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thellama73 
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 Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:06 |
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The central question here as far as I'm concerned is, how much of a philosophy do you have to accept in order to be a follower of that philosophy?
Can you eat pork and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you believe in God and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard Aristotle's claims about the four elements and still call yourself an Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously yes.
Can you be an atheist and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you
believe in abolition of private property and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard
Aristotle's claims about the use of syllogisms in logic and still call yourself an
Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously no.
Where is the line? I can't say, and I doubt anyone else can. As long as someone is sincere and not intentionally misrepresenting their beliefs (someone who wants to abolish private property probably does not subscribe to the views of Ayn Rand, even if they claim to, and are simply being dishonest) I think it is fair to take people at their word.
Edited by thellama73 - September 21 2012 at 21:07
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Epignosis
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:17 |
 thellama73 wrote:
The central question here as far as I'm concerned is, how much of a philosophy do you have to accept in order to be a follower of that philosophy?
Can you eat pork and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you believe in God and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard Aristotle's claims about the four elements and still call yourself an Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously yes.
Can you be an atheist and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you
believe in abolition of private property and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard
Aristotle's claims about the use of syllogisms in logic and still call yourself an
Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously no.
Where is the line? I can't say, and I doubt anyone else can. As long as someone is sincere and not intentionally misrepresenting their beliefs (someone who wants to abolish private property probably does not subscribe to the views of Ayn Rand, even if they claim to, and are simply being dishonest) I think it is fair to take people at their word.
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Jews tend to call themselves "practicing Jews" if they obey the law.
There is no line Logan. Individual sects decide the line. I'm no Trinitarian, therefore I'm not Baptist, even though I've gone to a Baptist church most of my life.
Likewise, Islamic people are destroying our buildings. Yet I've known very kind, thoughtful Muslim people. They do not defend the actions of terrorists.
Not much black and white. Just a sh*t load of gray (most of which is smoke coming from the explosions).
That's why politics is religion too. I have a list of 15 things Obama has done that is just like Bush or worse, and yet the biggest critics of Bush vote for Obama. Presidential candidates are gods playing for two different sports teams.
It's awful.
I hate it.
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thellama73
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:20 |
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. 
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:26 |
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!"
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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Epignosis
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:31 |
The Dark Elf wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!" |
Christianity (in the Bible) would advise us to not get upset over the color of Christ's hair. 
That's the whole point of much of Paul's letters.
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Ambient Hurricanes
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:41 |
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
For the evidence you provided as to the persecution of Jews in Christendom - I never denied that Christians persecuted Jews; I asked you to prove that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. If you look at what the mainstream "Christianity" actually was in Germany at the time, it's quite clear that it was not Christians responsible for the Holocaust any more than it was a Christian who perpetrated the massacre in Norway; Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian. |
Hitler did not gather Jews into ghettoes, force them into cattle cars, command the camps, guard the prisoners, herd the Jews into their final showers or stoke the ovens. The majority of these Nazis were indeed Christians, and identified themselves as such, and when the war was over most (at least those that escaped trial) picked up their old lives and went back to Protestant or Catholic churches on Sunday. Again, to think otherwise is not factual. |
Err...did you even read the rest of my post? Like the part about how many of the churches in Germany weren't even Christian? The type of "Christianity" that the Nazis were advocating was utter heresy, and bore little resemblance to the true faith. I will repeat what I said before: "Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian." |
I read it. I disagree with it utterly. The majority of Germans were avowed Christians (well over 90% as can be found in the census of 1939): 54% claiming to be Protestants (most of these Lutherans) and 40% Catholics. Only 3.5% claimed some neo-pagan "Belief in God" - a very tiny portion of Germans. If you don't care for Wikipedia, then here is a page from another book, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust by Gerard Stephen Sloyan, Robert P. Ericksen, Susannah Heschel...
A very telling paragraph from the book reads as follows:
"Most of the Germans who welcomed Hitler's rise to power - who saw Jews increasingly deprived of their rights, who witnessed the burning synagogues and broken glass of Kristallnacht, who watched the removal of Jews from German soil, who listened to rumors of the annihilation of Jews in Poland and Russia - were self professed Christians. Most of the actual perpatrators - members of the SS and of the reserve police battalions, the shooters and scientists, those who ran the trains and those who ran the camps - received religious training in the Protestant or Catholic tradition."
These were Christian Germans that both participated or ignored the Holocaust, many enriching themselves from stolen Jewish art, furniture and appropriated companies, land and buildings while turning a deaf ear. Their German Christian forefathers in the 14th century annihilated whole quarters of Jews in cities, burned them alive in their houses, or, like in Strasbourg, these German Christians dragged 900 Jews from the city to an island and burnt them alive BEFORE the plague had reached the city. They were as Christian as Christians in Nazi Germany.
So please, do not speak the word "heresy" in regards to certain Christian sects. If the pope had gotten his hands on Martin Luther, he'd have burned him at the stake as a heretic (he was tried in absentia and found guilty by the Inquisition).
So yes, Christians were responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the Holocaust. To say otherwise with absurd apologetics is patently false. You may not like it, but it does not change the Truth.
P.S. And one wonders if the same ideological arguments are not rife in Muslim countries. Does the violent militance of al-Qaeda's brand of Islam cohere with both Sunni and Shi'ite belief? Or any other sect of Islam for that matter? We paint with broad strokes without seeing the fine brush lines that separate one believer from another. |
You keep making the same claims while ignoring every point I make. I explained to you why the German churches that supported the Holocaust were mostly heretical. You ignored my evidence and continued to claim the same things about Christians, when I had demonstrated that most of the people you are talking about were not Christians. You haven't proven anything until you answer my evidence.
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timothy leary
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:41 |
Epignosis wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
The central question here as far as I'm concerned is, how much of a philosophy do you have to accept in order to be a follower of that philosophy?
Can you eat pork and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you believe in God and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard Aristotle's claims about the four elements and still call yourself an Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously yes.
Can you be an atheist and still call yourself a (religious) Jew? Can you
believe in abolition of private property and still call yourself an Objectivist? Can you disregard
Aristotle's claims about the use of syllogisms in logic and still call yourself an
Aristotelian? I believe the answer is obviously no.
Where is the line? I can't say, and I doubt anyone else can. As long as someone is sincere and not intentionally misrepresenting their beliefs (someone who wants to abolish private property probably does not subscribe to the views of Ayn Rand, even if they claim to, and are simply being dishonest) I think it is fair to take people at their word.
|
Jews tend to call themselves "practicing Jews" if they obey the law.
There is no line Logan. Individual sects decide the line. I'm no Trinitarian, therefore I'm not Baptist, even though I've gone to a Baptist church most of my life.
Likewise, Islamic people are destroying our buildings. Yet I've known very kind, thoughtful Muslim people. They do not defend the actions of terrorists.
Not much black and white. Just a sh*t load of gray (most of which is smoke coming from the explosions).
That's why politics is religion too. I have a list of 15 things Obama has done that is just like Bush or worse, and yet the biggest critics of Bush vote for Obama. Presidential candidates are gods playing for two different sports teams.
It's awful.
I hate it.
|
I think the correct term for Jews who follow the letter of the law is "observant".
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:41 |
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!" |
Christianity (in the Bible) would advise us to not get upset over the color of Christ's hair.
That's the whole point of much of Paul's letters.
|
I find all religion humorous, and Paul is out and out hilarious.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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Epignosis
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:47 |
The Dark Elf wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!" |
Christianity (in the Bible) would advise us to not get upset over the color of Christ's hair.
That's the whole point of much of Paul's letters.
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I find all religion humorous, and Paul is out and out hilarious. |
Super. Go to church, laugh yourself until you piss, and then save yourself the cost of admission to a proper show. 
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timothy leary
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 21:49 |
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 22:02 |
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
For the evidence you provided as to the persecution of Jews in Christendom - I never denied that Christians persecuted Jews; I asked you to prove that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. If you look at what the mainstream "Christianity" actually was in Germany at the time, it's quite clear that it was not Christians responsible for the Holocaust any more than it was a Christian who perpetrated the massacre in Norway; Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian. |
Hitler did not gather Jews into ghettoes, force them into cattle cars, command the camps, guard the prisoners, herd the Jews into their final showers or stoke the ovens. The majority of these Nazis were indeed Christians, and identified themselves as such, and when the war was over most (at least those that escaped trial) picked up their old lives and went back to Protestant or Catholic churches on Sunday. Again, to think otherwise is not factual. |
Err...did you even read the rest of my post? Like the part about how many of the churches in Germany weren't even Christian? The type of "Christianity" that the Nazis were advocating was utter heresy, and bore little resemblance to the true faith. I will repeat what I said before: "Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian." |
I read it. I disagree with it utterly. The majority of Germans were avowed Christians (well over 90% as can be found in the census of 1939): 54% claiming to be Protestants (most of these Lutherans) and 40% Catholics. Only 3.5% claimed some neo-pagan "Belief in God" - a very tiny portion of Germans. If you don't care for Wikipedia, then here is a page from another book, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust by Gerard Stephen Sloyan, Robert P. Ericksen, Susannah Heschel...
A very telling paragraph from the book reads as follows:
"Most of the Germans who welcomed Hitler's rise to power - who saw Jews increasingly deprived of their rights, who witnessed the burning synagogues and broken glass of Kristallnacht, who watched the removal of Jews from German soil, who listened to rumors of the annihilation of Jews in Poland and Russia - were self professed Christians. Most of the actual perpatrators - members of the SS and of the reserve police battalions, the shooters and scientists, those who ran the trains and those who ran the camps - received religious training in the Protestant or Catholic tradition."
These were Christian Germans that both participated or ignored the Holocaust, many enriching themselves from stolen Jewish art, furniture and appropriated companies, land and buildings while turning a deaf ear. Their German Christian forefathers in the 14th century annihilated whole quarters of Jews in cities, burned them alive in their houses, or, like in Strasbourg, these German Christians dragged 900 Jews from the city to an island and burnt them alive BEFORE the plague had reached the city. They were as Christian as Christians in Nazi Germany.
So please, do not speak the word "heresy" in regards to certain Christian sects. If the pope had gotten his hands on Martin Luther, he'd have burned him at the stake as a heretic (he was tried in absentia and found guilty by the Inquisition).
So yes, Christians were responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the Holocaust. To say otherwise with absurd apologetics is patently false. You may not like it, but it does not change the Truth.
P.S. And one wonders if the same ideological arguments are not rife in Muslim countries. Does the violent militance of al-Qaeda's brand of Islam cohere with both Sunni and Shi'ite belief? Or any other sect of Islam for that matter? We paint with broad strokes without seeing the fine brush lines that separate one believer from another. |
You keep making the same claims while ignoring every point I make. I explained to you why the German churches that supported the Holocaust were mostly heretical. You ignored my evidence and continued to claim the same things about Christians, when I had demonstrated that most of the people you are talking about were not Christians. You haven't proven anything until you answer my evidence.
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"Mostly heretical"? Is that even possible? In any case, there were important Catholic and Protestant hierarchy that supported Hitler and who prayed for Hitler at their masses:
"[Adolf Hitler is a] man of peace. ...The great deed of safeguarding peace...moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics of all the German dioceses...to extend congratulations and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday." Read in all Berlin pulpits: "God has heard the prayer of all Christendom for peace. By His grace and the tireless efforts of the responsible statesmen the terrible affliction of a war has been averted... [W]e desire now with a prayer and a Te deum to praise God for His goodness in that He has preserved peace for us...[and] assured the return of our Sudeten kinsmen to the German Reich."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, commemorating Germany occupying Sudentenland, October 2, 1938
"Pastors in the Bavarian regional church are required as public officials to perform the following oath: 'I swear to God the Almighty and All-knowing: I will be loyal and obedient to the Führer of the Reich and Volk, Adolf Hitler, I will obey the laws, and I will conscientiously fulfill all my official duties, so help me God.' This law is effective immediately."
- Bishop Hans Meiser of the Bavarian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, May 18, 1938
"Those...entrusted with souls and the faithful will unconditionally support the great German state and the Führer, because the historical struggle against the criminal illusion of Bolshevism and for the security of German life, for work and bread, for the power and honor of the Reich and for the unity of the German nation, is obviously accomplished by the blessing of Providence. ...Faith and the intimate union of souls gives Christians the conviction that the natural community of the nation is called upon to realize a divine idea, and it follows that a truly religious life presupposes the practice of national virtues."
- Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, to Catholic clergy after meeting with Hitler, March 15, 1938
Even churchgoers expressed the same unconditional loyalty (and the same eternal hatred of the Jews:
Why don't our rulers declare themselves for the Volkskirche, which is fighting for a living Christianity? With our great leader Adolf Hitler, our previously dead church also experienced the reawakening of a vital spirit. ...[Julius] Streicher, the Franconian leader, said in a speech: 'The murder of Golgotha is written on the foreheads of the Jews.' Yes - and that is why there is a curse on that people. Jesus, however, died for us and so we should believe in him and accept him.
- German Christian woman, letter to Germany's Foreign Minister, August 27, 1935
And then Hitler himself:
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Adolf Hitler to Gerhard Engel, one of his generals, in 1941.
You are wrong. Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 22:11 |
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!" |
Christianity (in the Bible) would advise us to not get upset over the color of Christ's hair.
That's the whole point of much of Paul's letters.
|
I find all religion humorous, and Paul is out and out hilarious. |
Super. Go to church, laugh yourself until you piss, and then save yourself the cost of admission to a proper show.
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No thanks. I piss in toilets. I would hate to baptize with water some old lady in the pew in front of me. 
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
|
|
Epignosis
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 22:12 |
The Dark Elf wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
thellama73 wrote:
I can't tell if we are agreeing or arguing, Rob. |
The humorous thing about religion is that two people of the same demonination who are members of the same church will not necessarily agree with each other. Arguing about religion is like reading a book and then getting upset when the movie adaptation of the book does not meet your expectations. "They got Christ's hair color all wrong!" |
Christianity (in the Bible) would advise us to not get upset over the color of Christ's hair.
That's the whole point of much of Paul's letters.
|
I find all religion humorous, and Paul is out and out hilarious. |
Super. Go to church, laugh yourself until you piss, and then save yourself the cost of admission to a proper show.
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No thanks. I piss in toilets. I would hate to baptize with water some old lady in the pew in front of me. |
Stay classy now, you hear?
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Ambient Hurricanes
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 22:18 |
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
For the evidence you provided as to the persecution of Jews in Christendom - I never denied that Christians persecuted Jews; I asked you to prove that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. If you look at what the mainstream "Christianity" actually was in Germany at the time, it's quite clear that it was not Christians responsible for the Holocaust any more than it was a Christian who perpetrated the massacre in Norway; Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian. |
Hitler did not gather Jews into ghettoes, force them into cattle cars, command the camps, guard the prisoners, herd the Jews into their final showers or stoke the ovens. The majority of these Nazis were indeed Christians, and identified themselves as such, and when the war was over most (at least those that escaped trial) picked up their old lives and went back to Protestant or Catholic churches on Sunday. Again, to think otherwise is not factual. |
Err...did you even read the rest of my post? Like the part about how many of the churches in Germany weren't even Christian? The type of "Christianity" that the Nazis were advocating was utter heresy, and bore little resemblance to the true faith. I will repeat what I said before: "Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian." |
I read it. I disagree with it utterly. The majority of Germans were avowed Christians (well over 90% as can be found in the census of 1939): 54% claiming to be Protestants (most of these Lutherans) and 40% Catholics. Only 3.5% claimed some neo-pagan "Belief in God" - a very tiny portion of Germans. If you don't care for Wikipedia, then here is a page from another book, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust by Gerard Stephen Sloyan, Robert P. Ericksen, Susannah Heschel...
A very telling paragraph from the book reads as follows:
"Most of the Germans who welcomed Hitler's rise to power - who saw Jews increasingly deprived of their rights, who witnessed the burning synagogues and broken glass of Kristallnacht, who watched the removal of Jews from German soil, who listened to rumors of the annihilation of Jews in Poland and Russia - were self professed Christians. Most of the actual perpatrators - members of the SS and of the reserve police battalions, the shooters and scientists, those who ran the trains and those who ran the camps - received religious training in the Protestant or Catholic tradition."
These were Christian Germans that both participated or ignored the Holocaust, many enriching themselves from stolen Jewish art, furniture and appropriated companies, land and buildings while turning a deaf ear. Their German Christian forefathers in the 14th century annihilated whole quarters of Jews in cities, burned them alive in their houses, or, like in Strasbourg, these German Christians dragged 900 Jews from the city to an island and burnt them alive BEFORE the plague had reached the city. They were as Christian as Christians in Nazi Germany.
So please, do not speak the word "heresy" in regards to certain Christian sects. If the pope had gotten his hands on Martin Luther, he'd have burned him at the stake as a heretic (he was tried in absentia and found guilty by the Inquisition).
So yes, Christians were responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the Holocaust. To say otherwise with absurd apologetics is patently false. You may not like it, but it does not change the Truth.
P.S. And one wonders if the same ideological arguments are not rife in Muslim countries. Does the violent militance of al-Qaeda's brand of Islam cohere with both Sunni and Shi'ite belief? Or any other sect of Islam for that matter? We paint with broad strokes without seeing the fine brush lines that separate one believer from another. |
You keep making the same claims while ignoring every point I make. I explained to you why the German churches that supported the Holocaust were mostly heretical. You ignored my evidence and continued to claim the same things about Christians, when I had demonstrated that most of the people you are talking about were not Christians. You haven't proven anything until you answer my evidence.
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"Mostly heretical"? Is that even possible? In any case, there were important Catholic and Protestant hierarchy that supported Hitler and who prayed for Hitler at their masses:
"[Adolf Hitler is a] man of peace. ...The great deed of safeguarding peace...moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics of all the German dioceses...to extend congratulations and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday." Read in all Berlin pulpits: "God has heard the prayer of all Christendom for peace. By His grace and the tireless efforts of the responsible statesmen the terrible affliction of a war has been averted... [W]e desire now with a prayer and a Te deum to praise God for His goodness in that He has preserved peace for us...[and] assured the return of our Sudeten kinsmen to the German Reich."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, commemorating Germany occupying Sudentenland, October 2, 1938
"Pastors in the Bavarian regional church are required as public officials to perform the following oath: 'I swear to God the Almighty and All-knowing: I will be loyal and obedient to the Führer of the Reich and Volk, Adolf Hitler, I will obey the laws, and I will conscientiously fulfill all my official duties, so help me God.' This law is effective immediately."
- Bishop Hans Meiser of the Bavarian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, May 18, 1938
"Those...entrusted with souls and the faithful will unconditionally support the great German state and the Führer, because the historical struggle against the criminal illusion of Bolshevism and for the security of German life, for work and bread, for the power and honor of the Reich and for the unity of the German nation, is obviously accomplished by the blessing of Providence. ...Faith and the intimate union of souls gives Christians the conviction that the natural community of the nation is called upon to realize a divine idea, and it follows that a truly religious life presupposes the practice of national virtues."
- Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, to Catholic clergy after meeting with Hitler, March 15, 1938
Even churchgoers expressed the same unconditional loyalty (and the same eternal hatred of the Jews:
Why don't our rulers declare themselves for the Volkskirche, which is fighting for a living Christianity? With our great leader Adolf Hitler, our previously dead church also experienced the reawakening of a vital spirit. ...[Julius] Streicher, the Franconian leader, said in a speech: 'The murder of Golgotha is written on the foreheads of the Jews.' Yes - and that is why there is a curse on that people. Jesus, however, died for us and so we should believe in him and accept him.
- German Christian woman, letter to Germany's Foreign Minister, August 27, 1935
And then Hitler himself:
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Adolf Hitler to Gerhard Engel, one of his generals, in 1941.
You are wrong. Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.
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When I said, "mostly heretical," I meant that most of the mainline churches were heretical, not that any particular church was "mostly heretical." Sorry for not being clear on that point. Going on...you still haven't proved that these "Christians" whom you quote were not heretics. I am not asserting that leaders and members of mainstream churches did not support Hitler, I am asserting that these churches were heretical and therefore not truly Christian. I provided evidence for that point. You did nothing to refute me but give me statistics and quotes about and from the very people whom I said to be heretics (and gave evidence to prove my point).
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I love dogs, I've always loved dogs
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: September 21 2012 at 23:14 |
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
The Dark Elf wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
For the evidence you provided as to the persecution of Jews in Christendom - I never denied that Christians persecuted Jews; I asked you to prove that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. If you look at what the mainstream "Christianity" actually was in Germany at the time, it's quite clear that it was not Christians responsible for the Holocaust any more than it was a Christian who perpetrated the massacre in Norway; Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian. |
Hitler did not gather Jews into ghettoes, force them into cattle cars, command the camps, guard the prisoners, herd the Jews into their final showers or stoke the ovens. The majority of these Nazis were indeed Christians, and identified themselves as such, and when the war was over most (at least those that escaped trial) picked up their old lives and went back to Protestant or Catholic churches on Sunday. Again, to think otherwise is not factual. |
Err...did you even read the rest of my post? Like the part about how many of the churches in Germany weren't even Christian? The type of "Christianity" that the Nazis were advocating was utter heresy, and bore little resemblance to the true faith. I will repeat what I said before: "Hitler and his followers were no more Christians than Breivik is, even though both parties claimed to be Christian." |
I read it. I disagree with it utterly. The majority of Germans were avowed Christians (well over 90% as can be found in the census of 1939): 54% claiming to be Protestants (most of these Lutherans) and 40% Catholics. Only 3.5% claimed some neo-pagan "Belief in God" - a very tiny portion of Germans. If you don't care for Wikipedia, then here is a page from another book, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust by Gerard Stephen Sloyan, Robert P. Ericksen, Susannah Heschel...
A very telling paragraph from the book reads as follows:
"Most of the Germans who welcomed Hitler's rise to power - who saw Jews increasingly deprived of their rights, who witnessed the burning synagogues and broken glass of Kristallnacht, who watched the removal of Jews from German soil, who listened to rumors of the annihilation of Jews in Poland and Russia - were self professed Christians. Most of the actual perpatrators - members of the SS and of the reserve police battalions, the shooters and scientists, those who ran the trains and those who ran the camps - received religious training in the Protestant or Catholic tradition."
These were Christian Germans that both participated or ignored the Holocaust, many enriching themselves from stolen Jewish art, furniture and appropriated companies, land and buildings while turning a deaf ear. Their German Christian forefathers in the 14th century annihilated whole quarters of Jews in cities, burned them alive in their houses, or, like in Strasbourg, these German Christians dragged 900 Jews from the city to an island and burnt them alive BEFORE the plague had reached the city. They were as Christian as Christians in Nazi Germany.
So please, do not speak the word "heresy" in regards to certain Christian sects. If the pope had gotten his hands on Martin Luther, he'd have burned him at the stake as a heretic (he was tried in absentia and found guilty by the Inquisition).
So yes, Christians were responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the Holocaust. To say otherwise with absurd apologetics is patently false. You may not like it, but it does not change the Truth.
P.S. And one wonders if the same ideological arguments are not rife in Muslim countries. Does the violent militance of al-Qaeda's brand of Islam cohere with both Sunni and Shi'ite belief? Or any other sect of Islam for that matter? We paint with broad strokes without seeing the fine brush lines that separate one believer from another. |
You keep making the same claims while ignoring every point I make. I explained to you why the German churches that supported the Holocaust were mostly heretical. You ignored my evidence and continued to claim the same things about Christians, when I had demonstrated that most of the people you are talking about were not Christians. You haven't proven anything until you answer my evidence.
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"Mostly heretical"? Is that even possible? In any case, there were important Catholic and Protestant hierarchy that supported Hitler and who prayed for Hitler at their masses:
"[Adolf Hitler is a] man of peace. ...The great deed of safeguarding peace...moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics of all the German dioceses...to extend congratulations and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday." Read in all Berlin pulpits: "God has heard the prayer of all Christendom for peace. By His grace and the tireless efforts of the responsible statesmen the terrible affliction of a war has been averted... [W]e desire now with a prayer and a Te deum to praise God for His goodness in that He has preserved peace for us...[and] assured the return of our Sudeten kinsmen to the German Reich."
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, commemorating Germany occupying Sudentenland, October 2, 1938
"Pastors in the Bavarian regional church are required as public officials to perform the following oath: 'I swear to God the Almighty and All-knowing: I will be loyal and obedient to the Führer of the Reich and Volk, Adolf Hitler, I will obey the laws, and I will conscientiously fulfill all my official duties, so help me God.' This law is effective immediately."
- Bishop Hans Meiser of the Bavarian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, May 18, 1938
"Those...entrusted with souls and the faithful will unconditionally support the great German state and the Führer, because the historical struggle against the criminal illusion of Bolshevism and for the security of German life, for work and bread, for the power and honor of the Reich and for the unity of the German nation, is obviously accomplished by the blessing of Providence. ...Faith and the intimate union of souls gives Christians the conviction that the natural community of the nation is called upon to realize a divine idea, and it follows that a truly religious life presupposes the practice of national virtues."
- Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, to Catholic clergy after meeting with Hitler, March 15, 1938
Even churchgoers expressed the same unconditional loyalty (and the same eternal hatred of the Jews:
Why don't our rulers declare themselves for the Volkskirche, which is fighting for a living Christianity? With our great leader Adolf Hitler, our previously dead church also experienced the reawakening of a vital spirit. ...[Julius] Streicher, the Franconian leader, said in a speech: 'The murder of Golgotha is written on the foreheads of the Jews.' Yes - and that is why there is a curse on that people. Jesus, however, died for us and so we should believe in him and accept him.
- German Christian woman, letter to Germany's Foreign Minister, August 27, 1935
And then Hitler himself:
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Adolf Hitler to Gerhard Engel, one of his generals, in 1941.
You are wrong. Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.
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When I said, "mostly heretical," I meant that most of the mainline churches were heretical, not that any particular church was "mostly heretical." Sorry for not being clear on that point.
Going on...you still haven't proved that these "Christians" whom you quote were not heretics. I am not asserting that leaders and members of mainstream churches did not support Hitler, I am asserting that these churches were heretical and therefore not truly Christian. I provided evidence for that point. You did nothing to refute me but give me statistics and quotes about and from the very people whom I said to be heretics (and gave evidence to prove my point).
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You use the word "heretic" quite often. The Catholic Church in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation deemed Protestants heretical, while founding Protestants like Zwingli and Calvin deemed the Papists heretical. The Early Christian church deemed Donatists and Gnostics heretical. They all believed they were Christian. Every last one of them. It was no different in Germany.
What you fail to understand is that both the Protestant and Catholic Churches' rabid support of Hitler leading up to WWII created the impression among the churchgoers that Hitler's hateful vision and his avowed wish to destroy the Jews was an act of divine providence, and several centuries of persecution of the Jews in Germany was once again given approval by the different denominations . By the time they realized what they had done, it was too late, and any outspoken members of the Churches were sent to concentration camps. This does not change the fact that nearly all Nazis had a Christian upbringing and Hitler himself identified himself as a Catholic during WWII.
In regards to the "Confessing Church", their actions that led to their breaking from the National Church was strictly along doctrinal lines and had nothing to do with Nazism per se.
In fact, during the Treysa Conference in 1945, U.S. State Dept. diplomat Robert Murphy stated:
"There is little evidence that the German Protestant church repented German's war of aggression or the cruelties visited upon other peoples and countries."
The German Prostetant Church produced the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt after the war (October 19, 1945) openly declaring it had done nothing to fight Nazism. Sadly, the "Declaration makes no mention of any particular atrocities committed during the Third Reich or of the church's support for Hitler during the early years of the regime." Even after the Nazi defeat they could not fully admit their culpability and support.
But one of the church council members who drafted the document, Martin Noemoller, knew full well the Church's complicity. He said unequivocally, "Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries."
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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Dean
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Posted: September 22 2012 at 06:51 |
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I've never met a mormon I didn't like - my department head in the MOD was a mormon and one of the nicest and most considerate people I have ever known, while I was a christian at the time we never had that many religious discussions, but in those we did have I never saw anything that would make me want to denounce him as a heretic Then I wasn't that sectarian in my christian views and as an atheist I still am not, a christian is a christian is a christian regardless of which church the adhere to. I've never met a muslim or a jew or a hindu or a sihk I didn't like either - as individuals we are all the same even in our differences. When it comes to religion we should focus on what makes us the same, not on what makes us different, it will never end wars, but it may make them less frequent.
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refugee
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Posted: September 22 2012 at 14:19 |
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He say nothing is quite what it seems;
I say nothing is nothing
(Peter Hammill)
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The Doctor
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Posted: September 23 2012 at 13:29 |
Dean wrote:
I've never met a mormon I didn't like - my department head in the MOD was a mormon and one of the nicest and most considerate people I have ever known, while I was a christian at the time we never had that many religious discussions, but in those we did have I never saw anything that would make me want to denounce him as a heretic Then I wasn't that sectarian in my christian views and as an atheist I still am not, a christian is a christian is a christian regardless of which church the adhere to. I've never met a muslim or a jew or a hindu or a sihk I didn't like either - as individuals we are all the same even in our differences. When it comes to religion we should focus on what makes us the same, not on what makes us different, it will never end wars, but it may make them less frequent. |
I disagree with this proposition. I have known Christians that are much more mellow about their beliefs and don't try to shove their god down others' throats and then there are those who do, some of this is individual, but I think denomination plays a role. The born-agains and the Southern Baptists are the worst at this from my experience, with the Catholics being the easiest going. Also, there are Christians who believe in a loving god, and try to be kind to others and put into practice the teachings of Christ as much as possible, while on the other hand, there are those who are much more Old Testament, vengeful god belivers who practice hate, bigotry and a belief that non-believers are beneath them (Westboro Baptist Church springs instantly to mind). Again, there is an individual component, but there is also a denomination component as well.
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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Dean
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Posted: September 23 2012 at 17:36 |
The Doctor wrote:
Dean wrote:
I've never met a mormon I didn't like - my department head in the MOD was a mormon and one of the nicest and most considerate people I have ever known, while I was a christian at the time we never had that many religious discussions, but in those we did have I never saw anything that would make me want to denounce him as a heretic Then I wasn't that sectarian in my christian views and as an atheist I still am not, a christian is a christian is a christian regardless of which church the adhere to. I've never met a muslim or a jew or a hindu or a sihk I didn't like either - as individuals we are all the same even in our differences. When it comes to religion we should focus on what makes us the same, not on what makes us different, it will never end wars, but it may make them less frequent. |
I disagree with this proposition. I have known Christians that are much more mellow about their beliefs and don't try to shove their god down others' throats and then there are those who do, some of this is individual, but I think denomination plays a role. The born-agains and the Southern Baptists are the worst at this from my experience, with the Catholics being the easiest going. Also, there are Christians who believe in a loving god, and try to be kind to others and put into practice the teachings of Christ as much as possible, while on the other hand, there are those who are much more Old Testament, vengeful god belivers who practice hate, bigotry and a belief that non-believers are beneath them (Westboro Baptist Church springs instantly to mind). Again, there is an individual component, but there is also a denomination component as well.
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I understand what you are saying, but I never said all christians are the same, I said they are all christians, which is the counter view to Jacob's that not all christians are christians
Edited by Dean - September 23 2012 at 17:36
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refugee
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Posted: September 24 2012 at 12:16 |
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/arnold-schwarzenegger-reveals-wife-maria-shriver-confronted-love-child-new-tell-all-book-article-1.1165667No big news at all, but still interesting to me because I signed a document in the end of June saying: Non disclosure agreement
Agreement between Schibsted Forlag, hereinafter called the publisher, and Espen Hagerup, hereinafter referred to as the translator. All content of the Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall manuscript is strictly confidential until the international release of the book or by other notice of the publisher. No information, content, extracts or otherwise related to the book must be leaked to any third party. Any breach of this contract may hold the translator legally responsible for this. Now, naturally, I wonder what happened. Daily News is clearly a "third party", and now they have printed extracts from the book more than a week before the release. Somebody who wanted to earn some easy money? Or maybe it’s the publisher, trying to draw some attention to the book? I have no idea. And read the comments. I’ve never been a fan of Arnold and I don’t share his political views, but he’s still a man, not an oak.
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He say nothing is quite what it seems;
I say nothing is nothing
(Peter Hammill)
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