its President, Paul von Hindenburg, and represented by his appointed Vice-Chancellor, Franz von Papen, initiated talks with the Holy See concerning the establishment of a concordat. The talks lasted three and half months while Hitler consolidated his hold on power.[78] This attempt achieved the signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933, which protected the freedom of the Catholic Church and restricted priests and bishops from political activity.[78]

Like the idea of the Reichskonkordat, the notion of a Protestant Reich Church, which would unify the Protestant Churches, also had been considered previously.[85] Hitler had discussed the matter as early as 1927 with Ludwig Müller, who was at that time the military chaplain of Königsberg.[85]

The Catholic Church was particularly suppressed in Poland: between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps.[86] In the annexed territory of Reichsgau Wartheland it was even more harsh: churches were systematically closed and most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as blessed martyrs.[86] Religious persecution was not confined to Poland: in Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed.[86]

A number of historians maintain that the Nazis had a general covert plan, which some argue existed before the Nazis' rose to power,[87] to destroy Christianity within the Reich.[51][88][89][90][91][92][93] To what extent a plan to subordinate the churches and limit their role in the country's life existed before the Nazi rise to power, and exactly who among the Nazi leadership supported such a move remains contested."[87] However, a minority of historians maintain, against consensus, that no such plan existed.[94][95][96][97][98][99] Summarizing a 1945 Office of Strategic Services report, New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey, stated that the Nazis had a plan to "subvert and destroy German Christianity," which was to be accomplished through control and subversion of the churches and to be completed after the war.[50][55] However, the report stated this goal was limited to a "sector of the National Socialist party," namely Alfred Rosenberg and Baldur von Schirach.[100] Historian Roger Griffin maintains: "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it."[51] In his study The Holy Reich, the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall comes to the opposite conclusion, "Totally absent, besides Hitler's vague ranting, is any firm evidence that Hitler or the Nazis were going to 'destroy' or 'eliminate' the churches once the war was over."[94] Regarding his wider thesis that, "leading Nazis in fact considered themselves Christian" or at least understood their movement "within a Christian frame of reference",[101] Steigmann-Gall admits he "argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it."[102]

Although there are high-profile cases of individual Lutherans and Catholics who died in prison or in concentration camps, the largest number of Christians who died would have been Jewish Christians or mischlinge who were sent to death camps for their race rather than their religion.[citation needed] Kahane (1999) cites an estimate that there were approximately 200,000 Christians of Jewish descent in Nazi Germany.[103] Among the Gentile Christians 11,300 Jehovah's Witnesses were placed in camps, and about 1,490 died, of whom 270 were executed as conscientious objectors.[104] Dachau had a special "priest block." Of the 2,720 priests (among them 2,579 Catholic) held in Dachau, 1,034 did not survive the camp. The majority of these priests were Polish (1,780), of whom 868 died in Dachau.

Protestantism[edit]
Martin Luther[edit]
Further information: Martin Luther and antisemitism
During the First and Second World Wars, German Protestant leaders used the writings of Luther to support the cause of German nationalism.[105] On the 450th anniversary of Luther's birth, which fell only a few months after the Nazi Party began its seizure of power in 1933, celebrations were conducted on a large scale by both the Protestant Churches and the Nazi Party.[106] At a celebration in Königsberg, Erich Koch, at that time the Gauleiter of East Prussia, made a speech in which he, among other things, compared Adolf Hitler with Martin Luther and claimed that the Nazis fought with Luther's spirit.[106] Such a speech might be dismissed as mere propaganda,[106] but, as Steigmann-Gall points out: "Contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian who had attained his position [as the elected president of a provincial Church synod] through a genuine commitment to Protestantism and its institutions."[107] Even so, Steigmann-Gall states that the Nazis were not a Christian movement.[108]

The prominent Protestant theologian Karl Barth, of the Swiss Reformed Church, opposed this appropriation of Luther in both the German Empire and Nazi Germany, when he stated in 1939 that the writings of Martin Luther were used by the Nazis to glorify both the State and state absolutism:"The German people suffer under his error of the relationship between the law and the bible, between secular and spiritual power",[109] in which Luther divided the temporal State from the inward state, focusing instead on spiritual matters, thus limiting the ability of the individual or the church to question the actions of the State,[110] which was seen as a God ordained instrument.[111]

In February 1940, Barth specifically accused German Lutherans of separating Biblical teachings from the teachings of the State and thus legitimizing the Nazi state ideology.[112] He was not alone with his view. A few years earlier on October 5, 1933, Pastor Wilhelm Rehm from Reutlingen declared publicly that "Hitler would not have been possible without Martin Luther",[113] though many have also made this same statement about other influences on Hitler's rise to power. Anti-Communist historian Paul Johnson has said that "without Lenin, Hitler would not have been possible".[114]

Protestant groups[edit]
Main article: German Christians
Different German states possessed regional social variations as to class densities and religious denomination.[115] Richard Steigmann-Gall alleges a linkage between several Protestant churches and Nazism.[116] The "German Christians" (Deutsche Christen) were a movement within the Protestant Church of Germany with the aim of changing traditional Christian teachings to align with the ideology of National Socialism and its anti-Jewish policies.[117] The Deutsche Christen factions were united in the goal of establishing a national socialist Protestantism[118] and abolishing what they considered to be Jewish traditions in Christianity, and some but not all rejected the Old Testament and the teaching of the Apostle Paul. In November 1933, A Protestant mass rally of the Deutsche Christen, which brought together a record 20,000 people, passed three resolutions:

• Adolf Hitler is the completion of the Reformation,
• Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church
• The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures.[119]

Ludwig Müller[edit]
The "German Christians" selected Ludwig Müller (1883–1945) as their candidate for Reich bishop in 1933.[120] In response to Hitler's campaigning,[121] two-thirds of those Protestants who voted elected Ludwig Müller, a neo-pagan candidate, to govern the Protestant Churches.[122] Müller was convinced that he had a divine responsibility to promote Hitler and his ideals,[123] and together with Hitler, he favoured a unified Reichskirche of Protestants and Catholics. This Reichskirche was to be a loose federation in the form of a council, but it would be subordinated to the National Socialist State.[124]

The level of ties between Nazism and the Protestant churches has been a contentious issue for decades. One difficulty is that Protestantism includes a number of religious bodies and many of them 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 the "official positions" of denominations problematic. The "German Christians" were a minority within the Protestant population,[125] numbering one third to one fourth of the 40 million Protestants in Germany.[117] With Bishop Müller's efforts and Hitler's support, "The German Evangelical Church" was formed and recognized by the state as a legal entity on July 14, 1933, with the aim of melding the State, the people and the Church into one body.[126] Dissenters were silenced by expulsion or violence.[127]

The support of the "German Christian" movement within the churches was opposed by many adherents of traditional Christian teachings.[128] Other groups within the Protestant church included members of the Bekennende Kirche Confessing Church, which included such prominent members as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer;[129] both rejected the Nazi efforts to meld volkisch principles with traditional Lutheran doctrine.[130] Martin Niemöller organized the Pastors' Emergency League which was supported by nearly 40 percent of the Evangelical pastors.[131][132] They were, however, (as of 1932) a minority within the Protestant church bodies in Germany. But in 1933, a number of Deutsche Christen left the movement after a November speech by Reinhold Krause urged, among other things, the rejection of the Old Testament as Jewish superstition.[133] So when Ludwig Müller could not deliver on conforming all Christians to National Socialism, and after some of the "German Christian" rallies and more radical ideas generated a backlash, Hitler's condescending attitudes towards Protestants increased and he lost all interest in Protestant church affairs.[121]

The resistance within the churches to Nazi ideology was the longest lasting and most bitter of any German institution.[134] The Nazis weakened the churches' resistance from within but the Nazis had not yet succeeded in taking full control of the churches, which was evidenced by the thousands of clergy who were sent to concentration camps.[135] Rev. Martin Niemöller was imprisoned in 1937, charged with "misuse of the pulpit to vilify the State and the Party and attack the authority of the Government."[136] After a failed assassination on Hitler's life in 1943 by members of the military and members of the German Resistance movement,[137] to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the Confessing Church movement belonged, Hitler ordered the arrest of Protestant, mainly Lutheran clergy. However, even the "Confessing Church made frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler".[138] But later many Protestants were solidly opposed to Nazism after the nature of the movement was better understood but a number also maintained until the end of the war the view that Nazism was compatible with the teachings of the church.

The small Methodist population was deemed foreign at times; this stemmed from the fact that Methodism began in England, and did not develop in Germany until the nineteenth century under the leadership of Christoph Gottlob Müller and Louis Jacoby. Because of this history they felt the urge to be "more German than the Germans" in order to avoid coming under suspicion. Methodist Bishop John L. Nelsen toured the U.S. on Hitler's behalf in order to protect his church, but in private letters he indicated that he feared and hated Nazism, and he eventually retired and fled to Switzerland. Methodist Bishop F. H. Otto Melle took a far more collaborationist position that included his apparently sincere support for Nazism. He was also committed to an asylum near the war's end. To show his gratitude to the latter bishop, Hitler made a gift of 10,000 marks in 1939 to a Methodist congregation so it could pay for the purchase of an organ. The money was never used.[139] Outside Germany, Melle's views were overwhelmingly rejected by most Methodists. The leader of the pro-Nazi segment of the Baptists was Paul Schmidt. The idea of a "national church" was possible in the history of mainstream German Protestantism, but National Churches devoted primarily to the state were generally forbidden among the Anabaptists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Catholic Church. The forms or offshoots of Protestantism that advocated pacifism, anti-nationalism, or racial equality tended to oppose the Nazi state in the strongest possible terms. Prominent Protestant, or Protestant offshoots, groups known for their efforts against Nazism include the Jehovah's Witnesses.


Religion in Nazi Germany - Wikipedia

 

[Grumblenuts]

And atheism means you refuse to be bullied into subscribing to theistic belief systems.

Atheism means that one KNOWS there is no creator. How one "knows" this is beyond me, not that I mind.

Can you provide any source that says Atheists know there is no creator vs believe so?

Can you provide any source, not to mention definition, that says Atheists in general claim to "know" or "believe" anything?