Listen to King, Ghandi, Mandela, Tutu, The Dali Lama none of them try to be on the right side they say there are no sides only humanity (and the rest of life on earth)
I am an atheist but then I can’t prove I am right, neither can any of us. I have an idea, lets do less harm to our fellow humans, do less harm to the earth, treat it like an experiment and see what happens.
“I” think we evolved from aggressive apes… “I” have sense (not a knowing) that we could do with less aggression and more compassion. “I” think that is a step upwards on the evolutionary ladder, “Imagine” as a singer once said.
So the Pope is just one more evolved ape, he has his own stuff, he is the same as the rest of us, he just happens to have a bigger stage.
Forgive his foolishness as you forgive yourself and I try to forgive myself.

Resistance requires you defeat to win, love just is, win or lose is not an issue.

Rumi said
“Out beyond ideas of right doing
and wrongdoing
There is a field.
I will meet you there”

Let me remind you, that a secular and democratic government of the ATHEIST Sweden was forcibly sterilizing some of its citizens until 1976.

I’m not going to let you get away with slandering an entire country. Especially when you hang the slander on further lies. Sweden is a constitutional monarchy. It has an established religion, Lutheranism. Their particular brand of Lutheranism being called, officially, the CHURCH OF SWEDEN (Svenska kyrkan).

Lutheranism has been the state religion since the 16th century. Until the 19th, it was illegal for a Swede to convert to another religion. And then, only if you left for another Christian denomination. It wasn’t until 1950 or so that you could simply leave the church. Something like 75% of the Swedish population currently identifies as Lutheran. It used to be 95%. In oh, about 1970.

As for forced sterilization, you’d be hard pressed to find a society that didn’t get swept up in the eugenics movement of the 1920′s. Canada also had a sterilization program into the 1970′s, for example. The aim was not genocide in either case. It was a misguided attempt to stem mental illness.

That the nazis fought the communists and that during the war they persecuted them as enemy allies does not mean that they feared them.

It doesn’t mean they didn’t fear them, either. They were certainly treated much worse and put under much higher scrutiny than Christians were. But that is all irrelevant, as Messier Tidy Upper explained.

The leading nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, …

That has nothing to do with the fact that Hitler’s rhetoric was steeped justification from Christianity and God, and that German soldiers went so far as to have “God is With Us” stamped on their belt buckles.

Also, german bishops decribed matters to the vatican’s secretary of state, relating e.g. nazi persecution of Jews as “unjust and painful.” In sermons, their take was that “God always punishes the tormentors of his Chosen People, the Jews.”

No, that was the take of one Bishop, others had no problem with it or even approved of it. In the end the decision at the council of German Bishops was to just ignore the Holocaust entirely.

If you know how the church works, you’ll realise that this is a hair’s width away from branding National Socialism a heresy.

Why didn’t they go the extra step and call it heresy? The Vatican refused to take a firm, even verbal stand against the Holocaust even towards the end of the war.

For the nazis, this was a call to battle against the Reich. Hitler wrote that “I shall open such a campaign against them in press, radio and cinema so that they won’t know what hit them.” Among others, the Gestapo searched the offices of every german diocese, effectively shut down the publishers who printed the encyclical and renewed its campaign against alleged immorality among the clergy.

Yes, and it worked, the church backed down.

You’re right, they didn’t “get along well”, there were quite a few conflicts. But the Catholic church still refused to take a firm stand.

If you’re talking about the concordate: that was an agreement between a catholic church already feeling the pressure of a hostile government — the nazis e.g. undermined the funding of foreign missionaries — and the nazis, who wanted to gain standing both among hostile, local catholics as well as wary catholic neighbouring countries.

Even if that is the case, it was a huge boost to Hitler’s power and acceptance worldwide.

Besides, I thought the Catholic church was supposed to be so moral and upright, if they knew what the Nazis were doing why didn’t they take a stand? The Nazis put pressure on them, and they just caved. This is supposed to be God’s representatives on Earth, yet they put their diplomatic position ahead of the lives of millions. If they expect to be treated as a superior moral group, then I would expect them to act like one.

“Good standing” with whom? With the church? The clergy? The laypeople? I find no such “good standing” in evidence.

He is still considered a Catholic by the church, he was never excommunicated.

Point us to one order from the Vatican in that respect. All right, point us to one bishop who helped a nazi escape. Very well, point us to one priest who did so.

Uh, Bishop Hudal for one. Google “ratlines”.

“The Allies’ War against Germany was not a crusade, but the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting. This so-called business … used catchwords like democracy, race, religious liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called ‘war criminals’.”

I believe we are completely OT, nevertheless here goes. You remarked:

“It seems pretty clear that the internal enemy nazis feared most were Bolsheviks, so much that they imprisoned or killed anyone they could find who could be seen as remotely related to them.”

That the nazis fought the communists and that during the war they persecuted them as enemy allies does not mean that they feared them. Goebbels actually shared the communists’ harted of the burgeois and wrote into his diary in 1926: “I find it horrible that the communists and ourselves kick in each others’ heads.” As much as they battled them before their ascent to power, the nazis couldn’t help but noticing that after such battles, several new recruits would show up. In fact, this was a deliberate tactic: “Haven’t you noticed,” Hitler once asked, “after a brawl at a meeting, that the ones who get beaten up are the first to apply for membership in the party?” The nazis never saw any real danger of a successful communist revolution.

“Much of the Nazi ideology was explicitly Christian, and for the most part the Nazis and churches got along well.”

The leading nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, did try to set up a meta-religion in his book “Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts”: a “religion of the blood” was to replace christianity, which was supposed to be stepped with “jewish influences”. Bishop count von Galen had the following to say about the “explicit christianity” of that: “idol worship, cultism, fallback into the night of paganism.”

About church and nazis getting along well: The episcopate remarked in 1933 already that the nazis were in constant breach of the concordat. Also, german bishops decribed matters to the vatican’s secretary of state, relating e.g. nazi persecution of Jews as “unjust and painful.” In sermons, their take was that “God always punishes the tormentors of his Chosen People, the Jews.” Starting in 1935 the nazis started a libel campaign against catholic priests. To this the nazis added interventions with the seminaries and personal attacks on priests. The conflict led pope Pius XI. to issue the encyclical “With burning anxiety”. Drafted by cardinal von Faulhaber, another “famous opponent of the Nazis” (Rabbi David G. Dalin’s words) and written in german instead of latin, it was read from the pulpits of all german catholic churches on Palm sunday. It detailed Nazi crimes, criticized Hitler personally and generally condemned Nazi ideology. If you know how the church works, you’ll realise that this is a hair’s width away from branding National Socialism a heresy. For the nazis, this was a call to battle against the Reich. Hitler wrote that “I shall open such a campaign against them in press, radio and cinema so that they won’t know what hit them.” Among others, the Gestapo searched the offices of every german diocese, effectively shut down the publishers who printed the encyclical and renewed its campaign against alleged immorality among the clergy.

If you call that “getting along well” then I wouldn’t wasnt to know what your idea is of “being in love”.

“Hitler is still a Catholic in good standing.”

“Good standing” with whom? With the church? The clergy? The laypeople? I find no such “good standing” in evidence.

“The Catholic church was one of the first ‘countries’ to officially endorse Hitler’s leadership of Germany.”

If you can find an edorsement of Hitler by the holy see I would be curious to know about it. If you’re talking about the concordate: that was an agreement between a catholic church already feeling the pressure of a hostile government — the nazis e.g. undermined the funding of foreign missionaries — and the nazis, who wanted to gain standing both among hostile, local catholics as well as wary catholic neighbouring countries.

“The Catholic church also helped Nazi leaders escape following the end of the war.”

Point us to one order from the Vatican in that respect. All right, point us to one bishop who helped a nazi escape. Very well, point us to one priest who did so.

“And although some individual clergy helped prevent the Holocaust, the Catholic church as a whole knew about it but mostly just ignored it.”

The church knew about the persecutions of jews before the war and condemned it, as mentioned above. Later they were told about the atrocities commited by the SD and the SS in the wake of the Wehrmacht’s advances. German bishops did inform the holy see, which led to pope Pius XII’s 1942 Christmas statement, denounciating of nazi ideology. Thousands of jews were kept hiden in churches and monasteries and saved. Recall, if you may, where the pope lived at that time and how many catholics, particularly clergy, were then in nazi controlled territory.

That the catholic church however had knowledge of the decision at the Wannseekonferenz – the starting event of the Holocaust – and the means of the “Endlösung” I find a rather fantastic claim. All internal communications by the nazis were not just secret, but also in codewords. Recall that it took years after the war’s end to determine the full extend of the Holocaust.

“Yes, there was a fair amount of resistance to the Nazi initial rise to power, but that changed a lot thanks to the Catholic church’s official endorsement of Hitler.”

I find no such switch of the low esteem that the church, both clergy and laypeople, held against the nazis. Among the clergy, what I do find is stand they took as mentioned above as well as the consequences they had to bear. Among the laypeople, what I do find is the “Kölner Kreis”, “Junger Bundschuh”, “Weiße Rose” and others.

For myself, I’d like to conclude our OT exchange: I find you picture of the church under the nazis a bit lopsided. Please have the last word.

Like Richard Dawkins? OMG he is EVIL!!!!

(giggle)

.

It does appear that hiring Benny as the Pope has been a bit of a PR blunder to say the least. That’s what happens when you hire bozo’s.

It seems pretty clear that the internal enemy nazis feared most were Bolsheviks, so much that they imprisoned or killed anyone they could find who could be seen as remotely related to them. What evidence do you have to back this claim?

Ahem .. The Jews!?

Adolf Hitler was the most notorious anti-Semite in history and he blamed everything on the Jews. The Jewish people living in Germany and Europe were demonised, lied about, propagandised against, persecuted and scapegoated .. and then Hitler came up with his famous “Final Solution” for the “Jewish problem.” Without a shadow of a doubt the Nazis feared as well as hated the Jews far more than any other foes – internal or external.

You do know this really, right? This, of all things, hasn’t been forgotten has it?

True, the Nazi’s didn’t like the Bolsheviks – but then they blamed Bolshevism on the Jews. Ironically, that didn’t save other Jews from being persecuted by the Bolsheviks and their Communist successors one little bit. The Nazi’s called the Jews “communists”, the communists blamed the Jews for “Capitalism”. Scapegoated by all sides – as usual.

Ironically, the same anti-Semitic “Blame the Jews” meme is becoming more widespread and popular again these days especially as the anti-Semitic Islamic world gets ever louder and larger. The same warped demented theories in ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ that were forged by Czarist Russia are still best-sellers in the Middle-East today and even in increasingly Islamicised Europe of all places, Judaeophobia is rearing its murderously, ugly head again.

Example : The recent Hamas supporters boat Mavi Marmara taunted the Israelis with anti-Semitic “go back to Auschwitz” remarks before they were intercepted a month or two ago. Funnily enough, the Israelis were falsely made out to be the bad guys (yet again) despite (yet again) merely defending themselves against a planned brutal ambush by a terrorist group masquerading as “peace activists”. As always the Jew cannot win. If he fights back – he will be blamed, if he is killed, no-one will speak out or remember.

Hitler is still a Catholic in good standing.

I’m no fan of the Pope or Catholicism at all .. but WHAT?

Hitler is dead so you’ve got your tense wrong for starters and, much as I dislike their creed, history and leader, I don’t think many too Catholics would still consider Hitler in good standing with them!

The Pope = really mendacious and really really ignorant theocrat.

@mike burkhart
Yep – let’s not “fuel extremists”, everyone just lie down and let them bury us nicely under pile of misinformation and insinuations…

The fact of the matter is that wars are almost always about resources or politics. Religious sentiment, unfortunately, tends to be easily wielded by leaders towards their cause. This especially gets sticky when the political leaders and religious leaders are one and the same.

This highlights the importance of two things:
1) The ability of the population at large to think critically (something I see eroding more and more) and avoid sacrificing their humanity for some ideology.
2) The importance of separation of church and state.

Makes me think of Charlie Chaplin’s famous speech from The Great Dictator:
http://www.vagabundia.net/dictator.html

According to the present teaching, they are absolute and inalienable. In the past it was believed that they don’t apply to certain groups of people, but the present teaching contains no such notions.

But the fact that this has changed proves that this is NOT really absolute. You were arguing that religious morals are superior because secular moral rules can be changed as society sees fit, but you readily admit that religious moral rules also readily change as society sees fit. Your whole argument is based on an assertion that you admit is false.

And the fact that the very concept of human rights originated with secular enlightenment thinking completely contradicts the your statement that we need religion for this. Religion wasn’t responsible for the idea of human rights, it took a few hundred years after the concept was established for it to be fully embraced by the Catholic church. Do you know when the Catholic church official abandoned it policy of antisemitism? The 1950′s.

Which is, coincidentally, why we don’t burn heretics any more.

At least not in Europe or the U.S. Witch hunts are still common in Africa.

(I must admit that there still are some areas where the doctrine is dangerously backwards, i.e. AIDS). Both the Canon Law and Catechism are relevant here because they codify the present teaching.

Yet the rules against contraception are treated as “absolute moral laws” as well. Are you saying you just outright reject God’s own absolute moral laws? What good are they if you won’t even accept them?

From Wikipedia: “At the end of 2008, 72.9%[2] of Swedes belonged to the Church of Sweden, a number that decreased yearly by more than one per cent during the last decade (2000–2009). In 2000, 82.9%[2] of the Swedes belonged to the church of Sweden, by the end of 2009, this figure was 71.3%.[1] Church of Sweden services are sparsely attended (hovering in the single digit percentages of the population).[11] The reason for the large number of inactive members is partly that until 1996, children became members automatically at birth if at least one of their parents was a member. Since 1996, only children that are baptised become members.”

Yup. A poster example of theocracy.

Hopefully don’t need to remind you that you were talking about a practice that ended in the 1970′s? Why are you now quoting statistics from 2008? You were the one arguing that atheism was somehow tied to their sterilization policies, but that ended close to 30 years, a whole generation, before the country abolished its state church. Now if you are able to provide evidence that Sweden was largely atheist in the 1950′s, that might have some relevance.

Based on what I have been able to find, rather than indicating atheism is responsible for Sweden’s sterilization policies, it seems that such policies were abolished as the country grew more secular. So so far Sweden looks like a good example contradicting your position.

Take this for example:

According to Palm and Trost (2000), when Swedes were asked in 1947 ‘Do you believe in God?’ 83% said yes, 9% said they didn’t know, and 8% said no. ” [Palm, Irving and Jan Trost. 2000. "Family and Religion in Sweden. " Pages 107-120 in Family, Religion, and Social Change in Diverse Societies, edited by Sharon Houseknecht and Jerry Pankhurst. New York, NY: Oxford University Press]

Yeah, really sounds like it was an atheist stronghold.

I think you need to read what he said more carefully. The one passage I quoted is not all he had to say. He talks about secularism specifically in the latter part of his speech, which is simply the desire to not give any faith preference. America, like it or not, is a Constitutionally-based secular nation.

And if you can name “many” atheist extremists — and by extremists, I mean ones that use atheism as a basis to match the deeds of faith-based extremists — then by all means please do so.