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Post by FloggingSully on Mar 28, 2007 10:52:08 GMT -5
Well, I took a comparitive religion class in college where religion was defined as having 3 characteristics: 1) a percieved "ultimate" (i.e. God), 2) a human transformation in responce to the percieved ultimate (i.e. going to heaven), and 3) I think the last was a set of guidance reguarding how to achieve this transformation (though I'm not sure I got that last one right).
If you use this definition then extreme nationalism could be considered a religion and if this nationalism was the cause of the war, then it could be argued that religion caused the war.
If you use another definition of religion (i.e. "A tradition where people go to church on Sundays and pray to God") then I don't believe religion was a cause of the war.
hope that made sense
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Post by ugly on Mar 28, 2007 10:57:06 GMT -5
It makes sense. I will tell you that I have never heard that argument before and the only one I have heard is the reference to Christianity. But I see what you are saying.
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Post by The Big Not Quite as Stiffy on Mar 28, 2007 12:06:24 GMT -5
From what I remember most of Hitler's agenda was written about in his book Mein Kampf. I don't recall anything in the book making it a religous war, and I think if that was Hitler's intentions he definitely would have made that clear. I'm under the impression it was a war to eliminate the 2 great evils, Communism and Judaism. Big, since you have read it will you please correct me if I'm wrong.
And on a side note, just curious as to who else has read the book?
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Post by Big on Mar 28, 2007 13:48:04 GMT -5
Hitler could very well get the idea that Aryan race was superior from religion because, correct me if I am wrong, but don't German ethnic people have characteristics of white supremacy, blonde hair and blue eyes?
Hitler wanted to own the World. That is why he started the war. He felt he was the second coming and Jews and Communism just happened to be icing on the cake. He noticed that Jews, when given the opportunity, have the ability to climb to power by becoming wealthy and controlling the government. You see, back then it was a known fact that Jews came up with the idea of Communism in Soviet Union. So, Hitler feared and despised Jews at the same time.
Hitler did not even intend to create great life for German people. He was so twisted he wanted robots. For example, he expected a mother that heard her son saying something against the "German cause" to report him to the police, so that he could be taken away forever. If she did not, she would be taken away together with her son because the neighbors were expected to notify the police, and so on.
This was all in Mein Kumpf. He expected Germans to dominate the World and put all Nazi laws ahead of feelings, emotions, and logic.
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Post by lkwdsteve on Mar 28, 2007 18:34:22 GMT -5
" Hitler could very well get the idea that Aryan race was superior from religion because, correct meif I am wrong, but don't German ethnic people have characteristics of white supremacy, blonde hair and blue eyes?"
Not sure of the point here. Some of ideas that influenced Hitler and Nazism were false influences. Ie-Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nazi's appropriated his name and some of his phrases without regard to his actual philosophy. Some would tell you that Nietzche was anti-semetic because the Nazi's celebrated him so much. But that wasn't true at all.
"He felt he was the second coming and Jews and Communism just happened to be icing on the cake. He noticed that Jews, when given the opportunity, have the ability to climb to power by becoming wealthy and controlling the government."
Hitler clearly was trained to hate the Jews and his account contained in Mein Kampf of when it "hit him" what a Jew was (this happened in his vagabond days in Vienna) is both chilling and a lesson in the psychology involved in stigmatizing groups of people.
"You see, back then it was a known fact that Jews came up with the idea of Communism in Soviet Union. So, Hitler feared and despised Jews at the same time."
Perhaps. But you leave out of this account the fact that Hitler' had a problem with the Slavs as a race. Germany was to get it's "Leibestraum" (living space) at the expense of the inferior Slavic races to the East. His eyes were not set long term on the West. They were on the East all along.That he went about it by attacking Rusia seemed to shock some people. They had listened to his words in speeches and without realizing that he had laid out his plans in total in Mein Kampf. It was right there all along for the reading if anyone bothered (maybe Churchill, a lone voice in the wilderness of British politics at the time, read it).
"Hitler did not even intend to create great life for German people."
Actually he did in his fevered mind. A "Folkish" state was the ideal. He did many good things, ON THE SURFACE, for his people. The problem was his intentions. He created a vibrant and healthy youth movement in Germany. That would have been great if he had left them alone. And hadn't "indoctrinated" them at the same time.
But, instead, he was ultimately forging a weapon for war with his "training" of the youngsters.
Hitler was a Pagan racist.
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Post by Big on Mar 28, 2007 18:46:31 GMT -5
The blonde hair and blue eyes thing I got from reading Malcolm X biography when I was in high school. In that book Malcolm clearly states his conversion to Islam was due to the fact that Christian God was with blonde hair and blue eyes, the accepted purest form of a white human.
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Post by lkwdsteve on Mar 28, 2007 18:56:54 GMT -5
The blonde hair and blue eyes thing I got from reading Malcolm X biography when I was in high school. In that book Malcolm clearly states his conversion to Islam was due to the fact that Christian God was with blonde hair and blue eyes, the accepted purest form of a white human. That's a big jump from Malcolm X to Hitler. I reject the notion that religion is the source of racism. Rather the opposite would be true. Racism would come first and a culture's resident religions might incorporate such attitudes already present. Perhaps. I read Malcolm X's book around 1986 or so. I felt well disposed toward him based on his writings. He was a great man, that the USA Islamic power structure came to fear and thus they murdered him. |
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Post by lkwdsteve on Mar 28, 2007 18:59:59 GMT -5
Good discussion Big.
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Post by Big on Mar 28, 2007 19:01:12 GMT -5
Religion can do whatever people that practice it want it to do. Kind of like a car driven either by a responsible driver or a criminal.
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Post by satiev1 on Mar 28, 2007 20:17:29 GMT -5
The Pope, Hitler, and Mussoluni were all on the same page.
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Post by satiev1 on Mar 28, 2007 20:19:05 GMT -5
Hitler could very well get the idea that Aryan race was superior from religion because, correct me if I am wrong, but don't German ethnic people have characteristics of white supremacy, blonde hair and blue eyes? Hitler wanted to own the World. That is why he started the war. He felt he was the second coming and Jews and Communism just happened to be icing on the cake. He noticed that Jews, when given the opportunity, have the ability to climb to power by becoming wealthy and controlling the government. You see, back then it was a known fact that Jews came up with the idea of Communism in Soviet Union. So, Hitler feared and despised Jews at the same time. Hitler did not even intend to create great life for German people. He was so twisted he wanted robots. For example, he expected a mother that heard her son saying something against the "German cause" to report him to the police, so that he could be taken away forever. If she did not, she would be taken away together with her son because the neighbors were expected to notify the police, and so on. This was all in Mein Kumpf. He expected Germans to dominate the World and put all Nazi laws ahead of feelings, emotions, and logic. Big, the Germans were not brainwashed. They were just waiting for a moment to start war and a leader. Throughout their history, the germans have always started wars. Have they been brainwashed throughout history. The german people are a people of war and not dialogue. Facism cannot survive without the people's support. |
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Post by lkwdsteve on Mar 29, 2007 9:07:57 GMT -5
FloggingSully,
In response to your post about definition of religion. I had to gather my thoughts for this, hence the delay.
DEFINITIONS
I don't like this definition of religion put forth by the comparative religion class. And I don't see a jump to extreme nationalism contained in that definition. Not only would this depend on the definition of religion but it would depend on the definition of specific words like "ultimate" and "transformation". You can end of with definitions so broad as to be meaningless, where they would seemingly inform every part of our life.
BIG'S POSTS
Don't mistake the contents of Big's posts here. He is well aware that religion had nothing to do with Hitler. He just can't pass up the opportunity to take shots at religion regardless how much off the subject matter at hand that it takes him.
METHOD OF ARGUMENT
1.) (Classic) Equivocation on the word God.
Folks religious will frequently hang their hat on the premiss that the very state of nature around us proves the existence of God (and therefore the correctness of the Bible). We see the work of Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas offered (I believe those are two good examples).
They end up with a proof of an ultimate being.
AND THEN THEY STOP, right there. It is ASSUMED that the ultimate being shown to exist by pure logic, is the God of the Bible. I see this time and time again. The problem is they have not proved the existence of the Biblical God, even if they have proved an ulimate being. I counter this method of argument by immediately demanding an accounting of the CHARACTERISTICS of the "proven" ultimate being. What you find is a list being developed that doesn't match the list of characteristics as outlined in Bible for it's God. For example none of these so-called proofs envision an EMOTIONAL ultimate being. But according to the Bible that is exactly what we have: an emotional God.
The equivocation occurs on the definition of the word God. You prove one definition of the word to be true (whether you actually have or not) so that you can proclaim to the world that a different definition of the word is true. And that's bad logic.
2.) Equivocation on the word religion.
I hope you see where this is going. The effort to proclaim Hitler as religious isn't an effort to understand Hitler. It's an effort to slam religion. That's the goal.
The desire would be to associate a known evil, Hitler, with religion. One method, that we see above, would be to broaden the definition of the word religion until it gets SO BROAD that we can fit the concept of National Socialism under it's umbrella.
The next step would be to proclaim to the world that Hitler was primarily influenced by religion. The proclaimer may or may not know himself what he is doing (that he is being illogical), the listeners may or may not know that he is using a specious definition for the word religion. Chances are that those who are already ill-disposed toward religion will nod their heads without really understanding what they are agreeing with.
Last point:
If National Socialism is a religion then so too is atheism.
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Post by matclone on Mar 29, 2007 9:25:21 GMT -5
The desire would be to associate a known evil, Hitler, with religion.
Ha, isn't that the truth. Everyone's trying to get mileage out of Hitler by tying him to the mast of their ideological opponent. Some have even managed to get their false associations in the lexicon (e.g., "islamofascists"). Good points, all, Steve.
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Post by Big on Mar 29, 2007 10:01:32 GMT -5
All I am saying is Hitler's goals were not much different than goals during Religious Crusades. Saying "God is on our side" or "Germans are meant to be superior" are not that different. Both are false beliefs in something that is imagined.
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Post by redviking on Mar 31, 2007 6:38:35 GMT -5
Hitler was willing to say anything to get the support of the German people. Him and Bush are similar, they merely use religion to get supports and votes. However, I think Bush is probably a little more religous than Hitler was. He probably does think that God told him to bomb Iraq.
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