h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just my two on war and religion.

It's true that most wars are over resources, mainly land. But it's not as though people are fighting over whether the land should exist or not! They are fighting over who gets to live on the land.

In order to have conflict, you need to have separate sides. Religion is something that divides people.

It is by no means the only thing that divides people, and I'd need data before I could say whether it's the main cause of division (ethnicity being the obvious competitor, where the two are separate), but it's certainly up there.

Examples have already been given - yes, people are fighting over land in Israel/Palestine, but my point is that it's Jews fighting Muslims (or, if you prefer, one ethnic group primarily defined by its religion fighting another ethnic group). Religion isn't helping.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying that all religion is evil and causes wars. But I am saying that religion in general cannot shirk its partial responsibility for wars.

Gif

Hi Ed,

I restrained myself from posting the Churchill quote. Hadn't seen the Golden Girls one before -

Gif

@ The Golden Girls

Backtracking slightly here to defend my views:

1. Organised religion is the biggest killer on this planet, not AIDS or cancer

"That may be true, though I'd like to see the statistics. Reguardless, as I've said, I think the vast majority of organized religions are wrong in many ways. Assuming there are such things as good and evil, this would make sense." - NPF

True, a lot of war is over territory or resources, but religion always rears its ugly head somehow. It might not always be the cause of the war but at the end it still causes the most casualties. WW2 and the Nazis, anyone?

2. I object to people, mainly Christians, telling me what my beliefs should be (if Jehovahs come to the door I tell them I'm a Catholic and that usually makes them go away anyway )

"How is that different in any way from objecting to people expressing their opinions? Do you not believe in the right to free speech or do you merely find the actual practice of it to be objectionable? (I tell those people to get lost also )" - NPF

I believe in the right to free speech but I don't push my views on anyone else. For example, if someone tries to give me a copy of Watchtower/a card through the door inviting me to an Easter/Christmas hymn service it goes straight to the recycle bin without a glance. I believe that it's possible Jesus did exist at some point and probably did say a lot of good stuff but he certainly wasn't the son of "God", but that's my opinion and you can take it or leave it.

3. I object to the hypocrisy and corruption of religious organisations; the congregation is starving but as long as the priests have enough wine to go round that's okay cross

"That is a valid objection to religious organizations that do such things. However, I don't think that's a valid logical objection to the fundamental idea of God or religion." - NPF

It's all relative though, innit?

Well, in a Marxist interpretation of history:
1) All wars are economic.
2) The position of religion in a society is determined by its class structure.

The rise of Nazism in Germany can best be understood in terms of class struggle. Nazism was an entrenchement of the bourgeois alligned classes, supported by the churches, against the the threat from the proletariat. The reason for the war - which was a resumption of WWII - is to do with the attempts of the German/Italian Axis to usurp the colonial status quo.

kthnxbai.

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Do you have no comment on my links? You didn't mention war in your first posting at all...
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What aside from the Holocaust, has WW2 and the Nazis got to do with religion? Please don't trot out that old chestnut about Hitler being a Christian, because although American Atheists and the like insist it's true, no one else believes it!

It was a straight-out war for conquest, and the oppression of Jews had been going on long before it.

>>because although American Atheists and the like insist it's true, no one else believes it!


Am I 'the like', then? Face it - he called himself a Christian and many Christians believed him. That is not to say that Christianity bears sole responsibility for Nazism. However...one factor that aided the rise of the Nazis was that the churches and the middle-class German Christians regarded them as a bulwark against a perceived socialist/Jewish menace and the geberal going-to-the-dogs of society.

>>What, aside from the Holocaust, has WW2 and the Nazis got to do with religion?<<

Vicky, I like how you so casually discard the deaths of millions of innocent people. Shows what a good, compassionate Christian you are.

In fairness, HI - that could be interpreted as...

'Obviously religion was involved to the extent that Jews were killed en masse, but this doesn't necessarily imply that they were killed for religious reasons'.

She's still wrong and clutching at straws, but for other reasons.

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Many, but not even most! It's odd that the people who choose to believe Hitler's claims to be a Christian, are the atheists. If he'd publicly proclaimed himself an atheist, you'd call him a liar.

It's very transparent.

A NZ site
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_hitler.html

Extract: <<Quotes Establishing Hitler's Non-Christianity
Hitler may in public have claimed to be doing the will of God, but records of his private conversations show otherwise. Many of these were recorded by his secretary and published in a book called Hitler's Table Talk (Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953). I have lifted the text of these from the soc.religion.christian newsgroup's Hitler FAQ.

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....
"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)>>

There's more of course..
Look at this as well
http://davnet.org/kevin/essays/hitler.html#Ethics

As I've said - I do think that some elements within Christianity were complicit with Nazism. But isn't an even stronger argument that it offered almost nothing to stop it? I don't just mean that German Christianity to a large degree turned a blind eye - as did the Vatican (though these are true). I mean that there was clearly nothing in Christian teaching that led a largely Christian-educated and Christian observant population to say 'Hang on - this ain't right! We've got to stop this!' Yes...there were honourable Christian exceptions. But by and large, the population went to war with 'Gott mit uns' emblazoned on their belt buckles.

And as for god...what did he do? To quote the dearly departed Linda Smith:
'You'd think that if ever there was a time for him to intervene - that would have been it.'

'no one else believes it'

OK, *you* don't believe it, despite the evidence you have repeatedly been shown. Many others did, including the German church.

Hitler claimed to be a Christian. Almost every other senior Nazi claimed to be a Christian (Himmler was a pagan, but Hitler derided those beliefs). The church supported the Nazi Party, and many senior church officials stressed how Christian they thought Hitler was.

Whether Hitler's religion is responsible (in whole or in part) for WWII is another debate, but to simply assert that no-one believes Hitler was a Christian is flat-out wrong.

Gif

Hi Vicky,

'If he'd publicly proclaimed himself an atheist, you'd call him a liar.'

What are you basing that on? Has any atheist ever claimed that Stalin and Mao were lying when they said they were atheists?

I notice that from your own link you have skipped totally the sections headed 'Quotes establishing Hitler's Christianity' and 'Quotes establishing Hitler's non-Atheism'.

As best I can make out, Hitler had a dislike for the established church, which he considered corrupt. It is also possible that he oscillated back and forth between the positions (he was never noted for the consistency and rigour of his thought). But he certainly never called himself an atheist, or denied that God existed.

Gif

I'd just like to say, that if you want any information on the link between Hitler and Germany's churches, read Hubris by Ian Kershaw. Or anything from the "Bavaria Project". It's fairly cut-and-dried that the church supported Hitler, and he courted them by playing up his (probably lapsed) Christian beliefs.

HI, Edward is right in his interpretation of what I said.

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Numbers don't matter, if it was 10 it would still be appalling. But are you aware that *20 million Russians* were also killed?

Also, that concentration camps held Christians, communists, Jehovahs Witnesses, gypsys, the intellectually disabled, and yes, homosexuals.

So can we see my argument that religion isn't a sound basis for morality? Of course, Christians *can* be moral. Many are. But I suggest that their morality is every bit as secular as my own. They choose to be moral because it's a sensible way to live amongst others. Their religious justifications are retro-fitted - in the same way that the Nazi Christians retro-fitted religious justifications to their immorality.

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Almost.. what I meant was that American movies aside, WW2 was about so much more than the Holocaust against the Jews. It was mostly about territory and conquest.

You're right, even the Holocaust was mostly not for religious reasons.

Check out this site too (do you read the links? Or am I just wasting my time? )

http://www.nationalreview.com/shiflett/shiflett012102.shtml

Extract: <>

(To save the trouble of following the links.)

What Hitler says, and what Hitler does are usually two very different things:

1933 - "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both."

1933 - Hitler orders formation of the Protestant Reich Church, "based on Nazi ideas of creating a ;positive Christianity;, namely purifying Christianity of any Jewish elements including even the Old Testament, an idea which had existed in a small minority of Christian groups since the time of Marcion of Sinope"

Is there any way I can make it clearer, that when it comes to religion and morality, Hitler's the worst example for either side?

You'd better also add 40M for the Atheist Mao, Vicky.

But leaving Hitler aside, Vicky...after all, he ewasn't solely responsible for Nazism...would you care to comment on Christian support for Nazism?

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No I didn't. You read them, I did too.

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Clutching at straws. I have presented enough to satisfy any court, even an American one, but you don't want to know. Your emotions are too strong and get in the way of your thinking, and any fairness you might have.

I. Am. Fed. Up.

Why do I bother? Someone else can deal with it, your smug hypocritical selves *can't* not just don't accept anything so deeply threatening to your self-esteem as the idea that you and American atheists and the like might be - horrors, wrong!