For my fellow ignorant Theists
Offline This is just going to be rant, of course everyone is welcome to critique it. I know not all theists are ignorant, this isn't a rant to ALL theists, just the one ignorant about science and history. What brought about this? A discussion with an American friends regarding the health care plan as well as this loving morning after a night of fun with friends I had the a knock at my door at 9AM from some good old Jehovah witnesses.......needless to say I am not in a pleasant mood, because the amount of ignorant statements made by both parties just made me sad for our education system, and for how badly indoctrinated these people are.
First off, I am an atheist, I am a libertine to boot, with some conservative leanings regarding the law and punishment, I am not a fascist, a liberal (in the democratic party or in the liberal party sense). I am not a communist, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a Nazi. I do not want the death of Christians or other theists, I do not want churches to be burnt down or destroyed, I do not desire any of that at all. I simply do not believe in any form of a god, gods, goddesses or supernatural deities. I do not believe in evolutionism (which doesn't exist it's just a made up word made to sound meaning to those that believe in creation) I do not believe in social Darwinism. I am not a Darwinist either. I do believe in the theory of Evolution as the best explanation of how life has evolved and been able to survive to this point in time, no I do not believe we were created from dirt by the breath of a god (this some how more believable than we evolved from a common ape ancestor?) nor do I believe we were created by drift wood (as per Norse mythology) or any other non-natural explanation that requires a supernatural deity.
With that said I do not go around robbing people, killing people, or generally causing chaos and mayhem, I am a law abiding citizen of my country (Canada) that seeks to have a peaceful co-existence with my neighbors and their family, for their peace means my family has peace, and the general harmony I share they get to share, it is in everyone best interest as a neighbors and as a society to co-exist. I do not need the threat of eternal hell and punishment to be good, nor do I need to fear angering some non existing god, I can and do act by the law because I much rather live peacefully with everyone instead of in conflict with them.
Now with history lesson, Hitler was not a liberal in any sense of the world, he was also not a socialist, he was very much so a fascist with lots of conservative leanings which many Christian have in America and in Canada have wanted to happen in their respective countries. Let me share with you some of the ideology of the Nazi regime. 1) they believed in the racial purity (liberals do not believe in racial purity) as well as getting rid of the undesirables, Jews (many right wing Christians would love to) Slavs, Roma's, homosexuals (yet another conservative favorite to get rid of), the mentally and physically challenged and communists (yet again another conservative favorite to get rid of). With this said the Nazi's wanted a Christan nation (hey republicans always spew this one) and in their efforts made the national church of Germany, by nazifying the German protestant church. (I know many a Christians that get a hard on for the idea of a national christian church that is government sponsored and the ONLY church recognized by the government no other religion allowed) As well compulsory membership into Nazi youth regime so that they could be indoctrinated into the parties ideologies and attendance to church(I know this is another christian favorite that ALL youths get taught about the bible in church and school basically indoctrination and many many republicans push for bibles and Christianity to be taught in school if they could get that pesky first amendment out of the way)
Many other programs they used as well, Germany for germans (hey the US for americans only, no immigrants repubicans tried to this when they were in power with Bush) Non germans could not marry germans, homosexuals were arrested in later on killed off (conservative christians and the republican party have expressed so many times the idea of outlawing homosexuality). But you cannot argue an atheist wants this, that Hitler was an atheist, and that all atheist are some how tied to the Nazi regime.
The whole socialized medical thing, many secular nations have this, they do not want to A) restrict you of your choice of doctors, B) Kill off the old and weak people. It's there so everyone can visit a doctor and get the medical help they need. It will not be up the government which type of medical treatment you get, right now however it is up the insurance company that wants to make a profit off of you, that decides what type of treatment you get, some how this is ok, but have the government pay for it is bad.....does this make logic? Nope, is it fear based on massive ignorance? Yes, in Canada, and various other counties, we are not denied the right to have other medical insurance if we want to, many have additional work insurance and we are allowed to visit any doctor we want, as well we get the treatment required without the fear of going bankrupt because little jimmy got sick. Why are American so ill informed, the age of the internet should allow you to actually do a wee bit of research regarding socialized medicine to realize it actually works, may not be the greatest thing in the world, but I think it's better than having a company that wants profits deciding the future of my health.
So please when I say I am an atheist, don't look at me like I am a monster, a child molester (because we all know how those god loving priests sure loved those little boys and girls), a fascist or a communist, atheists have various beliefs, ranging from liberal and conservative to anarchists and communists. I just don't believe in a god or any god or supernatural deity. that's it, that's all.
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I'm sorry that you had an evidently rough experience.
As more face palms and smacking my head of the wall with the utter ignorance that was presented to me. For one the Jehovah's Witness people could not fathom how a person could be good without god, and or why anyone would want to be good without god being there to tell them to be good (these are people that I hope remain believers because they might be the type to start killing if they just lost that belief all of the sudden). As well they started with the typical Hitler, Stalin, pot pol were atheists crap, and no matter how many times I tried to explain to them that they all followed some form of communist dogma, which was their problem in the end, they didn't either A) get it, B) didn't want to get it.
As for my American friend, well needless to say we aren't going to be talking for a while, he has his head right up his ass, believes that the Democrats and Obama want to kill his old nanny because she's old and that he will have to see whatever doctor the government tells him to see, and we won't get any help if he sees one if he is sick. Just utter stupidity.
Let's not get into the business of making stuff up, perhaps you should actually take a history lesson, Nazi youth weren't indoctrinated into Christianity, in fact religious teachings were excluded from the Hitler Youth.
Hitler was a Christian in only a opportunist sense, and the leaders of the Nazi party weren't big fans of Christianity either. Martin Borman, claimed that Christianity must be absolutely broken, because it was incompatible with Nazi Socialism, and the "scientific worldview".
The "Thirty Point Program" called for the cessation of publication and distribution of the bible, and the removal of crucifixes and pictures of saints from the altars to be replaced by Mein Kamf, and a sword. Hitler also planned on getting rid of Christian Churches, after gaining control of western Europe.
The endorsed worldview of the Nazi party, wasn't Christianity, their private writings and comments on it reveal they were repulsed by it, they endorsed a "scientific worldview", you can call it deluded version of it all you want, but I'd claim that anyone who exalts science as a worldview is deluded, including Richard Dawkins. It's not science, it's a cult of science, which Nazis, Jacobins, and the Dawkins like all have in common.
To claim that it's because of the republican party that we are incapable of adopting a national health care plan, is sheer ignorance on your part, the Democratic majority has the power to adopt a plan on its own, regardless of republican opinion. But top ranking officials in the party have objections to it, that are not as empty as the caricatures you attempt to paint. Cost is a huge factor in the decision, if in our current crisis it's feasible to adopt such a plan, and if the plan actually would work from a cost benefit analysis.
America is not Canada, or Europe, we have an entirely different culture in play, and much a larger and divided population to tend to. Saying it works in Canada, therefore it will work the same in the US, is another statement of ignorance.
Secondly, healthcare providers being driven by a sense of "profit" is not in and of itself a bad thing, judging that individuals are consumers, and that their intense competition in play by providers, healthcare providers seek to provide service that is satisfying to their end users. Companies tend to provide health care packages that attract and retain desirable employees. Most of the individuals who oppose national health care, oppose it because they are satisfied with their current condition, are not keen on paying more taxes, or the redistribution of wealth for the sake of others, or at the price of the service they have now.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/hitler_and_martin_luther
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/2008_04.html
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-and this against their own nation."
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: 'by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
"The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed." Mein Kampf, vol. i, ch. xi
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." - Adolf Hitler, Speech, April 26, 1933
Excerpts that I've seen from Mein Kamf and Hitler's speeches, like these, show him professing that the Nazis were working on behalf of their Creator and that organisms cannot change into different 'kinds.' At this point, I'm not sure whether he was Christian by the start of WWII, but he was definitely a theist. Overall, he actually seemed to adhere to the average Creationist's position of today: microevolution but not macroevolution. I don't remember seeing any evidence that the Nazis endorsed a scientific worldview, but if you have some, I'd like to see it. Heck, the way in which Nazism functioned, with its totalitarian government, censorship, propaganda, etc., was directly antithetical to science.
It should also be noted, of course, that the claim that the Jews were inferior was complete BS and that social darwinism is a naturalistic fallacy.
What private writings?
How is that deluded? Anyways, that might depend on how we're defining 'worldview.'
That's like an oxymoron.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
As I said Hitler was a christian only in an opportunist sense. He was like a politician who only confess christian faith in public for the sake of winning votes, while in discussion with his close confidants, he professed his disdain for Christianity, and a need to be rid of it.
Here are the facts: the Nazis had a thirty point plan to get rid of the bible, remove crucifixes and pictures of saints from alters, be rid of the christian church once Western Europe was under their control, and they excluded religious teachings from the Nazi Youth programs. The high ranking officials of the Nazi Party, were no fan of Christianity, in fact they despised it and found it incompatible with Nazi ideology, regardless if some of the populace didn't perceive it that way.
Here's Hitlers private view of Christianity: "Whether it's the Old Testament or the New, or simply the sayings of Jesus, it's all the same old Jewish swindle. It will not make us free. You cannot make an Aryan of Jesus; that's nonsense."
Compare this with your statement he made to the masses, and you have what i claimed, an individual who only confessed Christianity in public to win public support, but was not himself a christian, in fact he was a person repulsed by this "Jewish swindle", as where the other high ranking officials of the party, such as Goebbels, and Bormann.
To quote Bormann: "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable".[50] In 1942 he also declared in a confidential memo to Gauleiters that the Christian Churches 'must absolutely and finally be broken.' Thus it is evident that he believed Nazism, based as it was on a 'scientific' world-view, to be completely incompatible with Christianity."
And that would be a bogus reading of the quote. His claim is the human beings, should differentiate themselves from other animals by their strength, and intelligence, that's it. The literal merit of foxes remaining foxes, was not the point. Secondly Hitler view of science, was the view held by every advanced, western nation at that time, Eugenics was practiced from Sweden, to Canada, and it was view in popular currency among the scientific establishment of the time. It may have been proven false some number of years later, but at the time their view of science was quite accurate to the best of their knowledge.
And this view is plain retarded, totalitarianism isn't antithetical to science, these sort of claims are made by individuals who make science into a religion. Science is a tool, it's slave to human ambition, regardless of those ambitions are destructive, moral, or immoral. We don't say mathematics is antithetical to totalitarianism, and to treat science as such is to make it into some sort of divinity. Science is indifferent to it's use and direction. Nazis understanding of science was far from naive at the time, in fact it stood at the four front, the tools, and weapons used were at the height of scientific ingenuity. It may be debunked science now, as any of current scientific understanding of things may be debunked at some future time, but it wasn't debunked back then, where it was in vogue.
Because science is not a map of an individuals ambitions, science only informs a worldview. Science is not in the business of telling you how you should live your life, it's only a tool informing how you choose to live your life. Science in not view of the world, it informs a view of the world. Our ambitions, our concerns, the directions we choose to live our life in (our worldview), these are not scientific decisions, though they can be informed by it, like they can be informed by the weather, or mathematics, and financial feasibility.
An individual who doesn't give two shits about global warming, whose concerns are devoted only to himself, and his immediate family, and not generations after this, is not behaving "unscientifically", he can have all the knowledge available about global and still hardly have any concern.
Anyone who claims science as a worldview is making a religion out of it. Their elevating science into some form of divinity with it's own magic powers of endowing human ambition in a particular direction. This is the sort of beliefs that allows you to believe in this sort of "purety" and "holiness" of science, that it stands in opposition to totalatarinism, or various forms of immorality. The Jacobins proposed the creation of a "Church of Science", Rogsiepierre created a "goddess of reason". Interviews with Nazi with various historians, reveals they believed their view were rooted in science, and they held a divinity like esteem for science and rationalism. The Dawkins-like are just tamed descants of this deluded form of thinking.
No true Scotsman fallacy and other bat squeeze - got it
As I've implied, I don't know if Hitler was a Christian, but he wasn't an atheist either.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA006_1.html
It's what the quote seems to be saying, that organisms cannot evolve into different species, unless I've taken it out of context, which I'm pretty sure I haven't.
It doesn't say anything about humans being superior to all other animals. What's your justification for this interpretation that you seemed to have pulled out of your ass?
Okay, perhaps I went about this the wrong way.
We use science to study the world; it is a systematic search for truth. For science to be most effective, it must be unbiased and allow for the free exchange of ideas. Even the definition of science implies these characteristics: gaining knowledge through observation and experimentation. Totalitarian governments and cults, by their very nature, are detrimental to this process. That's what I meant when I said Nazism was antithetical to science, and a science cult was an oxymoron. In other words, the way I understand "science" is that if it's not impartial regarding everything in the natural world, then it's not realy science.
If you disagree with this definition of science, then that's fine; I don't want to debate semantics. At least then I'll know why you've taken the positions that you have taken. Again, I'm just going by the definitions.
Alright, fair enough.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Well...eh...he's not saying that Hitler wasn't a 'real' Christian; that would be a True Scotsman. He's saying that Hitler pretended he was a Christian in public when he actually hated Christianity.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we are overly blessed with many like your friend. But I'm sure we in America don't hold a monoploy on stoopid folk
Sort of like Ted Haggard was only a christian in an opportunistic sense. Of course I would extend Ted's ambitions to each and every other theist priest, pastor or lay leader...
Respectfully,
Lenny
"The righteous rise, With burning eyes, Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies, To beat and burn and kill"
Witch Hunt from the album Moving Pictures. Neal Pert, Rush
And this comes out of your deluded ignorance, a desire to see the world by what coddles you and makes you feel good, not by what it factually is. Yep, I guess your model applies to Desmond Tutu, Rev. King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Herbert Mccabe, and etc...?
This sort of anti-theist fueled delusions have gotten stale, it's perhaps time for you to find some new material.
I stand (or sit) corrected. Shoutld never write when headed out the door for rehearsal.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin