"If there is a root of evil that became a terrifying force that almost brought the world to destruction in the first half of the twentieth century, it is the anti-religious ideologies of Germany and Russia, North Vietnam, and North Korea. It takes almost willful blindness to invert this historical fact, and to suppose that the religions that were persecuted and crushed by those brutal forces are the real sources of evil in the world."
- Keith Ward
@philokalia saidWhat do you think sonship is hoping for?
A very bold attempt to make this thread to be also about so called religious genocide.
Why not stick to the topic.
@philokalia saidWhat do you think sonship wants to debate?
And here comes the attempt to now turn it into a thread about hell. Apparently, this Christian is concerned that atheism might be being too strongly criticized.
The very first posts of the thread are just major attempts at deflecting from the topic.
@fmf saidI imagine the OP is intended to readdress the balance and to highlight that war crimes still occur in an environment without religion. On this point I fully accept that terrible things have happened in history where religion was not a motivator, such as greed or lust for power.
What do you think sonship is hoping for?
It is not atheism or theism for that matter that with singularity precipitates war crimes or acts of horror. It is the primitive human condition that often gives way to jealously, anger and greed. Whether it is a case or 'you have it and I want it' or you have it but God says I deserve it' it is invariably man's own basic weakness that enables such dark episodes to occur and reoccur.
(The quote in the OP of course is bias in the other direction, though balances out perhaps after the focus on Biblical war crimes in the other thread).
About six million Jewish people were murdered by Hitler's regime.
Expect now apologists for Atheism to come in with the latest trend - try to explain Hitler was a Christian.
Something about god on the buckles of the NAZI soldiers may be mentioned. Because the Third Reich exploited religious sounding language some atheists like David Silverman and Christopher Hitchens try to pen his abominations on Christian theology.
Eric Metaxas was a biographer of German theologian Bonhoeffer. He says the Hitler complained that Christianity taught "meekness and flabiness," which was of no use to NAZI ideology. The latter preached "ruthlessness and strength."
Nothing transcended the authority of the Fuhrer. He would answer no higher power. He was the supreme and ultimate leader wanting to rule not only the Germans but practically the world.
His driving rationale to carry out the Holocaust was greatly influenced by Darwinian survival of the fittest. In Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler wrote:
If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.
[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 4th printing (London: House & Blackett, 1932), pgs. 239-240 ]
@sonship saidI'm glad I made my post before you tendered this last effort.
About six million murdered by Hitler's regime.
Expect now apologists for Atheism to come in with the latest trend - try to explain Hitler was a Christian.
Something about god on the buckles of the NAZI soldiers may be mentioned. Because the Third Reich exploited religious sounding language some atheists like David Silverman and Christopher Hitchens try to pen h ...[text shortened]...
[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 4th printing (London: House & Blackett, 1932), pgs. 239-240 ]
I would like Duchess64 and Caissad4 to explain something about the scores of millions of unborn women whose lives were terminated in the wombs of their mothers since, let us say, Row v Wade.
Which do you think provded more FUEL to this mass extermination of unborn women (and men):
1.) Biblical concepts of humans being created in the image of God and invested with a spiritual and immaterial dignity from conception.
2.) Humans as more purely material collection of atoms and for whom likely no final accounting for their extermination of convenience will have to be answered for.
In short which do you think provided more ideological fuel for this holocaust - Christian (or biblical) theology or Atheism ?
@sonship saidYou talked of there being "no final accounting" except within a universe that accords with your belief system and is governed by your God.
Humans as more purely material collection of atoms and for whom likely no final accounting for their extermination of convenience will have to be answered for.
According to your beliefs, what is the "final accounting" for people who are non-believers and non-Christians, like the Jews?
What do you believe happened or happens to all the Jewish Holocaust victims and Jewish Holocaust survivors who died "unreconciled" to your God?
What is the "final accounting" you envisage for them?