March 2013 Freethinker Meeting

Post Reply
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

March 2013 Freethinker Meeting

Post by Dardedar »

Time for our March 2013 Fayetteville Freethinker meeting! We have a LOT of good stuff this month.

Doug will highlight Bertrand Russell as our Famous Freethinker of the Month.

We'll have a Moral Question of the Day regarding a recent local religious lawsuit.

Jim Cherry will give us an overview of a new book covering the front lines of creationism.

Doug will present a logical fallacy of the month, continuing the long-running logic series.

We've put it off long enough, Darrel will give our main presentation addressing the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of one, Adolf Hitler.

Art Hobson, who has a regular column in the paper, recommended Darrel for a guest column opportunity.
If you missed it in the paper last Sunday, it's posted in our forum here: viewtopic.php?p=26178#p26178

It's based on a presentation given at our January meeting entitled: "A Case for Optimism."

At our meeting Saturday we'll be presenting the new 3rd edition of our Fabulous Fayetteville Freethinker
Fact-Filled Family Fun Folder. This time in beautiful baby blue.

***
Meeting Details:

When: Saturday, March 30, 2013.

Where: The Fayetteville Public Library. 401 W. Mountain St.
(two blocks west of the town square). Library phone: 571-2222.

Time: 2:00 - 4:30 pm

Room: The Walker Room, the main meeting room. Go in the front door, through the
lobby and to your right. You can bring a snack or coffee from Arsaga's in the library lobby.

Map: http://tinyurl.com/b3sfgf
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: March 2013 Freethinker Meeting

Post by Dardedar »

Here are the clips we played at our March meeting:

Lawrence Krauss on teaching creationism as child abuse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTedvV6oZjo

Mr. Deity and the Hitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDaYR-VUL_k

Alain de Botton on atheism 2.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6HUgrRlQ

Hitchen's on Stalin and fascism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRhczvtmbWE

Hitler learns Christian claim he is not an atheist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-m0bUd1ofw

The pill to lower you IQ permanently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9pD_UK6vGU
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: March 2013 Freethinker Meeting

Post by Dardedar »

The handout accompanying lecture at our March meeting.

Regarding Hitler's Religion

1) “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity ... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.” --Hitler, speech in Passau October 27, 1928. Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. pg. 60.

2) The Nazis were explicitly Christian:
"We demand the freedom of religion in the Reich so long as they do not endanger the position of the state or adversely affect the moral standards of the German race. As such the Party represents a positively Christian position without binding itself to one particular faith.”
--24th principle of the Nazi Party, from the Twenty Five Points (1920)

3) Hitler's beliefs are expressed clearly in his founding book Mein Kampf. He believed in Heaven, Hell, a supreme being who created the universe, Jesus Christ, life after death, special creation, original sin, expulsion from paradise, and divine judgment. His book is filled with references to God and the Bible, such as: “...I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord.” --Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf, p. 65

4) Hitler was a baptized Roman Catholic, a communicant and an altar boy. He was never excommunicated.

5) Nazi General Gerhart Engel reported in his diary in 1941 that Hitler stated: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”
--Adolf Hitler in 1941 to General Gerhart Engel. John Toland (1992). Adolf Hitler. pg. 507.

6) Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signed a Concordat with the Nazis in 1933. An excerpt:
"Article 21. Catholic religious instruction in elementary, senior, secondary and vocational schools constitutes a regular portion of the curriculum, and is to be taught in accordance with the principles of the Catholic Church. In religious instruction, special care will be taken to inculcate patriotic, civic and social consciousness and sense of duty in the spirit of the Christian Faith and the moral code, precisely as in the case of other subjects."

7) Prayers to Jesus became mandatory in all schools under Hitler's administration:
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. . . we need believing people." --Hitler speech, April 26, 1933, Ernst Helmreich, "The German Churches Under Hitler, p. 241.

8) Nazi solders wore belt buckles inscribed: "Gott Mit Uns" which is: "God With Us."

9) Nazi soldiers gave the following oath: "I swear by God this sacred oath that to the Leader of the German empire and people, Adolf Hitler,…”

10) The Nazis banned books that ridiculed religion:
“All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk." --Blacklist for Public Libraries and Commercial Lending Libraries (Stadtbibliothek Koblenz, 1993; pp. 5-7)

11) From Hitler's first address as Chancellor:
"We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk.... This the national government... will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volkand state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk." --Adolf Hitler, on 1 Feb. 1933, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 Aug. 1935, [Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich].

12) Hitler 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 only 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..." --Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

13) Hitler hated the godless and specifically targeted atheists. He started a campaign against the "godless movement:"
"We were convinced that the people needs and requires 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.” --Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. p. 378

Atheist Hall Converted (into religious hall)
Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers
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.... 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, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933.]

14) Hitler's refers to the longstanding Christian anti-semitism and his mission:
“The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc,… I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.”
--Speech 26 April 1933 in a reception for Catholic Bishop Berning; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. p. 117-118.

15) Hitler admired Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, who also shared his profound hatred of the Jews. Some examples:

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...set fire to their synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever
will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them." --Martin Luther, "On the Jews and their Lies"

"Burn the synagogues; take away their books, including the Bible. They [Jews] should be compelled to work, denied food
and shelter, preferably banished. . . . Moses said that idolators should not be tolerated. If he were here he would be the
first to burn their synagogues." --Martin Luther, "On the Jews and their Lies"

"The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves," and "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."
--Martin Luther, "On the Jews and their Lies"

***

Further reading:
"The Great Scandal: Christianity's Role in the Rise of the Nazis" by Gregory S. Paul
Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 23, Number 4.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/ ... _23_4.html

See 169 references regarding:
"Hitler on Christianity, Catholicism and Religion"
http://tinyurl.com/bmb7jwh

See: "Hitler's Christianity" http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

Objections:
1) "Hitler was faking, secretly hated Christians"

This is invariably based upon bogus quotes. See:
"Was Catholic Hitler "Anti-Christian"? On the Trail of Bogus Quotes"
http://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

2) "Nazis weren’t really Christian but rather pagans and into the occult"

Hitler responds: "We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us."
--Speech in Nuremberg, September 1938. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, vol. 1, pg. 396

3) "Hitler got his ideas of Aryan superiority and Jewish hatred from Darwinian evolution"

See: http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm

4) "Hitler followed Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy"

See: http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm

Bonus, video: "Hitler Learns Christians Claim He Is An Atheist" (parody) http://tinyurl.com/d9d4fxy

fayfreethinkers@yahoo.com

fayfreethinkers.com
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
Post Reply