This article is for people who think that “Darwinists” were responsible for the Holocaust. Yesterday, presumably because I am listed as a scientist in support of the Clergy Letter Project, I received an e-mail from a Christian clergyman, Steven D. Martin, who has this to say:
I am a United Methodist pastor who has turned to filmmaking as an extension of my ministry. While my films are not directly related to your work in the field of evolution, perhaps they might be interesting as a way of illustrating the importance of constantly working to have a constructive conversation between science and religion.
My web site, http://www.vitalvisuals.com, is full of resources for the church and university classroom that might help you. “Theologians Under Hitler” is a film about three major Protestant theologians who supported Hitler during the Third Reich. This film is a good resource for helping Christians understand the importance of keeping nationalism at bay. I think this relates directly to the debate over evolution, where a false science is being promoted for nationalistic/religious purposes.
I could find out little about Mr. Martin except for a press release here http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_[…]cfm?AID=5848 . But I checked out his website and watched a couple of segments from his films, most particularly a nine-minute segment from “Theologians under Hitler,” which discusses three prominent German theologians
who were also outspoken supporters of Hitler and the Nazi party. In 1933 [Paul] Althaus spoke of Hitler’s rise as “a gift and miracle of God.” [Emanuel] Hirsch saw 1933 as a “sunrise of divine goodness.” And [Gerhard] Kittel, the editor of the standard reference work on the Jewish background of the New Testament, began working for the Nazis to find a “moral” rationale for the destruction of European Jewry.
This provocative film asks: how could something like this happen in the heart of Christian Europe? Could it happen again? How does the scholarship of this period affect the church today? Does the church of today retain the ability to recognize profound evil?
Mr. Martin has also produced a film about Elisabeth Schmitz, a Christian theologian who stood up to the Nazis, and hints in his e-mail that he is making another film concerning the religious life of Charles Darwin:
Another helpful film in our catalog might be “Paradise Lost: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin.” This film portrays Darwin not only as a groundbreaking scientist, but a theologically-trained religious person.
That’s all I know; I neither endorse nor disparage Mr. Martin’s films. I request, however, that if you want to comment on this article, please, please, please do not waste our bandwidth by repeating the inane argument that the theologians and others who supported Hitler were not true Christians. They were ordained Christian clergyman, they identified themselves as Christians, and their congregations identified themselves as Christian. They were Christians.
Well clearly they were not “true christians”. Only those who agree with my personal belief can be called true and I am beginning to worry about the man in the mirror because he doesn’t look like my pictures.
The churches sold out to the Nazis as soon as he seemed like a winner. Where is that absolute morality we always hear about?
tsig, you forgot to emphasize the True Christian™. :p
I would recommend anyone who are interested in the subject to read “The Holy Reich” http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Reich-Co[…]5&sr=8-1
The book is very informative and describe the religious beliefs among top Nazis in great details. I think it’s partly the media’s fault that today we perceive the Nazis as a gang of crazy occultists when in fact the dominating faction in the party identify themselves as Christians of one stripe or another.
But heh, Nazis as occultists fit perfectly in movies and video games(Hellboy, Wolf 3D) so I don’t think anyone will care anyway.
From Pope Pius XII on down, many if not most Christians in Europe had no problem with the “profound evil” of Hitler, who was after all doing no more to the Jews than Martin Luther had proposed centuries earlier. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the[…]d_Their_Lies )
Today’s supporters of “Christian Reconstructionism” and “Dominionism” in America are proposing Final Solutions not much less drastic than Hitler’s. Rousas John Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation, or Dennis James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, or the many right wing whacko congregations who oppose all of evolution and biology and science - or the Dishonesty Institute and their fellow travelers who Lie For Jesus - morally stand right there with Reverend Martin’s “Theologians Under Hitler.”
Yes, it could happen again, and it could happen in America.
“The German Evangelical Church seemed to the Nazis to offer an almost ideal vehicle for the religious unification of the German people.”
- The Third Reich In Power (p220) by Richard J. Evans, from the chapters “Converting the Soul” covering the Nazi’s use and abuse of religious and scientific organisations to their own ends.
Matt - interesting info. Thanks for posting.
Actually many of the Dominionists would be worse than Hitler. Rushdooney’s proposals would kill 297 million of the 300 million people alive in the USA right now.
Rushdooney was clearly both a loon and evil. He was also one of the key founders of Xian Dominionism and Pat Robertson’s mentor.
Their proposal to while away the hours waiting for the xian dictatorship was to stone disobedient children to death. I guess everyone needs a hobby.
Thanks for this posting. For years I have been quite concerned with the fact that we Christians seem to be more interested in arguing about God than we are following the rigorous ethical standards a belief in God might demand.
I have created these films as a way of getting inside that concern and giving folks a way to talk about it. Again, thanks for the posting.
I have to ask a question. I understand that this “Theologians Under Hitler” film discusses three German theologians who supported Hitler and the Nazi’s.
However, since this thread is specifically aimed at “people who think that “Darwinists” were responsible for the Holocaust”, does this particular film slso discuss the issue of whether Darwinism contributed in some way or ways to the Nazi Holocaust?
FL
Given as how the vast majority of Nazi officials were, at best, indifferent to “Darwinism,” that many Nazi officials actively opposed “Darwinism” because Der Fuhrer said so, and that “Darwinism” was never ever brought up as a topic during the Nuremberg Trials, it is highly unlikely that the film will talk about the (very minimal to non-existant) contributions “Darwinism” made to the Holocaust, especially since the film is about the contributions that theologians, not “Darwinists,” made to the Holocaust.
FL: I challenge you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the[…]d_Their_Lies and then provide us with your discussion of the issue of whether Martin Luther and Lutheran Christianity may have contributed in some way or ways to the Nazi Holocaust.
FL: I challenge you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_P[…]he_Holocaust and then provide us with your discussion of the issue of whether Pope Pius XII and Roman Catholic Christianity may have contributed in some way or ways to the Nazi Holocaust.
FL: I challenge you to read http://www.literature.org/authors/d[…]n-of-species and count how many times the words “holocaust” or “Jew” or “Nazi” or “atrocity” or other similar terms appear.
Then compare the entire corpus of Darwin’s publications with the “Christian” publications of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation or Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries and discuss which set of publications advocates wholesale slaughter and other Nazi Holocaust-like activities.
Paul,
Good links to good documentation. Thank you.
FL …
Would you please tell us why the NAZIS had the inscription “Gott mit uns” on their belt buckles?
Since you probably don’t understand German, I’ll translate: “God is with us.” This is well documented. In fact, I have such a belt buckle from a Wehrmacht (German Army) uniform here in my study.
You don’t seem capable of understanding that centuries of Christian anti-semitism led to the destruction of Jews in Europe under the Christian NAZIS.
Before you come in here and presume to lecture us, I suggest that you acquire a little European history. You know, stuff more than your ignorant pastor thumped into your head.
Not only has FL proven time and time again that s/he is not interested in learning anything, ever, s/he has also proven that s/he doesn’t ever want anyone else to learn anything either. I call shenanigans and suggest immediate and automatic BW’ing. Thank you.
Unlikely. What may have contributed was the concept of Social Darwinism. Germany was vehemently antisemitic and the Nazis used these sentiments, which btw can also be found in Luther’s own writings (or rantings), to persecute the Jews, as well as various other groups they found unwelcome.
Where Darwinists responsible for the Holocaust? SInce people of all walk of life contributed to the Holocaust, this will undoubtably include people who had come to accept the facts of science.
The issue of this posting however is not so much to lay blame as to discuss the attempt of some to dismiss Christians who supported Nazism as somehow not ‘real Christians’. Such an approach does a disservice to the lessons of history where Christians, quite willingly, collaborated with the Nazis. If one ignores history, one is likely to repeat it, and we already see some evidences of this.
How about those who believe that Iran needs to be invaded to set in motion a catastrophic series of events, necessary for the end-times to be triggered? I find it incredibly scary to hear Christians resort to such foolish arguments and yet, this is hardly an uncommon sentiment in our country.
Remember John McCain and John Hagee?
Source: Evangelist John Hagee Wants War With Iran, and He Wants It Now! by Bill Barnwell
I don’t know whether to be ashamed that both John Hagee and I are both the same species, or horrified to the point of nausea that a grown man could possibly think of such an odious parade of apocalyptic nonsense.
That Darwin was “theologically trained” looks like mere fact. After all, he had planned (or his family had planned for him) to settle down as a country parson. But in his young days, he was rather a tepid believer, if the biographies are to be believed. And in his old days, a closet atheist, who didn’t like to discuss the matter because he preferred to remain a respectable gentleman and didn’t want to upset his wife. Calling him religious seems a bit off. But there’s surely something interesting to do about the evolution of his views on religion.
Hitler was “theologically trained” - here are some quotes from Hitler: “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.” - and “My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them…” (more at http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm - see also http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm )
Stalin was “theologically trained” - he studied to be a Russian Orthodox priest, but his views on religion evolved, too.
John Hagee was “theologically trained” - Rousas John Rushdoony and Dennis James Kennedy were “theologically trained” - it sounds like our friend “FL” (above) may have been “theologically trained.”
Where do you want to go with this “theological training” meme, Christophe?
There seems to have been more references to Pasteur and Koch than to Darwin. See some citations given by “Respectful Insolence” at Scienceblogs.com for March 29, 2008:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2[…]_you_sin.php
Perhaps, but it could also be a case of discussing individuals (albeit “major” “theologians”) behaviors as opposed to then more relevant behaviors of social groups. Some of the churches reactions have been commented on; I was inspired to look for academicians, as my alma mater Uppsala University has been mentioned in these circumstances.
Alas, I’m no historian, and the web resources doesn’t back up my dim memories of spurious reading here. It seems clear that the swedish Nysvenska rörelsen [en ‘New Swedish Movement’] was started by Uppsala students 1930, the year after the infamous swedish national socialist party was organized. Nysvenska rörelsen was a reaction to “the import of foreign policies”. Which is ironic, considering its inspiration seems to have been mainly fascism at first but later nazism in particular. It soon had to move to Malmö, however, and albeit Malmö has a university it seems the further ideological development was by politicians and intellectuals rather than academics.
The other tenuous historical connection between swedish academia, Uppsala and nazism is a common inspiration by the eugenics movement. The first “outright race biological institution” was purportedly started in Uppsala 1921. The head Herman Lundborg was a docent at Uppsala University.
Interestingly, it seems nazis racist inspiration was shared with the eugenics movement stemming from the french diplomat Arthur de Gobineau race theories. He seems to have been posted among other places in Stockholm, and he believed himself to have been a descendant of Nordic Vikings among others, though it looks like most of his inspiration was from travels and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
And the thread interconnects back to Uppsala academics, again tenuously, through student Rudolf Kjellén, which would go on to develop “geopolitics” at Göteborg university as political scientist. (He went on to become a conservative politician.)
Kjellén was a a student of Friedrich Ratzel, who invented Lebensraum. Kjelléns key concepts shaped Germany’s and Nazi geopolitik through General Karl Haushofer (who Rudolf Hess among others studied under).
Against my expectations I didn’t find strong connections to academia at Uppsala. Instead the whole swedish society was under the same european influences as Germany. Sweden had at first severely restricted Jews. But the integration process started and the anti-semitism disappeared largely long before the first World War. (Albeit the last prohibition, against Jews for political office, was actually not lifted until 1951.)
Worse was that the swedish military and royalty had ties with nazism and other racial politics. The swedish soldier instruction (1929-1942) read roughly: “Our capability and strength is founded in the peoples racial characteristics.” The rather forceful stance of the swedish prime minister for a neutral position during the war may (again, no historian) have been a forced result of repressing military interest for nazi ideas as much as it was his own view.
Btw, the linked “Northstate Science” blog adds on the discussed Wikipedia description of the catholic church leader during the WWII:
Even today we find politicians who view God as being on their side:
““Only God, who appointed me, will remove me, not the M.D.C., not the British,” Mr. Mugabe declared in the city of Bulawayo on Friday. “Only God will remove me!””
Clearly Mugabe embraces the motto “In God We Trust”.
Okay, the answer from two posters seems to be “it’s unlikely that this film does so.” That’s a reasonable answer, and I offer reasonable thanks to those two posters.
However, it just seems kinda silly for one poster to advocate sending my question to the Bathroom Wall.
FL
Torbjörn Larsson brought up the name of Gobineau as a precursor. I would like some help on his relationship with Darwin. I understand that Gobineau wrote his major work, “The Inequality of Human Races”, before “On the Origin of Species” appeared. But I have gotten the impression that Gobineau was opposed to the idea of evolution. Anybody know?
Many notable scientist (Galton for instance) published scientific papers showing the empirical basis of racism and arguing for the practice of eugenics. Since scientists at the heart of the academic establishment argued for scientific racism, we are forced to evaluate the basis of their claims. There are only two fundamental ways to evaluate the data. We can either adopt a postmodernist approach and claim that scientific research only confirms the experimenter’s biases. Thus we can argue that racist conclusions demonstrate the flaws of a scientific world view. Alternatively we can evaluate the empirical claims sincerely at the risk of being persuaded by them. If we find that the claims are correct, we must become racist ourselves, but if we find they are incorrect we will claim that those who advocate scientific racisms are not True Scientist™, meaning they fail to evaluate the data properly because of their biases. Observations about the popularity of scientific racism among scientists are non sequiters of no interest.
It seems only fair to allow the theologians a similarly logically consistent approach when assessing theological opinions. Neither scientist nor theologians should pretend that thoughtless and inconsistent practice of their respective intellectual disciplines can magically prevent moral atrocities, but I see no a priori fallacy in claiming that a book outlines an ethical system and that some action is inconsistent with this system. This is no different than saying that racisms is inconsistent with scientific evidence.
With this understanding, is it fair to claim that science or Christianity contributed to the holocaust? Since the ultimate causal origin of scientific racism is not nature herself, but rather human prejudices (unfortunate consequences of human evolution perhaps) claiming that scientific practice led to the holocaust is simply incorrect.
When making the claim that Christianity itself leads to the holocaust, you are making a claim about the central logic of Christian theology and must support your argument with references to this logic itself. Again in the same way as with scientific racism we can simply reject the validity of religion, or we can ask whether religion properly leads to the conclusions. Observations about the sociological climate of Europe, the inscription on Nazi belt buckles and Luther’s writings are simply Non squiturs. Non sequiturs are incapable of lending any rational support to an argument despite their rhetorical efficacy.
Only because… oh, never mind. It’s pointless.
“The highly influential theories of Aryan racial superiority propounded by the counter-revolutionary Arthur de Gobineau were explicitly opposed to Darwin’s theory of evolution…” - http://books.google.com/books?id=9v[…]esult#PPA176,M1 page 177 (beware - the link actually includes the “ ,M1 “ - you’ll have to manually add it)
“There have been racist social theories in the past that used evolution (the way the crusaders used religion) in an attempt to justify their ideology. A common claim that is that evolution teaches us about the “Aryan Master Race”. This theory was developed by Arthur de Gobineau and it pre-dates Darwin’s theory. Gobineau’s writings influenced many later racist ideologies. As evolution began to be more scientifically validated, it was incorporated falsely into various racist theories. They mistook the fact of evolution to mean that some races are “more evolved” (see next myth) than others, whereas evolution clearly teaches otherwise. This gave rise to “Social Darwinism” which gave led to the practice of eugenics. Neither movement was supported by Darwin himself and neither is supported by science. Those who have mixed racism with science were doing so in defiance of the teachings of science.” - http://schadey.blogspot.com/2008/04[…]nswered.html
I will make reference to the Crusades - essentially all of them - and note that they occurred prior to Darwin.
And sooner or later we will have to discuss the assorted Holocaust-like pogroms, wars of extermination, ethnic cleansing and other atrocities lovingly described in great detail in the (pre-Christian) Old Testament. Can you explain how Darwin affected these events?
I particularly like how this quote sounds so much like the No True Scotsman™ argument. I certainly don’t disagree with the sentiment, but when answering such a myth I think it might have been appropriate to discuss WHY racist assertions disagree with reality, instead of dogmatically asserting that they do. As it stands the rhetoric gives a very ecclesiastical impression to me.
The reason why it was advocated that your posts be sent to the Bathroom Wall is because you’ve grated everyone’s nerves raw with the way you rarely, if ever, miss an opportunity to present your false dilemma of how Christians can not be Christians unless they reject Evolution, or how you eagerly demonstrate malevolent ignorance that would otherwise be easily dispelled by reading a book.
If you actually read books about 20th Century history and politics, you would have known that Charles Darwin’s idea of “descent with modification” has had extremely little political clout in influencing the politics of theological friendly and unfriendly tyrannies. But, the possibility is far greater that a vampire is more likely to go sunbathing with garlic butter than you are going to read a book your spiritual handlers did not give you expressed permission to read.
Why will you do such a thing? What on earth does it prove? That people enjoy killing people? You will find no argument against that from me.
*blink* *blink*
1) what is a pogrom?
2) Who an earth said anything about Darwin affecting war?
3) Though, I would like to point out that while I would never ever claim that the scientific theory of evolution leads to war (or much of anything), your “evidence” to the contrary is ridiculously illogical. By the same token we can conclude that Hitler did not affect the holocaust, since “ethnic cleansing and other atrocities” predate the wittings of Hitler. The preexistence of wars only shows that Darwinism is not a necessary cause of war, it may still be a sufficient cause of war. (Thats right, you just argued Hitler didn’t cause the holocaust. Ten points for that one.)
4) I would like people to make rational arguments in support of their points. My personal opinion on the wars “lovingly described in … Old Testament” is that IDGARA. So, no, I don’t have to discuss them because they are not a matter of any consequence to me. But, if you would like to base irrational arguments on them, then I will address them since I would like you to make rational arguments.
In conclusion, I am drinking coffee therefor you are an atheist.
FWIW, catching up on old threads.
Or we could more parsimoniously conclude that the scientists claim was simply wrong, and that they, unwittingly or not, supported politics.
They same conclusion is of course applicable on the religions under discussion.
Sorry about any double comments. There seems to be a problem with the browser cache.
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