Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University
of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issue with any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?
I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover, I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determine whether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games. Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all you have to do is commit to a criterion for testing. It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-minded enough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?
Ben Stein's Expelled is merely the latest in a long line of creationist pieces that argue that, since Hitler appealed to evolution to justify his ideas, therefore evolution bears much of the blame for Nazism and the Holocaust. Evolutionists retort that it's always possible to misuse any belief system, but that doesn't make the belief system itself wrong.
I think that's wussy.
First, it is fair to examine the role a belief system has in abuses that arise from it. It's certainly fair to examine the role that Western leftists played in making Stalin's and Mao's purges possible, or examine the question whether Vietnam activists abetted the Khmer Rouge atrocities.
Second, it's noble to persuade your adversary with calm reason. But it's far more satisfying to grab your adversary's best weapon and beat him to a bloody pulp with it. D'Artagnan is cool and gets the dates, but I'll bet Hagar the Horrible's fighting style is more fun any day.
So, you wanna play "Who's responsible for Hitler?" Fine, let's play.
I can understand, if not condone, Hitler's animosity to the Russians. Communism was at one of its nadirs of barbarism, though we could argue endlessly whether Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot was the most evil. And the fear of invasion from the east is a primal one in Europe, fed by repeated invasions from the East. Although it had been 700 years since the Mongol invasions, the Turkish Empire was dead, and maybe it was time to let it go.
But why the Jews? Walled up in ghettoes, barred from many occupations, what threat were they to anybody? Yet somebody, for centuries, had been fanning irrational hatred of the Jews. Somebody gave Hitler this idea. Who was it?
Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism.. - Hans Kung
One famous medieval diatribe against the Jews has an elaborate plan for making their lives miserable:
What did the Jews do to deserve all this?
I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made assassinations, kidnapped children, as related before. I have heard that one Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood, together with a barrel of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnapping of children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already heard). I am well aware that they deny all of this. However, it all coincides with the judgment of Christ which declares that they are venomous, bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly. [In other words, the fact that they deny these crimes proves that they're criminals]
But what about all those Christian commands to show mercy to others?
Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts...
Now let me commend these Jews sincerely to whoever feels the desire to shelter and feed them, to honor them, to be fleeced, robbed, plundered, defamed, vilified, and cursed by them, and to suffer every evil at their hands -- these venomous serpents and devil's children, who are the most vehement enemies of Christ our Lord and of us all. And if that is not enough, let him stuff them into his mouth, or crawl into their behind and worship this holy object. Then let him boast of his mercy, then let him boast that he has strengthened the devil and his brood for further blaspheming our dear Lord and the precious blood with which we Christians are redeemed. Then he will be a perfect Christian, filled with works of mercy for which Christ will reward him on the day of judgment, together with the Jews in the eternal fire of hell!
Thank heaven for theologians who can discern the truth! If it weren't for this explanation, I might read Matthew 25:35 ("For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in") and get a completely different impression.
Anti-Semitism is the fruit of centuries of teaching by Popes and the
Catholic Church, like the above excerpts, by Pope Ooops, my bad. That's
not by a Pope or Catholic theologian. That was written by Martin Luther;
it's
a thoroughly evil little pamphlet from 1543 titled On the Jews and Their Lies.
This is the guy that Halley's Bible Handbook calls "Next to Jesus and
Paul, the Greatest Man of all the ages." A bit further along, we read
"Persecution is the spirit of the DEVIL, even though carried on in the name of
Christ." Apparently Halley never read Luther's writings. (You can find this
quoted in William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and many
other places. You will probably not find it in a lot of "Christian"
collections of Luther's works.)
Gotta love point 3, about taking all the books away. This from a guy who complained that the Catholic Church had taken the Bible away from the people.
The irony is that Luther, early in his career, condemned abuses of the Jews. He seems to have hoped that they would respond to his kinder, gentler Christianity. But when they didn't, he turned on them.
This is not to defend the Catholic Church, which has its own long list of anti-Semitic sins, but to demolish entirely the pretense that Things Would Have Been Different if Real Christians had been in charge.
There's more. Encouraged partly by Luther's break with Rome, the peasants of Germany revolted in 1525. In his letter An Admonition to Peace, Luther condemned the avarice of the nobility but had scant sympathy for the peasants. To them he wrote:
Again, it is not true when you declare that you teach and live according to the Gospel. There is not one of the articles which teaches a single point of the Gospel, but everything is directed to one purpose; namely, that your bodies and your properties may be free. In a word, they all deal with worldly and temporal matters. You would have power and wealth, so as not to suffer wrong; and yet the Gospel does not take worldly matters into account, and makes the external life consist only in suffering, wrong, cross, patience, and contempt for temporal wealth and life. [Bad peasants. Revolting merely because of oppression.]
ON THE THIRD ARTICLE [the peasants had drafted a manifesto with twelve articles] “There shall be no serfs, for Christ has made all men free.” That is making Christian liberty an utterly carnal thing. Did not Abraham and other patriarchs and prophets have slaves? Read what St. Paul teaches about servants, who, at that time, were all slaves. Therefore this article is dead against the Gospel. It is a piece of robbery by which every man takes from his lord the body, which has become his lord’s property. For a slave can be a Christian, and have Christian liberty, in the same way that a prisoner or a sick man is a Christian, and yet not free. This article would make all men equal, and turn the spiritual kingdom of Christ into a worldly, external kingdom; and that is impossible. For a worldly kingdom cannot stand unless there is in it an inequality of persons, so that some are free, some imprisoned, some lords, some subjects, etc.; and St. Paul says in Galatians 3:28, that in Christ master and servant are one thing. [Considering how often anti-evolutionists equate evolution with subversion, it's worth asking whether anyone who respects Luther, a man who hated freedom so vehemently, can call himself an American patriot. Imagine, all men equal! O the horror! At the very least, the irony of Martin Luther King being named after this man is overpowering. All the more so when we recall the whiff of lynch law in Point 5 above.]
Then compare these two passages:
The rulers unjustly take your property; that is the one side. On the other hand, you take from them the authority, in which their whole property and life and being consist.
I must also give you an illustration from this present time. Pope and emperor have set themselves against me and have raged. Now how have I brought it about that the more pope and emperor have raged the more my Gospel spread? I have never drawn sword nor desired revenge. I have begun no division and no rebellion, but, so far as I was able, I have helped the worldly rulers, even those who persecuted the Gospel and me, to maintain their power and honor.
"I have begun no division and no rebellion." The mind just boggles. Within a short time, it was no more Mister Nice Guy. The pamphlet Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants really doesn't need much elaboration:
Stab, smite, slay, whoever can.
Luther was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, many nobles blamed him for the Peasant Revolt (at least partly true) and other people condemned him for betraying the peasants in his later writings (also partly true). It was a no-win situation. But just as with the Jews, when his initial conciliatory approach failed, Luther turned vindictive.
Luther was an absolutely classic authoritarian, someone who felt justified in opposing any authority that impeded him but who could simultaneously demand that everyone else submit to authority. There's more than a passing similarity to Hitler, who lashed out at the intellectuals who spurned him by instituting a cult of authority. If Darwin bears some moral culpability for the Holocaust, where does that leave Luther and the people who have treated him as a hero?
Note for historically literate readers.
The ones who died in the Holocaust, I mean?
"I don't know?" Oh, come, come, come. Don't be so modest. One of the principal things a religion tries to answer is the question of what happens when we die. And your religion doesn't know? Shame on you.
Or maybe you're saying it is possible to go to heaven without being a Christian. I don't have a problem, personally, but then I don't go around spouting creationist babble about links between evolution and Nazism.
No, anyone who believes evolution was a root of Nazism knows perfectly well what the answer to this question has to be. The Jews are in hell, because they didn'tacceptJesusastheirpersonalLordandSavior.
O-kay. So evolution is evil because it led to the Holocaust. You follow a god who condemns people to hell after they've been through Auschwitz. So if evolution is evil, where does your belief system fall?
Now I can picture one possible response to this argument. And I really, really, really hope somebody makes it.
This pretty much excludes anyone who buys the "Darwin = Hitler" idea.
I am perfectly well aware of the complexities of Luther. He did launch the Protestant Reformation, although so many other people broke with Rome at that time that it seems inevitable that someone would get away with it. And almost single handedly, he standardized German with his translation of the Bible. But he was a deeply flawed, contradictory and conflicted person. And under the veneer of spirituality, once you start reading his works, was a very vile, spiteful, and hate-filled person. Most historians draw a pretty straight line from Luther's anti-Semitism to Hitler's.
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Created 04 February 2008; Last Update 05 May, 2008
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