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Limited comprehension and its Darwinian consequences

Submitted by Hermit Barber on Fri, 2012-02-03 18:14

Source: Washington Post
Credits: Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service
Dated: 2012-02-01

On eve of Darwin’s birthday, states take steps to limit evolution

  
On the eve of the 203rd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday, lawmakers in at least four states are taking steps to hinder the teaching of evolution in public schools, while other bills would do the same without naming evolution outright. Ostrich logic. If your ideas are unsupportable, you can always try to pretend there are no alternatives. No matter how you hard pretend, it remains a bird brained notion.
One of the bills, New Hampshire’s House Bill 1148, not only singles out evolution, but would require teachers to discuss its proponents’ ”political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” It is scheduled for a hearing in early February. Nothing like embedding the logical fallacy that the source of an idea affects its validity into law. Still, it would be interesting to have atheism presented to schoolchildren. Some of them will undoubtedly be happy to have their disbelief validated.
The author of the bill, Republican state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, has linked the teaching of evolution to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and Hitler’s atrocities and associates it with atheism.

That's amusing. Hitler once said, "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 and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed." Does this sound like the words of an atheist - or an evolutionist? Hitler was neither.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were raised in the JudeoChristian belief system - and having indulged themselves in carnage, committed suicide to leave the world which they hated, probably because they perceived it, likely correctly as hating them, and go to, "a better place" [Klebold's final journal entry]. Again, this is about as far as you can get from atheism.
“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented,” Bergevin told the Concord Monitor. “It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: They don’t respect human rights.”

Funny this. Read the "List of Hitler Quotes" alongside. Realise that the Nazi Office of Racial Policy held thousands of public meetings a month and ran a journal, "Inromationsdienst", which promoted an anti-Semitic agenda and attacked the same “muddle-headed humanitarianism” (Humanitätsduselei) which so offends Bergevin and his ilk. This wasn't anything new. It followed on centuries of Christian based Pogroms against Jews (and heretics), including the founder of Lutherianism, Martin Luther, who advised Christians to: "put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders ... Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues ... And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught" [ Proctor 1988: 88. ]

Having dealt with the Nazi's who were, as you can see in the right column, an intensely religious nation, second only to America in religiosity of an Industrialized economy, let us evaluate the unsupported assertion that "the Soviet Union, Cuba," [and] "China today" "don't respect human rights."  The unstated assumption is that the United States does, and further, that this is because of its religious nature. Are these assumptions realistic?

The United States:

I could go on. In practically every instance, when allowing for the different population and economy sizes, not just "even" but "especially", the "godless communist" nations did much better than the USA. After 50 years of American sanctions, Cuba still outperforms the USA in many indices. China is rapidly overtaking the USA in many areas, and will be the preeminent power before 2025 if we don't blow ourselves to hell before then. If we do, it will quite likely be a religious hand on the firing button. Atheists are generally too sensible to go to war. There are much better ways to settle differences than fighting. The deliberate destruction of the global economy in 2007 was driven by as yet uncharged  criminal American bankers - and resulted in orders of magnitude greater losses than even the collapse of the Soviet Union. So who is the criminal nation here? The religious people of the USA, or liberal-humanist atheists?

Who respects 
In many ways, the debate over evolution mirrors strategies adopted by opponents in the battle over abortion: If it can’t be outlawed outright, critics will at least try to make it more difficult. And so, the mass denies the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the few.
Several atheist organizations have called for the withdrawal of all the bills, but are keeping an especially close eye on Bergevin’s. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, has called it “ignorant, infuriating bigotry.” What does he expect from "one nation under educated(tm)"?
Ahead of Darwin’s birthday on Feb. 12, other current anti-evolution bills include:  
— In the Indiana Senate, a bill would allow school districts to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life within the school corporation." That bill has already passed a statehouse committee and was scheduled for a vote on Jan 31.  
— The “Missouri Standard Science Act” would require the equal treatment of evolution and “intelligent design,” an idea that the universe was created by an unnamed “designer.” A second bill would require teachers to encourage students “to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.”  
— A bill in the Oklahoma Senate would require the state’s board of education to help teachers promote “critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning” if a local school district makes that request.  
— A second bill in the New Hampshire House would require science teachers to instruct students that “proper scientific inquir(y) results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established.”  
— A bill in Virginia would make it illegal for state colleges to require a class that conflicts with a student’s religious views. Critics say that would enable a student to receive a biology degree, for example, without studying evolution if he or she objected to it.  

— A second bill in Indiana would require the state board of education to draft rules about the teaching of ideas in science class that cannot be proven by evidence — a clear doorway for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, critics say.

While all the bills have drawn the attention of several large atheist groups including the Center for Inquiry and the National Atheist Party, Bergevin’s bill in New Hampshire has raised the most eyebrows.

“Evolution is not just for atheists, and has been accepted as fact by many religious institutions, including the Catholic Church,” Silverman said. “It is clearly an attempt to create religious discussion in science class, and to somehow make science ‘not for believers.’”

Even if the bill were to become law, some expect it to be short-lived.

“In the unlikely event it would pass, it would quickly be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional,” said Rob Boston, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“It is just warmed-over creationism, which the Supreme Court has already said is unconstitutional, and the government cannot require anyone to stand up and explain where they stand on a religion or a philosophy.”

If the bills stand little chance of surviving, why do they get proposed?

Josh Rosenau, a programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, chalks it up to the high number of rookie legislators.

In 2010, he said, “A lot of very conservative legislators got elected who did not necessarily know we have debated these bills before and they did not pass,” he said. “You had people elected as ideologues and they are fulfilling their campaign promises.”

Indeed, Bergevin is a first-time legislator who had wide support from the Tea Party. Still, Rosenau said, Bergevin’s bill is unusual for requiring teachers to discuss a scientist’s religious views.

“Just on its face, I think a court would look askance at it,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘On behalf of the state of New Hampshire I endorse theism over atheism.’”

The bigger picture, Boston said, is the strategy of the bills that do not name evolution per se, like the two in Virginia and Indiana.

“They are smart enough to know that a direct attack on evolution is not likely to survive, so they instead put some kind of penalty on teaching it to make (educators) afraid,” he said.

  

Source: scienceblogs.com/pharyngula
Credits: Douglas Theobald

List of Hitler quotes

Douglas Theobald passed along an interesting collection of quotes from that atheist evolutionist, Adolf Hitler. It's particularly interesting that he outlawed atheist and freethought groups in 1933.

It's a long list of quotes, so I'll tuck it below the fold.

"The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."

[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."

[Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]

"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 and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."

[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 46]

"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125]

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.152]

"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.174]

"Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.309]

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

[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

"Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook."

[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, p. 171]

"I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1]

"I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 2]

"...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]

"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

"I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

"Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

"I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 6]

"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I]

"The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

"To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

"The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right]

"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

"While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

"Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

"....the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11, precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings]

"Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

"All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

"Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

"A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture- race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

"For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

"In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another."

[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

"For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'

[Adolf Hitler's prayer, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2 Chapter 13]

"The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life"

[Adolph Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933]

"ATHEIST HALL CONVERTED

Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers

Wireless to the New York Times.

BERLIN, May 13. - In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership.

The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members ..."

[New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree]

"I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker."

[Adolf Hitler, Speech, 15 March 1936, Munich, Germany.]

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life...."

[Adolf Hitler, Berlin, February 1, 1933]

"Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years."

[The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872]

 

Source: Washington Post
Credits: Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service
Dated: 2012-02-01

On eve of Darwin’s birthday, states take steps to limit evolution

  
On the eve of the 203rd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday, lawmakers in at least four states are taking steps to hinder the teaching of evolution in public schools, while other bills would do the same without naming evolution outright. Ostrich logic. If your ideas are unsupportable, you can always try to pretend there are no alternatives. No matter how you hard pretend, it remains a bird brained notion.
One of the bills, New Hampshire’s House Bill 1148, not only singles out evolution, but would require teachers to discuss its proponents’ ”political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” It is scheduled for a hearing in early February. Nothing like embedding the logical fallacy that the source of an idea affects its validity into law. Still, it would be interesting to have atheism presented to schoolchildren.
The author of the bill, Republican state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, has linked the teaching of evolution to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and Hitler’s atrocities and associates it with atheism.

That's amusing. Hitler once said, "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 and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed." Does this sound like the words of an atheist - or an evolutionist? Hitler was neither.

 
“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented,” Bergevin told the Concord Monitor. “It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: They don’t respect human rights.”  
In many ways, the debate over evolution mirrors strategies adopted by opponents in the battle over abortion: If it can’t be outlawed outright, critics will at least try to make it more difficult. And so, the mass denies the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the few.
Several atheist organizations have called for the withdrawal of all the bills, but are keeping an especially close eye on Bergevin’s. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, has called it “ignorant, infuriating bigotry.” What does he expect from "one nation under educated(tm)"?
Ahead of Darwin’s birthday on Feb. 12, other current anti-evolution bills include:  
— In the Indiana Senate, a bill would allow school districts to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life within the school corporation." That bill has already passed a statehouse committee and was scheduled for a vote on Jan 31.  
— The “Missouri Standard Science Act” would require the equal treatment of evolution and “intelligent design,” an idea that the universe was created by an unnamed “designer.” A second bill would require teachers to encourage students “to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.”  
— A bill in the Oklahoma Senate would require the state’s board of education to help teachers promote “critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning” if a local school district makes that request.  
— A second bill in the New Hampshire House would require science teachers to instruct students that “proper scientific inquir(y) results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established.”  
— A bill in Virginia would make it illegal for state colleges to require a class that conflicts with a student’s religious views. Critics say that would enable a student to receive a biology degree, for example, without studying evolution if he or she objected to it.  

— A second bill in Indiana would require the state board of education to draft rules about the teaching of ideas in science class that cannot be proven by evidence — a clear doorway for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, critics say.

While all the bills have drawn the attention of several large atheist groups including the Center for Inquiry and the National Atheist Party, Bergevin’s bill in New Hampshire has raised the most eyebrows.

“Evolution is not just for atheists, and has been accepted as fact by many religious institutions, including the Catholic Church,” Silverman said. “It is clearly an attempt to create religious discussion in science class, and to somehow make science ‘not for believers.’”

Even if the bill were to become law, some expect it to be short-lived.

“In the unlikely event it would pass, it would quickly be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional,” said Rob Boston, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“It is just warmed-over creationism, which the Supreme Court has already said is unconstitutional, and the government cannot require anyone to stand up and explain where they stand on a religion or a philosophy.”

If the bills stand little chance of surviving, why do they get proposed?

Josh Rosenau, a programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, chalks it up to the high number of rookie legislators.

In 2010, he said, “A lot of very conservative legislators got elected who did not necessarily know we have debated these bills before and they did not pass,” he said. “You had people elected as ideologues and they are fulfilling their campaign promises.”

Indeed, Bergevin is a first-time legislator who had wide support from the Tea Party. Still, Rosenau said, Bergevin’s bill is unusual for requiring teachers to discuss a scientist’s religious views.

“Just on its face, I think a court would look askance at it,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘On behalf of the state of New Hampshire I endorse theism over atheism.’”

The bigger picture, Boston said, is the strategy of the bills that do not name evolution per se, like the two in Virginia and Indiana.

“They are smart enough to know that a direct attack on evolution is not likely to survive, so they instead put some kind of penalty on teaching it to make (educators) afraid,” he said.

  
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