Yeah, We're That Scary

If atheists ruled the world. Seen on BoingBoing. [thanks, Court!]

Comments

[Phelps]

We've seen when atheists run the world. See: Soviet Union.

[Rogier]

Do you think communist dictators repressed millions, and committed genocide, for the advancement of atheism?

That's one tired canard.

Start here: http://breakingspells.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/myths-of-atheism-hitlerstalinpot-were-evil-because-of-atheism/

[Julian]

All of these quotes (and more) can be found on Fundies Say The Darndest Things http://www.FSTDT.com (huge repository... but posting doesn't fuction anymore) and the new version of the site located here: http://www.FSTDT.net

[Jerry]

We've seen when atheists run the world. See: Soviet Union

Too funny, yeah we are really scary. Where do I buy the Black Robes?

[Twelvebit]

Hitler, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust would have been impossible if the supposed "morality" of Xtianity wasn't as useless to humanity as tits on a boar hog. The only significant Xtian opposition to Hiter came from the Jehovah's Witnesses, a sect that got no support from the rest of the Bible Beaters, who mostly supported the Nazi Regime --especially evangelicals (sound familiar?). From the Wells article cited below:

"On December 17, 1941, Protestant Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg, Thuringia, Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck collectively issued an official proclamation:

From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness, his national being, and his biological nature. A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it. [Helmreich, p. 329]"

Xtian belief is entirely compatible with mass murder and torture as was amply demonstrated in Nazi Germany (and by the attitudes of modern American Fundamentalists). Various quotes on the matter are provided below:

"We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

- Adolf Hitler, Speech in Berlin, October 24, 1933

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

- Adolf Hitler, to General Gerhard Engel, 1941

From "Christianity in Europe During WWII," by Jim Walker:

One must also remember that most of the German citizens held beliefs as Protestant Christians. Many of the German police battalions who executed Jews with anti-Jewish zeal got recruited straight from the German populace, citizens that grew up in traditional Christian homes. For example, the men of one Police Battalion came predominantly from Hamburg and the surrounding region, an overwhelmingly Evangelical Protestant area. And even those battalion members who renounced the Church, declared themselves "gottglaubig," a Nazi term for having a proper religious attitude without being a member of a traditional church [Goldhagen, p. 209].

Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced laborers during the Third Reich.

On March 1946, in a lecture in Zurich, Martin Niemöller declared: "Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo." [Goldhagen, p.114]

Finally, again from the Wells article, note the final part of this paragraph, a sentiment very similar to that which might have come from the mouth of a Fundamentalist Xtian supporter of George W. Bush or Caribou Barbie:

"Richard Steigmann-Gall's research found that, "many confessional Lutherans who would later join the Confessing Church received the Nazi movement warmly." Otto Dibelius, General Superintendent of the Kurmark, and one of the most conservative in the Confessing Church, certified the Nazi movement as Christian: "The National Socialists, as the strongest party of the right, have shown both a firm, positive relationship to Christianity.... We may expect that they will remain true to their principles in the new Reichstag." After the Nazi Seizure of Power, Dibelius continued to view Nazism this way, even to the point of excusing Nazi brutality [Steigmann-Gall]. At a 1933 service in Berlin's Nikolaikirche for the new Reichstag, Dibelius announced: "We have learned from Martin Luther that the church cannot get in the way of state power when it does what it is called to do. Not even when [the state] becomes hard and ruthless.... When the state carries out its office against those who destroy the foundations of state order, above all against those who destroy honor with vituperative and cruel words that scorn faith and vilify death for the Fatherland, then [the state] is ruling in God's name!" [Steigmann-Gall]."

[GreginOz]

Rapture Ready? Fuck Off, Already...

[Eric]

Do not confuse those who use christianity for their own purposes with real christians. We can find an example in any given group of humans to make the entire group look foolish.

[Twelvebit]

You're the confused one Eric, with your variant on the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. If you want to defend Christians why not make some effort to educate yourself on the most basic logical fallacies? From Wikipedia:

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again." Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing." The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing."
—Antony Flew, Thinking about Thinking (1975)

In putting forward the above rebuttal one is equivocating in an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. The proposer initially treats the definition of "Scotsman" (i.e., a man of Scottish ancestry and connection) as fixed, and says that there exists no predicated case that falls within that definition. When one such case is found, the proposer shifts to treat the case as fixed, and rather treats the boundary as debatable. The proposer could therefore be seen prejudicially not to desire an exact agreement on either the scope of the definition or the position of the case, but solely to keep the definition and case separate. One reason to do this would be to avoid giving the positive connotations of the definition ("Scotsman") to the negative case ("sex offender") or vice versa.