The Stalin/Pol Pot/Hitler Killed Because of Atheism Fallacy

spidergoat said:
There was nothing wrong with their atheism. They just shouldn't have killed so many people.
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People say of Aurangzeb that he was very devout and lived a spartan life with a multiethnic, multireligious court. He was so humble he even stitched his own salat caps, wrote Qurans in calligraphy, gave alms and prayed regularly. The fact that he also killed all his brothers and imprisoned his father for the throne, while committing wholescale massacres across his empire does not appear to have seemed contradictory to him. So, yes, I guess, there was nothing wrong with his theism. He just shouldn't have killed so many people.
 
I don't know much about Pol Pot and Stalin, but Hitler was no atheist.

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

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 2


"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

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people, especially faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life. The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us in thinking that they might usefully replace the existing denominations. ...There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10

Hitler obviously had his own interpretation of Christianity, but he certainly was no atheist.

EDIT: Found a couple more

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

- Adolf Hitler, to General Gerhard Engel, 1941


Here's a really good one:

"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. ...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. ..."

- Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922


Where do you think Hitler got his hatred for the Jews? Christianity!
 
That is certainly possible. Not every act of a religious ruler is inspired by religion.
 
Also, it's not like Stalin was strictly an atheist. He was also an idiot. He didn't accept genetics or Darwin's evolution theory.
 
Sorry for the double posts, but I just did some reading on Pol Pot, and while he did not believe in a god, he did believe in heaven and destiny and all that stuff. So where he may have been an atheist, he did at least believe in a spiritual realm of some kind.

So I'm curious where SAM gets her idea that Hitler was an atheist, and that atheism had anything to do with any of their crimes. I'll take her off "ignore" long enough to see if she actually answers me.
 
She didn't actually say "hitler." I did when I split the posts off from the hijacked thread and created the general title. Hitler is often part of the same fallacious nonsense that those who who believe a lack of superstition results in murderous atrocity propose from time to time.
 
S.A.M. said:
Hitler also knew the power of propaganda.

His pubic speeches are hardly indicative of his private beliefs.
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OK, so you'll cite what Stalin said as evidence of his private beliefs, but you'll dismiss the same from Hitler? I wonder why that is? Could it be because one supports your argument while the other doesn't?

Hmm...

Anyway, you still didn't answer the question (as usual). If you would, can you tell me where you got the idea that Hitler was an atheist?
 
SkinWalker said:
She didn't actually say "hitler." I did when I split the posts off from the hijacked thread and created the general title. Hitler is often part of the same fallacious nonsense that those who who believe a lack of superstition results in murderous atrocity propose from time to time.
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Fair enough. But I've heard her say Hitler before.
 
Hitler also knew the power of propaganda.

All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise
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"To whom should propaganda be addressed? … It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses… The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skilfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself … its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect… it's soundness is to be measured exclusively by its effective result". (Main Kampf, Vol 1, Ch 6 and Ch 12)
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His pubic speeches are hardly indicative of his private beliefs.

Same guy also said, in less public speeches:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....
"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)


10th October, 1941, midday

"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)


14th October, 1941, midday

"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....
"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....
"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....
"Christianity <is> the liar....
"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)


19th October, 1941, night

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."


21st October, 1941, midday

"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....
"The decisive falsification of Jesus' <who he asserts many times was never a Jew> doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....
"Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea." (p 63-65)


13th December, 1941, midnight

"Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... <here insults people who believe transubstantiation>....
"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease." (p 118-119)


14th December, 1941, midday

"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....
"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)


9th April, 1942, dinner

"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)


27th February, 1942, midday

"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."
"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)
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http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_hitler.html
 
So Sam, why do you believe that the propaganda is the former, and not the latter? Why do you choose to believe that the anti-theist Hitler was the real man, and not the propogandist? Rather than believing that the author who spoke candidly about propaganda and his faith is the real man?

Again, only because one supports your argument, and one doesn't. And you choose to believe the one that supports your argument, rather than forming an opinion based on the actual evidence.
 
I base it on what they said and did, themselves. Hitler was addressing a Christian Germany. He needed an army that would follow him. What is more logical, that he spoke his mind to his friends and propaganda to the masses, or vice versa?

As for Stalin, he banned religion and the Communist party sponsored the Militant Godless group to unbrainwash the people. You can hear echoes of their propaganda on this forum.


What do you base yours on? Faith?
 
You didn't base it on what he said, because he's said both. He was an admitted Catholic, and often cited what they were doing as God's will. You yourself pointed out that he knew the power of propaganda, so how can you not see that he was using the anti-religion fervor to rally folks against the Jews?

And his actions speak of a classic anti-Semite, not an atheist. You should know, you are one.
 
I base it by distinguishing between his public and private speeches.

And his actions speak of a classic anti-Semite, not an atheist. You should know, you are one.
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This must be part of the prosocial atheism we hear so much about.
 
Regardless of what Hitler actually believed at the time he ruled Germany and invaded Europe, the people that followed him were devoutly religious and this religiosity was used to commit an atrocity on another religious cult that was minding their own business. Cult on cult atrocity is a product of religious influence.

In addition, Stalin was raised as a devout Christian and was well-versed in how the religious used power and position to create a hegemony. Stalin inserted himself as a cult of personality, some would argue the godhead of a hegemony based on an ideology. That ideology was not humanism, which is at the core of modern atheism. Indeed, "atheism" is not a philosophy at all, but a condition brought on by rational/critical thought and a rejection of superstition as a life way.

The religiously deluded (and they are, after all deluded -since there's not a shred of good evidence to support their claims- and I'm speaking of the specific cults of theism such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) want to equate the rejection of their superstitions with "evil" and "murder," out of fear that those that are currently indoctrinated into their superstitions will begin to think for themselves and commit the heresies and apostasies of leaving their superstitious lifeways.

Such an "exodus" would destroy the hegemonic control that religious cults have over governments and societies. Individuals within these hegemonies of religion are perhaps afraid to have a lifetime of superstition tossed aside and marginalized as an embarrassment to those based in reality should the superstitious become the minority instead of the other way around.
 
It wouldn't do any good. I've seen a lot of people in this forum change their minds, evolve in their points of view, and gain new perspectives -even if they didn't go "over to the other side."

SAM isn't one of them.
 
SkinWalker said:
It wouldn't do any good. I've seen a lot of people in this forum change their minds, evolve in their points of view, and gain new perspectives -even if they didn't go "over to the other side."

SAM isn't one of them.
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You're wrong. I have a whole new perspective of atheists where I had none when I came here.

And yes, I am slow to make up my mind and slow to change it. I consider it an advantage. It takes a lot to convince me either way.

JDawg said:
Obviously not.

You really need to read Skinwalker's post.
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You mean how people behave under an elected leader? He was in the army himself, he should know. :p
 
What I don't get, SAM, is that you've picked a few atheists, pointed out that they've killed tons of people. Then you've basically concluded that atheists are bad.

If I said that a few Muslims have killed lots of people, then concluded that all Muslims are bad, what would you say to that?

Baron Max
 
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