Does it Matter that Hitler was a Theist?

[Dingbat]

Hello Sunstone. I have had to deal with this rediculous claim many times.

1. Hitler only pursued the Catholic faith because he desired the influence the Church had with the people he needed for cannon fodder.
2. If his actions are diametrically opposed to the religion then neither the religion nor God have anything what so ever to do with his actions.
3. If you evaluate a teacher, then you would naturally select the best and most obedient students. It is meaningless to select the ones who do not show up, do not study the lessons, and do not put into practice the teachings they receive.
4. Hitler actually said that evolution justified his actions. I am not saying evolution is why he did them but rather what he used to make them appear legitimate. It can be shown that indeed his actions are consistent with many evolutionary principles. That has no bearing on whether evolution is true of false but what its truth implies.

Hitler's pretenses at faith are less than meaningful to evaluate his actions, the Bible, or God. It is a desperate and obnoxious concept. Without God the sanctity of life, the equality of man, or even actual morality have insufficient foundations for society’s needs.

I have a feeling you don't even know what the word evolution means.

 

[Father Heathen]

It can be shown that indeed his actions are consistent with many evolutionary principles.

Evolution is genetic adaptation to an environment via natural selection, so please tell us which actions were "consistent" with what evolutionary principles.

 

[crocusj]

4. Hitler actually said that evolution justified his actions. I am not saying evolution is why he did them but rather what he used to make them appear legitimate.

Must we, must we really, go through the tedious exercise of those who throughout history will affiliate themselves to anything to legitimise their phylosophy - eg; Jesus Christ.

It can be shown that indeed his actions are consistent with many evolutionary principles. That has no bearing on whether evolution is true of false but what its truth implies.

Can it, indeed. Specifically, what are these evolutionary principles. Obviously you do not "believe" that evolution is true but are quite prepared to argue an entire genocidal etiquette as if it were ( what is this etiquette if it is not?)?

Hitler's pretenses at faith are less than meaningful to evaluate his actions, the Bible, or God. It is a desperate and obnoxious concept. Without God the sanctity of life, the equality of man, or even actual morality have insufficient foundations for society’s needs.

Quite..... Pish, though.

 

[InChrist]

Hitler was obsessed with creating the perfect Aryan race. His actions were consistent with evolution as he attempted to manipulate and speed up the process and see his vision of a superior race evolve.

“As Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf, the fundamental political category is biological. Consequently, “the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a State or Government but rather the conservation of the race.” This aim accords with Hitler’s larger Darwinian view of the cosmos, wherein the “fundamental law of necessity” reigning “throughout the realm of Nature” is that “existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife….where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.” Survival of the fittest.”

“According to Hitler, the Jews threatened the superior race with degradation, but so did the “mongrels and negroids,” the Slavs, the Gypsies, the handicapped, the retarded, and all the other inferior biological misfits.”
Excerpts: Darwin and Hitler: In Their Own Words

Darwin and Hitler: In Their Own Words | Conservative News, Views & Books

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

We have kept only a faint and largely ineffective memory of why WW2 was such an abomination and what made it possible and how hard and how painful it was to contain it.

I would agree to some extent, but I would also note that part of this "ineffective memory" is not necessarily a negative thing. In the appendix to his rather controversial novel State of Fear, Michael Crichton talks about Eugenics. Before WWII, lots of notable figures, including some of the greatest minds of the period, were proponents. "After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form."

Crichton isn't exactly accurate in the part about biographies. It wasn't just that certain notables had their records "expunged" (so to speak), as some (like Karl Pearson) are known by name by only because their work is still used. So even undergrads in just about any science have come across "Pearson's r", but despite the fact that Pearson was a founder of modern statistics, relatively little is ever written about him compared to other mathematicians from Newton to Cohen (the guy who finalized the answer to Cantor's continuum hypothesis). In math textbooks (among others), there are frequently little blurbs about the life of some mathematician whose work contributed to whatever section the blurb appears in. In the years I've spent teaching and tutoring mathematics (and most of my undergrad students have been social scientists who are taking a required intro stats course), I've lost track of the number of textbooks I've come across, yet I have rarely come across a blurb on Pearson. The one exception (I actually think it was in a work on the history of mathematics and/or logic) was really an explanation as to why so little is said of him: he was a eugenicist and was the Chair of Eugenics at the University of London.

The motivation behind this...shall we say, motivated forgetting? wasn't just embarrassment, but rather a concerted effort to expunge the idea of eugenics from academia, which necessarily meant a fair amount glossing over certain people, certain works, etc.

Eugenics was a "science", with researchers, activists, and politicians all over the world supporting programs including research activity and legal/political action. The Holocaust was the purest, most effective, and most thorough realization of this "science". But it was so horrific that almost without exception it ended the political and academic support eugenics.

So while it is true that people are not regularly taught the history of academic and political eugenics programs/activities, this follows from a desire never to encourage that approach to evolution.

There is no other explanation for the heightened tolerance for repeating those same mistakes in the last few decades, or for the accomodation into believing that "the fault was all of that madman Hitler".

What mistakes? In the US, forced sterilization of those with "bad genes" were carried out, backed by state laws. The same was attempted in the UK, and although I don't believe it actually happened, there were similar acts passed by Parliment (on the "mentally deficient"). Canada too passed sterilization and seperation laws. The list goes on, and this is all in the 20th century before the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, the political, social, and academic support for Eugenics was replaced with a statement of basic rights regardless of race adopted by the UN. The departments, labs, textbooks, etc., which had all been devoted to "progress" using the "science" of eugenics, vanished. And recently (perhaps because our understanding of genes and evolution is sufficiently advanced, as it was only in 1953 that Watson & Crick's paper on DNA came out) the white-washing of history as far as Eugenics is concerned has steadily declined.

As far as I can see, the only "lesson" which we've forgotten is the other factor behind the Nazi regime. The extent to which Christianity is a cause is debated, because, while there is no doubt that wide-spread anti-semiticism in Europe and elsewhere was intricately tied to Christian views, the relationship between the Nazi's (including Hitler's personal beliefs) and Christianity is not clear. However, while this issue is debated all the time, the relationship between socialism and the Nazi's receives considerably less attention (at least in academia). It's fairly common for people to say that the Nazi party is an example of extreme right-wing views, while communism is one of extreme left-wing, but htis is rather fundamental distortion. What's interesting is that even in monographs, journal articles, and textbooks on totalitarianism which make this right/left characterization, the descriptions of the actual dynamics of regimes like Stalin's, Mao's, Mussolini's, etc., are quite similar to those of the Nazi party.

Since the French revolution, views usually associated with the Left have included a support communal government through a breakdown between the distinction of private citizen and government. Some realizations of this goal are supported even by some on the right-wing to an extent (social security, public education, etc.). And I'm not criticizing these, nor am I criticizing socialism as it is realized in Europe, Canada, and Australia.

However, Nazi germany (whatever rhetoric it employed against communism), was fundamentally a socialist enterprise: the People were the State, and the State the People. And in every instance of the extreme examples of this, a "messianic" type figurehead is there, whether it is Hitler or Saddam. Instead of religion (which represents by its very nature a rival to state/political power), an social and political ideology (as thorough and dogmatic as any religion) is promoted though propaganda and institutional action. Likewise, a figurehead arises to function as the symbolic representative of the State-sponsored ideology.

If there is any forgotten lesson, it is the relationship between the extremes of classical socialism (as it has developed both at an intellectual level and through political realization) and the Nazi party. Right-wing extremism is classically a monarchy (just look at Hobbes' Leviathan), although more recently the right-wing has incorporated classical liberalism in its modern form (libertarianism), the extreme of which is anarchy.

What regimes like Hitler's, Stalin's, Saddam's, and others did is impossible without a great deal of state power and the capacity for the upper echelons to do what they will regardless of any and all views from the general public. Until recently (including, in some cases, very recently), we had Kings, Shahs, Emperors, and other monarchical governments capable of this. There was no equivalent of the Nazi party in the ancient world, or even the medieval. This is not true of the modern era.

 

[Father Heathen]

Hitler was obsessed with creating the perfect Aryan race. His actions were consistent with evolution as he attempted to manipulate and speed up the process and see his vision of a superior race evolve.

But that's not how evolution works. So, no, they weren't "consistent". This is nothing more than an attempt to by dishonest, deceitful people to misrepresent evolutionary theory.

 

[Me Myself]

Hitler was obsessed with creating the perfect Aryan race. His actions were consistent with evolution as he attempted to manipulate and speed up the process and see his vision of a superior race evolve.

Saying actions are consistent with evolution is like saying actions are consistent with gravity.

Sure, you can make a moral system around gravity if you want, but gravity is just gravity, it is morally neutral. So is evolution.

 

[LuisDantas]

Hitler was obsessed with creating the perfect Aryan race. His actions were consistent with evolution as he attempted to manipulate and speed up the process and see his vision of a superior race evolve.

Maybe he used that word, I don' know. But that is not even remotely similar to the biological use of the word, which is in fact irreconciliabe with such a silly ideology.

“As Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf, the fundamental political category is biological. Consequently, “the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a State or Government but rather the conservation of the race.” This aim accords with Hitler’s larger Darwinian view of the cosmos, wherein the “fundamental law of necessity” reigning “throughout the realm of Nature” is that “existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife….where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.” Survival of the fittest.”

Which, again, is irreconciliable with the biological concept of evolution. Hitler was a major-league racist, which is to say that he had no working knowledge of evolution. He nurtured dreams of being a harbinger of a chosen people.

“According to Hitler, the Jews threatened the superior race with degradation, but so did the “mongrels and negroids,” the Slavs, the Gypsies, the handicapped, the retarded, and all the other inferior biological misfits.”
Excerpts: Darwin and Hitler: In Their Own Words

Darwin and Hitler: In Their Own Words | Conservative News, Views & Books

 

[1robin]

I have a feeling you don't even know what the word evolution means.

To start a debate with someone by claiming to know something that you have no access to and therefore can't possibly know is not a good start. That statement besides being unkowable is also wrong and meaningless. What verifies my faith at times is the inconsistency of arguments against it. GK Chesterton said he finally gave up on atheism because God could not be what atheists claim. He could not be too warlike and too passive, too demanding and too permissive, too remote and too intrusive. It was the schizophrenia that existed in atheism that made him start to consider Christianity in the first place. I would add that the practice of claiming to know what you can't possibly know, equating two unequal things, and countering arguments that Christians didn't actually make destroys what credability the claims countering a Christian's claims might have had.

Regardless I have seen every debate on evolution v/s religion I can find. I have seen many secular evolutionary debates. I have transcripts to many. I have a math degree and come from a family with an Apollo 5 engineer and a national merit scholarship winner. I am currently working in a DOD F-15 avionics lab for a PhD trouble shooting Rubidium gas oscillators among many other things so insinuations that I am not educated enough to understand that life coming from non-life is not only against biology’s own law of abiogenesis, and probability, but even violates the scientific method and has not been duplicated with lab rats like Dawkin's in controlled conditions. The only thing proven was that even with human intelligence it could not be done by chance. Unless you can discuss what you have access to alone and actually can know I am not interested in a discussion.

 

[1robin]

Evolution is genetic adaptation to an environment via natural selection, so please tell us which actions were "consistent" with what evolutionary principles.

You have one distracting Avatar.

As for your point. I will restate what I posted in another post here: GK Chesterton said he finally gave up on atheism because God could not be what atheists claim. He could not be both too warlike and too passive, both too demanding and too permissive, both too remote and too intrusive. It was the schizophrenia that existed in atheism that made him start to consider Christianity in the first place.

The reason I mention that is that it exists in evolution as well. I spend a lot of time indicating that without God evolution is insufficient for morality. To this, every single time I am told that oh no, evolution is quite capable of generating morality. Of course it is a morality that does not actually exist in nature that they describe. "Nature red in tooth and claw" is not what they describe. They, I guess because they can't admit that evolution would obviously have a far more selfish morality than what is considered civil, spend a great deal of time doing intellectual gymnastics to show that it only produces benevolence and altruism. Evolution is capable of every "good" moral result but is innocent of every example of selfish morality that it necessarily would produce in their view. That is scientific schizophrenia.

As for what I said. Tell me what is incorrect about the following.

Either
1. Evolution produces no morals at all. Which means if it is the governing dynamic instead of Christianity then itnor anything else left on the table cannot justify the sanctity of life, equality of man, and the relative value of life. It is basically the same as a Halon fire suppression systems on ships. Halon doesn't kill a person, it is inert, but it does replace the oxygen in the air and we suffocate anyway. Evolution replaces moral certainty with moral ambiguity (or silence) and actually argues against racial equality even if it does not produce morality directly.

Or

2. Evolution can generate morality along lines of survival. Evolution is no philosopher and could be said to create behavior more than morals but those behaviors have moral implications. It argues for and implies racial inequality. Either no value for any life or equal value for all life. Slavery is a benefit to survival for a species so throw that in. It gives no foundation for rights of anykind so thrw them out. It does not have a foundation for meaning, purpose, value, or law and makes us into a bilogical anomalie that will ends it's brief futile existance with the rest of the universe in universal heat death. I can go on forever but you get the point.

Evolution is said to be based on survival. If evolution is the governing dynamic tell me why my clan should not kill every other human on earth that does not benefit us. It reduce competition for resources and adds to my clan's survivability. Hitler used it to show that in nature there are hierarchy’s. He used this to base his racial purity and superiority practices. He used the dominance of the strong over the weak in nature for his efforts to subdue what he said were inferior races. Both of those plus countless others are perfectly consistent with evolution.

Your equivocation is mainly a hyper literal semantical objection and does not do the issue justice. Even if we took that view then in the best case scenario everything I mention in option 1 above is absolute. It is very hard to argue that evolution has no diabolical social or moral implications with a title like: Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.
If that came out of Hitler's mouth it would seem right at home.

 

[1robin]

But that's not how evolution works. So, no, they weren't "consistent". This is nothing more than an attempt to by dishonest, deceitful people to misrepresent evolutionary theory.

That is false. If evolution is true then he was acting consistent with it. His brain and it's intellectual faculties speeding up what evolution does already is its self a product of evolution. Even with your hyper literal and minimalist definition for the concept of evolution he was doing what all creatures do, influencing survivability through behavior. A roach’s instinct to hide from light would be an evolutionary behavioral adaptation the same as Hitler’s genetic manipulation derived from the same source. I guess you have compartmentalized evolution into something so small it has no undesired traits for you. The fact is that evolution is not and will not be quantified so easily and it's boundaries are vague and moving targets. No matter how it's massaged one thing is certain. His actions were far more consistent with evolution that the Bible no matter what degree you will allow it to be. IMO and many respected Phds his practices were very consistent with evolutionary dynamics.

 

[1robin]

Saying actions are consistent with evolution is like saying actions are consistent with gravity.

Sure, you can make a moral system around gravity if you want, but gravity is just gravity, it is morally neutral. So is evolution.

Drawing equalities between unequal things is not meaningful. Gravity as you said has no behavioral implications. Gravity does not make it an advantage to kill the competition, evolution does. In fact behavior is an integral part of evolution and claimed to be that by professional evolutionists if convenient at the time. What you are trying to reduce evolution true is simply natural selection. Evolution is a huge field and has no real boundaries. It incorporates behavior advantage or disadvantage and so most definitely does affect morality. This is obvious when in a professional debate against a theist the evolutionist’s runs up against the fact that with evolution and no God morality there is no foundation for morality. It is obvious what an inconvenience that is in a debate and so does all manner of intellectual gyrations to show that in fact evolution generates morality but only good morality and can even account for pure altruism. What a wonderfully adaptable theory it is. It creates whatever exists. It can either explain something as elusive as altruism or it can be morally inert (based on cenvenience). It is true without any necessity to adhere to the scientific method. It produced life even when probability and biology’s own laws say it is impossible. It even did it by its self by chance when scientists could not do so on purpose. It can account for smooth incremental changes as well as the sudden appearance in a geological instant of every major body type at once. It can produce the gradual progression of complexity over ages of time till it produces our brains, (the most complicated arrangement of matter in the known universe). As well as produce one of the most complicated eyes in history right out of the box. That is one handy theory idea.

By the way everything I said is based on an either or between God and evolution, if you instead believe as I do in a God plus some evolution concept then parts of this discussion do not apply. I guess I have bothered you enough for one day. Have a good afternoon and weekend.

 

[Noaidi]

What you are trying to reduce evolution true is simply natural selection. Evolution is a huge field and has no real boundaries. It incorporates behavior advantage or disadvantage and so most definitely does affect morality. This is obvious when in a professional debate against a theist the evolutionist’s runs up against the fact that with evolution and no God morality there is no foundation for morality. It is obvious what an inconvenience that is in a debate and so does all manner of intellectual gyrations to show that in fact evolution generates morality but only good morality and can even account for pure altruism. What a wonderfully adaptable theory it is.

You could, if you are interested in morality, join in on this thread:
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/science-religion/104590-morality-unique-humans.html

 

[Me Myself]

Drawing equalities between unequal things is not meaningful. Gravity as you said has no behavioral implications. Gravity does not make it an advantage to kill the competition, evolution does.

"evolution" doesn´t. Evolution is the description of something that happens. Animals do compete and the most adaptables are the ones that survive. Are you unaware of this?

do you think that the animal with worst adaptability to his environment is more prone to survival than one with a best adaptability?

In fact behavior is an integral part of evolution and claimed to be that by professional evolutionists if convenient at the time. What you are trying to reduce evolution true is simply natural selection. Evolution is a huge field and has no real boundaries. It incorporates behavior advantage or disadvantage and so most definitely does affect morality. This is obvious when in a professional debate against a theist the evolutionist’s runs up against the fact that with evolution and no God morality there is no foundation for morality. It is obvious what an inconvenience that is in a debate and so does all manner of intellectual gyrations to show that in fact evolution generates morality but only good morality and can even account for pure altruism. What a wonderfully adaptable theory it is. It creates whatever exists. It can either explain something as elusive as altruism or it can be morally inert (based on cenvenience). It is true without any necessity to adhere to the scientific method. It produced life even when probability and biology’s own laws say it is impossible. It even did it by its self by chance when scientists could not do so on purpose. It can account for smooth incremental changes as well as the sudden appearance in a geological instant of every major body type at once. It can produce the gradual progression of complexity over ages of time till it produces our brains, (the most complicated arrangement of matter in the known universe). As well as produce one of the most complicated eyes in history right out of the box. That is one handy theory idea. [/SIZE]

By the way everything I said is based on an either or between God and evolution, if you instead believe as I do in a God plus some evolution concept then parts of this discussion do not apply. I guess I have bothered you enough for one day. Have a good afternoon and weekend.

Evolution is a simple and widely evidenced process to which biological life submits to. Whether god exists or not is an entirely different debate and has 0 importance on this.

Saying evolution is against God is like saying lightning is against Thor.

 

[Father Heathen]

To start a debate with someone by claiming to know something that you have no access to and therefore can't possibly know is not a good start.

Do you have access to it via logic, evidence, study and testing.

Also, the concept of god and the theory of evolution are not mutually exclusive. Biblical literalism does not have a monopoly on the concept of god.

 

[Father Heathen]

evolution is insufficient for morality.

So is gravity. What's your point?

 

[Father Heathen]

That is false. If evolution is true then he was acting consistent with it. His brain and it's intellectual faculties speeding up what evolution does already is its self a product of evolution. Even with your hyper literal and minimalist definition for the concept of evolution he was doing what all creatures do, influencing survivability through behavior. A roach’s instinct to hide from light would be an evolutionary behavioral adaptation the same as Hitler’s genetic manipulation derived from the same source. I guess you have compartmentalized evolution into something so small it has no undesired traits for you. The fact is that evolution is not and will not be quantified so easily and it's boundaries are vague and moving targets. No matter how it's massaged one thing is certain. His actions were far more consistent with evolution that the Bible no matter what degree you will allow it to be. IMO and many respected Phds his practices were very consistent with evolutionary dynamics.

Evolution cannot be artificially accelerated. It has nothing to do with "superiority". It's the bible that contains mass bloodshed, whereas evolution is simply the passing on of genetics that are beneficial toward survivability. It's nature. Man can't play a hand in it. We're going to go by the academic definition of the theory, not some backwood bumpkin misrepresentation that willfully ignorant and intellectually dishonest fundies use.

 

[LuisDantas]

@1robin: Maybe you are simply unaware of that, but what you are describing as "evolution" does not really have much of a resemblance to the ideas that go by that name in biology.

In fact, from what you have been saying about evolution, it seems that you have been fed misinformation on the matter.

 

[LuisDantas]

I would agree to some extent, but I would also note that part of this "ineffective memory" is not necessarily a negative thing. In the appendix to his rather controversial novel State of Fear, Michael Crichton talks about Eugenics. Before WWII, lots of notable figures, including some of the greatest minds of the period, were proponents. "After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form."

Crichton isn't exactly accurate in the part about biographies. It wasn't just that certain notables had their records "expunged" (so to speak), as some (like Karl Pearson) are known by name by only because their work is still used. So even undergrads in just about any science have come across "Pearson's r", but despite the fact that Pearson was a founder of modern statistics, relatively little is ever written about him compared to other mathematicians from Newton to Cohen (the guy who finalized the answer to Cantor's continuum hypothesis). In math textbooks (among others), there are frequently little blurbs about the life of some mathematician whose work contributed to whatever section the blurb appears in. In the years I've spent teaching and tutoring mathematics (and most of my undergrad students have been social scientists who are taking a required intro stats course), I've lost track of the number of textbooks I've come across, yet I have rarely come across a blurb on Pearson. The one exception (I actually think it was in a work on the history of mathematics and/or logic) was really an explanation as to why so little is said of him: he was a eugenicist and was the Chair of Eugenics at the University of London.

The motivation behind this...shall we say, motivated forgetting? wasn't just embarrassment, but rather a concerted effort to expunge the idea of eugenics from academia, which necessarily meant a fair amount glossing over certain people, certain works, etc.

Eugenics was a "science", with researchers, activists, and politicians all over the world supporting programs including research activity and legal/political action. The Holocaust was the purest, most effective, and most thorough realization of this "science". But it was so horrific that almost without exception it ended the political and academic support eugenics.

So while it is true that people are not regularly taught the history of academic and political eugenics programs/activities, this follows from a desire never to encourage that approach to evolution.



What mistakes? In the US, forced sterilization of those with "bad genes" were carried out, backed by state laws. The same was attempted in the UK, and although I don't believe it actually happened, there were similar acts passed by Parliment (on the "mentally deficient"). Canada too passed sterilization and seperation laws. The list goes on, and this is all in the 20th century before the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, the political, social, and academic support for Eugenics was replaced with a statement of basic rights regardless of race adopted by the UN. The departments, labs, textbooks, etc., which had all been devoted to "progress" using the "science" of eugenics, vanished. And recently (perhaps because our understanding of genes and evolution is sufficiently advanced, as it was only in 1953 that Watson & Crick's paper on DNA came out) the white-washing of history as far as Eugenics is concerned has steadily declined.

As far as I can see, the only "lesson" which we've forgotten is the other factor behind the Nazi regime. The extent to which Christianity is a cause is debated, because, while there is no doubt that wide-spread anti-semiticism in Europe and elsewhere was intricately tied to Christian views, the relationship between the Nazi's (including Hitler's personal beliefs) and Christianity is not clear. However, while this issue is debated all the time, the relationship between socialism and the Nazi's receives considerably less attention (at least in academia). It's fairly common for people to say that the Nazi party is an example of extreme right-wing views, while communism is one of extreme left-wing, but htis is rather fundamental distortion. What's interesting is that even in monographs, journal articles, and textbooks on totalitarianism which make this right/left characterization, the descriptions of the actual dynamics of regimes like Stalin's, Mao's, Mussolini's, etc., are quite similar to those of the Nazi party.

Since the French revolution, views usually associated with the Left have included a support communal government through a breakdown between the distinction of private citizen and government. Some realizations of this goal are supported even by some on the right-wing to an extent (social security, public education, etc.). And I'm not criticizing these, nor am I criticizing socialism as it is realized in Europe, Canada, and Australia.

However, Nazi germany (whatever rhetoric it employed against communism), was fundamentally a socialist enterprise: the People were the State, and the State the People. And in every instance of the extreme examples of this, a "messianic" type figurehead is there, whether it is Hitler or Saddam. Instead of religion (which represents by its very nature a rival to state/political power), an social and political ideology (as thorough and dogmatic as any religion) is promoted though propaganda and institutional action. Likewise, a figurehead arises to function as the symbolic representative of the State-sponsored ideology.

If there is any forgotten lesson, it is the relationship between the extremes of classical socialism (as it has developed both at an intellectual level and through political realization) and the Nazi party. Right-wing extremism is classically a monarchy (just look at Hobbes' Leviathan), although more recently the right-wing has incorporated classical liberalism in its modern form (libertarianism), the extreme of which is anarchy.

What regimes like Hitler's, Stalin's, Saddam's, and others did is impossible without a great deal of state power and the capacity for the upper echelons to do what they will regardless of any and all views from the general public. Until recently (including, in some cases, very recently), we had Kings, Shahs, Emperors, and other monarchical governments capable of this. There was no equivalent of the Nazi party in the ancient world, or even the medieval. This is not true of the modern era.

Let's just say that your opinions about WW 2 are quite distinct from mine own. So much so that, in fact, I don't know where to even begin in point out the divergences. If you feel like it we might discuss some smaller bits once at a time.

 

[1robin]

"evolution" doesn´t. Evolution is the description of something that happens. Animals do compete and the most adaptable are the ones that survive. Are you unaware of this?

This is another semantical argument and has no effect on reality. The fact is that if survival is the governing dynamic as it is in evolution then I should kill every one that does not contribute to my survival to lower competition for resources. I would consider the lethal ability to kill all rivals that do not contribute a survival skill that is completely implied by evolution. How is it inconsistent? Not to mention wiping out the old or sick that are a drain on a tribe's resources. Many things determine what survives including lethality, camouflage, hardiness, defensive strategies etc..... what I said is consistent with the dynamic it is however inconvenient for evolutionists and there in lies the equivocation.

do you think that the animal with worst adaptability to his environment is more prone to survival than one with a best adaptability?

What does this have to do with anything Hitler did and used evolution to justify? I am not debating evolutions reality only if true what it implies.

Evolution is a simple and widely evidenced process to which biological life submits to. Whether god exists or not is an entirely different debate and has 0 importance on this.

That is false. For evolution to even have a chance many things that biologically do not happen must necessarily happen. God is the perfect and only candidate for these natural impossibilities. However the issue is whether the evil Hitler did is or is not consistent with evolutionary principles.

Saying evolution is against God is like saying lightning is against Thor.

I never said that. In fact the Bible and I both claim that change within a "kind" is a reality. I did not claim what you suggest and it is not the issue being discussed. I however can discuss the issue if you wish. Without God it is infinitely more probable that nothing would exist than anything including evolution, is a starting point.