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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@ Sheldon
why do some people only mention the persecution of the jews whenever the holocaust is mentioned and not the persecution of other parts of the human race.
I think it's probably because the main focus of the Holocaust was against the Jewish people. Though of course other demographics suffered. In this context it is undoubtedly because a claim was made about christians being appalled at genocide that is directly contradicted by the centuries of antisemitism and pogroms against the Jewish people leading to and ending in the Holocaust.
@ Sheldon
weren't most of the people killed during the holocaust non jewish. 6 million jews were killed and 11 million people who weren't jewish. 1 of the first targets as well as the jews was Romani gypsies.
My understanding is that, yes, the total number of non-Jews killed is greater than the total number of Jews killed, but the Jews comprise the largest total number killed for a single demographic.
Ah, I see you beat me to it.
Yes, but the Jewish people represented the largest demographic, as I just said. The Nazis murdered indiscriminately though, but also targeted specific groups like communists, gypsies, and of course gay men and women. As I said in response to your question, I imagine that is the reason the main focus is usually on the 6 million Jewish people who were murdered.
I think the confusion is from what exactly people consider the holocaust. If you only consider the extermination camps (not a definition I am endorsing), then the vast majority killed was Jewish. With a wider definition, the ratio of Jewish deaths drops considerably.
@ Sheldon
you also forgot to mention the disabled,slavs,poles,Ukrainians,soviet slavs,Spanish republicans,jehovahs witnesses,roman Catholics,prodistants,freemasons,esporantists.
Ali "you also forgot to mention!"
"Sun, 06/24/2018 - 10:13 (Reply to #36)Permalink
Sheldon "Yes, but the Jewish people represented the largest demographic, as I just said. The ***Nazis murdered indiscriminately though"
No Ali, I didn't forget to mention them, as I quite specifically said they murdered indiscriminately (see above), and I'm not sure where you're going this, is there a point? It seems something of a non-sequitur to me as it isn't salient to the previous posts.
because if we forget to menetion the smaller groups of people and only mention the group that make up the largest demographic. people in the future may use it to taint the opinions of others. most people targeted by the nazis where political targets or seen as political threats. disabled people (mentally/physically) were targeted because they were seen as a drain on public resources and threatened the purity of the aryen race as they were seen as sub-human.
Except no one forgot to mention them, as I said. They were not salient to the topic that's all. The Holocaust was cited as an example of Christians who are not appalled at genocide. Christian antisemitism was cited as evidence to debunk the risible claim that Hitler wasn't really a christian.
This strikes me as complete non-sequitur? Nazis are cunts, we get it, but that was not directly relevant to the point being made. It wasn't an oversight or an attempt to hide anything.
I totally agree that Christians have been unbelievable antisemitic, including Martin Luther. Hitler might have even got his antisemitic views from Christians You don't have to be a Christian to be influenced by Christianity. or any other religion or world view. We are all influenced by each other to one degree or another. Case and point, Gad Saad talks a lot about how in the Middle East, non-Muslims are incredibly anti-Semitic because they are influenced greatly by the Muslim society in which they live.
If Hitler was a Christian, he was not a practicing one so far as I can tell. He certainly liked to jail and torture Christians who tried to stop his extermination of Jews. He didn't care what your religion was so long as you agreed that the Aryan race was superior and Jews were at the bottom. He showed no partiality to Christianity at all. All that mattered was that you believed in killing Jews. That's why he got along better with the Grand Mufti in the Middle East than the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who he had executed.
So he was born a christian, raised and baptised a christian, he claimed to be a christian his entire life, displayed christian antisemitism, claimed he was doing "god's work", lived in a country where 96% of the population identified as christians, and they all to a certain degree participated or didn't oppose the genocide of the holocaust.
"If Hitler was a Christian, he was not a practising one so far as I can tell. "
No true Scotsman fallacy.
"He certainly liked to jail and torture Christians who tried to stop his extermination of Jews. "
Wow, I mean Christians always agree and almost never attack each other....NEXT....
"He didn't care what your religion was so long as you agreed that the Aryan race was superior and Jews were at the bottom.2
Is that why he killed 6 million non christian Jews, and only allowed christians into the SS? You know, I think you're wrong and he may have cared a bit after all.
"He showed no partiality to Christianity at all. All that mattered was that you believed in killing Jews. "
Hilarious fair play, seriously read that back a few times.
"That's why he got along better with the Grand Mufti in the Middle East than the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who he had executed."
He was a psychotic megalomaniac, and a ruthless opportunist, how exactly does that mean he wasn't a christian? He was born a christian in an overwhelmingly christian country, he was baptised and raised a christian, he claimed he was a christian his entire life, he claimed to be doing god's work to justify his 'christian' antisemitism. He insisted his elite SS only admitted christians. He lived in a country that was overwhelmingly christian.
What evidence is contradicting all that exactly? He did some bad stuff? Oh well that's different.
NO TRUE SCOTSMAN.
You are asserting a lot of things that most scholars disagree with as if they are facts. That's called straw-manning.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14690760701321239
Appeal to authority fallacy.
Have you read that link? Here's a snippet...
"As I have argued elsewhere, in many
ways we can see that, in the church of Christ as well, Hitler was this kind of anticlerical
– not a complete anti-Christian, not an apostate (and certainly not an
atheist) in the church of Christ, but instead believing he knew and understood,
and ultimately fulfilled the religion of Christ better than its hated clergy and
institutions. "
The "most" scholars thing was a nice touch. At least you didn't do a Dan and say 99.999% of scholars I suppose. Still if a job's worth doing.
Now about that evidence for your claim that a man born in a christian country, baptised a christian, raised a christian, who claimed be a christian his entire life, and to be doing god's work to justify his antisemitism, in a country known for centuries of virulent christian antisemitism .....was in fact not a christian at all?
It should be easy, just cite the work of a few of those scholars you just appealed to. .
By the way is there any reason you have focused entirely on Hitler? I gave plenty of other examples that refuted your claim about christians being appalled by genocide.
How many of the German population had failed to notice all those Jews disappearing into cattle wagons do you suppose? I guess not of them were christians either right? How about the SS where being a christian was the only way you could hope to get in? How about Serbian christian genocide in Croatia? How about William Lane Craig? How about Catholic clergy implicated in the Rwandan genocide? How about the christian deity come to that? Then there was the crusades of course. Christian Spain's colonisation of south america killed how many/ Christian European settlers committed genocide against the indigenous north Americans.
I'm tired of typing now....
That is NOT a description of a strawman attack.
More like a strawman defence.
I never said all Christians were "appalled by genocide". I asked if you knew any who weren't. I never said Christianity isn't the most evil religion on earth. I never said most of the things you think I said. I merely said that WLC is more of an authority on Christianity than Hitler is. This is very obvious to the rational atheist who isn't blinded by extreme bias. In the same token, Zakir Naik and Anjem Choudary are more of an authority on Islam than Maajid Nawaz or Tarek Fatah. The Dalai Lama is more of an authority on Buddhism than my neighbour.Okay, maybe not Nawaz since he says that he's memorized half the Quran (whatever that means). The point is that people who are non-practicing are merely cultural Christians or Muslims or Buddhists. If you are a cultural Christian such as Brevik, you can think Jesus was a sissy and that God probably doesn't exist, and still technically be a Christian because of your cultural identify, but you are most definitely not putting much if any weight into the Bible when making your decisions.
ASIDE: It's interesting how Brett Weinstein or Sam Harris are suddenly far right white supremacists according to many on the left because they criticize the left. In the same token, any atheist or agnostic who calls out atheists for being irrational is similarly mislabeled as a religion apologist.
I'm not wasting my time on all those straw man comparisons. You asked for examples and I have given them. They ironically included both William Lane Craig whom you cite as an expert, and Hitler who you claim wasn't. Since I made no comparison of the two beyond **YOUR criteria, I have no idea why you're now posting this non sequitur.
You brought Andre Brevik into this discourse I never even mentioned him.
Christians are no less appalled by genocide than anyone else. If they believe the bible is the immutable word of "God" and worship that deity nonetheless then they axiomatically are not appalled by genocide, since the bible claims that deity both committed and encouraged his "chosen pets" to commit genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and sex trafficking, and slavery.
All I have to say is this.
If atheists are the kings of genocide, then why is that christianity has killed more people more than any other ideology. At least from all my research, although I have never truly tabulated the numbers, it seems to me that christianity has killed the most people, with islam now trying to catch up.
rmfr
It also strikes me as a flawed argument since atheism per se doesn't have any dogma or doctrine that would incline anyone to commit atrocities. The same cannot be said for the Abrahamic monotheism, which are drenched in blood, both in their texts and in their history.
When theists use this red herring they cite dictators who held absolute power in totalitarian regimes, yet cite their atheism as the motive for their crimes, but theocratic dictatorships behave just as barbarically indicating it is in the nature of such regimes to commit atrocities as individuals have no rights. The primary difference is there is nothing in atheism that teaches such behaviour is acceptable or even required. Theists prefer to ignore this and argue lamely using the no true Scotsman fallacy that people like Hitler weren't "real" christians.
Stalin didn't believe in a deity, well he also didn't believe in unicorns or mermaids one assumes, was this to blame for his crimes as well then? The apologetics clearly want to imply that belief in a deity makes people more moral and checks the worst type of atrocities, but we know for a fact this isn't true, even before the most devout monotheists immolated themselves and their thousands of victims on September the 11th 2001.
The age old argument regarding Hitler being atheist, lets make it clear that atheism is simply a position of non/lack of belief essentially.
I think it could be agreed that he was very likely Anti-Christian going by his actions, But he certainly displayed traits that lean to theism.
But these get over looked as they do not fit the narrative that wants to be portrayed.
The most amusing segment I have read on him by "scholars" was that he displayed no human spirituality or emotion, and in the next section stating how he was witnessed on multiple occasions to get into an emotional frenzy and even sometimes openly weep at some of the music of people such as Wagner.
So I would be careful in what is written about him, as these "scholars" tend to have a set of parameters they want things to sit neatly inside of, rather then be impartial.
Excellent post, and refreshingly concise.
Of course one could also point out the kind of reaction we could expect from theists if he had claimed all his life to be an atheist, and this was pointed out only for atheists to lamely claim he couldn't be as "real" atheists don't do bad things. The fallacious reasoning is bad enough, but they then compound this irrational claim by mendaciously ignoring the No True Scotsman fallacy when it is pointed out.
There is no evidence that not believing in a deity makes people less moral, indeed there is a body of research that indicates people from the same types of cultural background often make more moral choices when they are atheists. Though this research is open to other interpretations of course such as people who have done terrible things having an attack of conscience and thinking religious contrition is a worthwhile answer as one example. Though some research in the US indicates that the intake into prison systems for violent crimes like rape and murder has a disproportionately higher number of theists compared pro rata with theists in the population at large. So before they have a chance to work out that religious belief might gain extra privileges or fool a parole board for example.
It's also true that post industrialised democracies like Japan for example that are predominantly atheist or secular have a lower number of violent crimes like rape and murder, when compared to predominantly religious countries like the US.
And for my first post ever here, hello by the way, I'll jump in on this.
The entire premise here is flawed as atheism does not motivate anyone to "do" anything. You might try to say that 'well you being an atheist makes you post here' but that's not true. The only thing that makes you an atheist is a lack of belief in gods. You do not do things based on what you "don't" believe but based on what you do believe.
I see this topic has predictably turned into a 'What about Hitler and the Holocaust?' discussion of a sorts and what motivated him and others to engage in such a horrific act of genocide. The real point with respect to this discussion is that whatever it was that did it was something he believed in and not his lack of belief in something else. Whether or not Hitler was an believer of some sort or not also does not change the fact that whatever he did or didn't believe doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of German's were Christians and approved of the persecution of Jews.
@Blinknight
Howdy, Blink. Welcome to the AR. Damn nice post for your first time at bat here. Good to have you aboard.
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