Wed, 23 Aug 2006

Darwin, Hitler, the Holocaust and History

Who's Theories?
The results of who's theories?

Thank the gods for small favors: at least this latest salvo from the Christian Right in the culture wars doesn't blame pagans for Hitler - this time, he's all Darwin's fault! It was even illustrated with the image at left - although I've changed the caption a bit, but taking a cue from WND have decided to illustrate this post a bit more fully than is my usual habit.

According to co-producer Jerry Newcomb:

"...before the advent of Darwinian beliefs, the basic concept was that man was made in the image of God, and was therefore valuable."

Methinks Mr Newcomb and the other producers of this trash need a bit of a history lesson. You see, this isn't the first time that Christianity has gone after science... and Darwin certainly is not responsible for the devaluation of human life. In fact, I'd go so far as to postulate another source a bit closer to the producers for the particular nightmare of antisemitism. Like Christianity itself.

Galileo

Perhaps the most famous example of Christianity taking on science was the case of Galileo Galilei and the Inquisition pictured here. The end result was that Galileo was forced to recant his theory that the earth revolved around the sun, and to assert the primacy of a literal interpretation of scripture instead:

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

Joshua 10:12-13

Obviously, according to the Bible, it's the sun that revolves around the earth, and not vice-versa, as Gaileo asserted. I wonder when we're going to see heliocentrism blamed for Hitler? Or hear demands for equal time for the idea that the sun revolves around the earth, per the Bible?

torture in the inquisition

So Christianity hasn't exactly had great relations with science over the centuries. But you'd think they'd know their own history, especially regarding the sanctity of human life. I mean, Darwin wasn't around when the Inquisition was torturing and murdering by the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.

Of course, these folks weren't really "humans" - they were heretics or even heathens! And, perhaps not curiously, many of the victims were Jews (which is one more reason I consider Judaism to be a heathen path), whom the Christians blamed, based on the Bible, for the murder of their messiah!

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:

Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men.

1 Thess 2:14-15

This persecution of the Jews is an ancient and hallowed tradition in Christianity:

Many, I know, respect the Jews and think that their present way of life is a venerable one. This is why I hasten to uproot and tear out this deadly opinion. I said that the synagogue is no better than a theater and I bring forward a prophet as my witness. Surely the Jews are not more deserving of belief than their prophets. "You had a harlot's brow; you became shameless before all". Where a harlot has set herself up, that place is a brothel. But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts. Jeremiah said: "Your house has become for me the den of a hyena". He does not simply say "of wild beast", but "of a filthy wild beast", and again: "I have abandoned my house, I have cast off my inheritance". But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.

Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407)

This isn't just a practice of Catholic Christians: many of the leaders of the reformation were virulent antisemites as well.

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them...

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb...

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home...

Martin Luther (1483-1546):The Jews and Their Lies

Not to be outdone, John Calvin got in on the act:

Their rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.

John Calvin (1509-1564): A Response To Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew

Bear in mind that the Darwin wouldn't be publishing the theory of evolution for another three centuries... I think it's pretty clear who's theories were used by Hitler to commit the largest act of genocide in history:

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 the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.

Adolf Hitler, 1922

I rest my case.

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