Buddy falls for Dinesh Hitler/atheist claptrap

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Dardedar
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Buddy falls for Dinesh Hitler/atheist claptrap

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Fresh after our freethinker meeting yesterday debunking the whole "Hitler was an atheist" meme, Buddy Rogers has an article in the paper passing it along based upon some Dinesh D'Souza "conservative scholarship" (*snicker* *snort*).

Non-subscribers won't be able to read his article but his main points are contained in this rebuttal which is posted below and also in the thread underneath his article at the above link (anyone can comment at the newspaper thread, no subscription required).

Response to:

Myths, Motives Of Human Imperfection
By Buddy Rogers
Posted: March 31, 2013

***
Could it be that the goal with Buddy is to fit as many howlers, whoppers and palpable falsehoods as possible into his 750 limit? And if that is the goal, he's actually pretty good at it. But that's not the goal is it? I certainly hope not.

Buddy admits that he leans on the "conservative scholar" (*cough*) Dinesh D’Souza this time around. That's not a good idea. Two reasons, Dinesh is a profoundly dishonest misinformed hack on matters touching upon religion and politics (examples below), and as Buddy has shown repeatedly in his columns he is so completely lacking in discernment and any ability to distinguish fact from fecal matter that he is as helpless as a babe when it comes to knowing when a two bit charlatan like Dinesh is making it up as he goes (which with Dinesh is easily most of the time).

Dinesh on slavery: "...the "American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."

Nice. Incidentally, it was only a few months ago that Dinesh was forced out of his job as president of a small evangelical college because he was caught with his pants down in a hotel with a woman and some bit about him going around introducing her as his fiancee. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact he is still married to his wife of 20 years. "Dinesh D’Souza Resigns Presidency of The King’s College"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... llege.html )

But that bit of hypocrisy pales in comparison to his shameless dishonesty and incompetence on matters touching upon religion and politics. This is easy to show so let's give it a little poke before formally wading through of Buddy's feast of howlers.

"Forbes’ Shameful Piece on Obama as the “Other”
The worst kind of smear journalism..."
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/forbes_sha ... dsouza.php

Here is the conservative Weekly Standard ripping Dinesh's stupidity a new one: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... ?nopager=1

See also this thorough unpack of his ridiculous movie: "Dinesh D'Souza's Lies About Obama, Now In Movie Form"
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/05/27 ... -fo/186695

Which was based upon his ridiculous farcical book: "D'Souza's The Roots of Obama's Rage rooted in lies"
http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/1 ... ies/171476

This guy has less credibility than Glenn Beck, if that's even possible. And this is the well from which Buddy draws his ludicrous and grade school distortions about political leaders and religion. Pathetic.

Enough about his source, let's get into the specifics of why Buddy's second-hand Dinesh material is wrong.

D.
-----------
Weekly Standard excerpt below:

***
The Weakly Standard: "The Roots of Lunacy
How not to understand Obama"

Excerpt:

"Readers will not be shocked that D’Souza’s paradigm easily passes D’Souza’s test, thanks to the author’s misstatements of fact, leaps in logic, and pointlessly elaborate argumentation. The misstatements range from the very small to the very large. As “further evidence that this anticolonial reading is on the right track,” he cites Obama’s press conference after the Gulf oil spill.

"Time and again,” he [Dinesh] writes, Obama “condemned ‘British Petroleum’—an interesting term since the company long ago changed its name to BP. Given our anticolonial theory, it’s no surprise that Obama wanted to remind Americans of what BP used to stand for.”

Right you are, Holmes! Except .  .  . I’ve read the transcript of the press conference, and Obama didn’t make a single reference to British Petroleum—a name which, in any event, is commonly used by many people of a certain age (including me) who are sworn enemies of anticolonialism. D’Souza makes many errors of this sort, citing facts that aren’t facts in support of an otherwise unsupported conclusion. He says that Obama, in his memoir Dreams from My Father, never mentions his father’s drunkenness. Obama mentions it often. Indeed, D’Souza misreads the entire memoir: Far from admiring his father and emulating him, Obama makes his disillusionment with his father one of the themes of his own life story.

And where facts are missing altogether, faulty reasoning bolsters the case. “Wonder why Obama went to Harvard?” D’Souza slyly asks. “Here is a clue: It is the leading academic institution in America. And here’s another: His father went there.” Forget that neither of these facts is a clue, technically."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... ?nopager=1

***

Just yesterday that we had a lecture on this issue of Hitler and atheism at the Fayetteville library (freethinker meeting). It's too bad Buddy didn't attend because he might have known better than to make such obvious mistakes on the issue. Let's unpack:

Buddy: "...the myth monotheists are the perpetrators of the worst atrocities of history.">>

Buddy doesn't tell us who passes along this "myth" but there's probably something to it. But this would just be the guilt by association fallacy. As was pointed at the beginning of the lecture yesterday, the truth of theism or atheism has nothing whatsoever to do with the behavior of some of the people who happen to hold one of these beliefs. The truth of these beliefs is entirely independent of that. No group wants to be associated with these bad characters of history so there is an entire cottage industry of dolts like Dinesh who are devoted to peddling this blatant fallacy. And that wouldn't even be so bad, if they could at least get their facts straight. And they can't.

Bud: "Atheists’ simplistic, inaccurate scapegoating of religion ignores the territorial, ethnic and power motivations of the Sunni-Shiite, Balkans, Palestinian-Israeli, Northern Ireland...">>

This is where we are supposed to believe, with a straight face, that these plainly religious disputes (consider these juicy examples, good grief) are based upon something other than religion. Is there a difference between the people on the two sides of the Ireland conflict other than that one side is Catholic and the other side Protestant? Is there a race/genetic difference between the two sides of the Sunni-Shiite conflict other than religion? Of course not. It's entirely a product of religion. 100%. Just how GD stupid does Dinesh believe his readers can be? It truly boggles the mind.

Bud: "Atheism is at the heart of Stalin’s murder of 20 million..., Mao Zedong’s slaughter...">>

Let's start with the basics. Buddy doesn't even bother to attempt to show what he needs to show in order to establish a causal relationship from atheism... to... these slaughters. Like Dinesh he just makes it up and hopes no one notices.

Basic definitions:

a = meaning "not" or "without"

theism = belief in a personal living God

Thus an atheist is one who does not have a belief in a personal living God. They are not, a, theist. That's all that word does. It only does one thing. That's it. Anything beyond that one thing, is made up. Put another way:

A theist says a God exists and an atheist says they don't believe you. It's really that simple.

There is only one thing an atheist can do that is inconsistent with that word and that is: believe in a personal living God. That's it. The only thing Buddy can try to smear an atheist with that would be inconsistent with that word, would be theism. Buddy should learn this simple fact before he begins since it may help him from falling for this most basic guilt by association fallacy.

***

While even Buddy acknowledges that millions have been killed *specifically* "in the name of religion" and quite often his religion, he should also learn that this differs entirely from his made up correlation that this is somehow similar to when people who don't believe in God also happen to be very bad totalitarians (or whatever else). No one has been killed "in the name of atheism." Not one. That's just stupid. Again, the word atheist doesn't get you any of that. It only does one thing: not, theist. It's a one trick pony. Anything else is made up until Buddy and Dinesh can show otherwise, and they haven't and they won't, because they can't.

Bud: "of up to 70 million Chinese, Hitler’s extermination of 10 million “inferior” Jews,...">>

Again, Buddy can't begin to show that a person being a very bad dictator follows from a lack of belief in God. He just regurgitates the guilt by association fallacy and hopes it'll stick. This differs entirely from his comparison with the Christian Hitler and his Christian Nazis who specifically said, repeatedly, that they were killing Jews in the name of Christianity and Buddy's God.

The notion that Hitler was an atheist is so stupid and ill-informed that it was necessary to play a clip of public idiots like Bill O'Reilly making the claim just so people at the lecture yesterday wouldn't think it wasn't a made up strawman.

If you want to see this, jump to the 4:00 minute mark on this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_iNCGH9kY

Buddy plainly falls for making the claim himself, and he doesn't bother to support it. There was a lady in attendance yesterday who actually was in a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia during WW2. She's Dutch and I think also lived in Europe for some time. She said she thought this line of BS about Hitler being an atheist was uniquely American. Other than here, she hadn't heard of people in Europe being so misinformed that they would fall for such nonsense.

I know exactly why Dinesh thinks he can get away with claiming Hitler was an atheist, and I know exactly why he is absolutely, conclusively, wrong. If Dinesh had done even a little homework he could have figured this out on his own, but again, he's so profoundly inept it's amazing anyone could take him seriously.

Dinesh has fallen for the Trevor-Roper-endorsed translation of the Table Talk quotes which have been shown to be frauds (link to clip of Dinesh saying this provided upon request). This is entirely debunked in a nice short article written eleven years ago by historian Dr. Richard Carrier who went back to the original, earliest available German documentation and plainly shows that they are frauds:

"Was Catholic Hitler "Anti-Christian"? On the Trail of Bogus Quotes" http://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php

cont...

***

Other than the bogus Table Talk quotes, Dinesh and Buddy have nothing to support their Hitler/atheism claim (not that it would matter if they did). This stands quite in contrast to the evidence on the other side.

First remember, it says nothing about Xtianity being true or false just because a fanatic was able to use it as a foundation for a genocide against the Jews and others. We don't want to fall for the same fallacy Buddy does. But this doesn't change the historical fact of Christianity's long and established history of anti-semitism, which goes back right to the time of Jesus.

Let's consider these lines of evidence regarding Hitler's religion. I'll limit myself to only about a dozen examples, of *many* more available.

***
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, (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, 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
[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 longstanding Christian anti-semitism:
“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, 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. 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

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

Along with the "Hitler atheist" whopper here are a few other objections/myths see a few others briefly addressed here: http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler-myths.htm

The notion that Hitler was an atheist has no support. On the face if it, that he was a Christian, appealing to an overwhelmingly Christian populace steeped in centuries of Christian based antisemitism, has considerable support.

Rather than continue going through Buddy's article bit by bit, I'll give him a chance to catch up. Don't want to filibuster. This response is archived on our forum: viewtopic.php?p=26219#p26219

Buddy is welcome to join in there which allows much larger posts along with pictures and a few other things.

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

D.
--------------
"[The truth is] six million Jews were targeted and systematically murdered in the heart of Christendom, by baptized Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox who were never rebuked, let alone excommunicated."
--Dr. Franklin Littell of Baylor University speaking at US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 12/8/93, Awake, 8/22/95, pg. 12
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Buddy falls for Dinesh Hitler/atheist claptrap

Post by Cherryj »

Excellent references Darrel. I copied most of your info today for posting a reply on an agnostic forum; it's a thread for nonbeliever Razorback fans (we're a small group). The local fundies often use it as a "witnessing opportunity" and this morning someone just happened to use the Hitler-was-an-atheist argument, so I reposted your references.

In general, I'd say Christians over-emphasize Hitler's personal beliefs. Hitler's Germany in 1933 was 67% Protestant and 33% Roman Catholic - 100% Christian, at least officially; Jews were not counted as they had recently been stripped of citizenship. In 1939, 3.5% of the population claimed to be Neo-Pagans and other non-Christian theists and 1.5% considered themselves to be non-believers, yielding a population that was 96% Christian. Wither Hitler was himself a Christian is irrelevant when one considers his effectiveness in getting a whole nation of Christians (with a very small number of dissenters) to become accomplices in his plans. Naturally, of course, the apologist whipped out the usual No True Scotsman fallacy – amazing, isn’t it, in a nation over 95% Christian, virtually no one apparently was a “real” Christian…
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Dardedar
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Re: Buddy falls for Dinesh Hitler/atheist claptrap

Post by Dardedar »

Cherryj wrote:Excellent references Darrel. I copied most of your info today for posting a reply on an agnostic forum;...
Excellent, spread them far and wide. And if you get stuck, post a note and I can help with more.

When they try to claim that Hitler was an occultist, I like to share this with them:

"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 on 6 September 1938. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Volume 1 Edited by Norman Hepburn Baynes. University of Michigan Press, p. 396

If you follow the link to the NWAonline thread, there are many more exchanges I had with some who weren't happy with this information.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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