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>You can't turn to "science" as the source of our standards; a source of right or wrong.
If you study the Bible there are contradictory standards of right and wrong.
It definitely is not a book to guide people in what is right and what is wrong.
The heroes in the Bible are definitely not good examples for our children or
our adults to follow in terms of ethics. I have tried to find and summarize
the good ethics in the Bible, and I am having a lot of trouble finding it
-- maybe you can list the passages in the Bible that you consider good sources
of right and wrong. One must allow people's natural reasoning abilities
and their natural sense of justice to operate to allow them to determine right from
wrong. As soon as some book like the Bible or Koran, or some person like
the pope, some God or any other dictator coerces people into believing certain
things are right and other things are wrong one is in danger of losing one's
natural sense of justice. Nazi Germany is a good example.
>The places around the world where the unchanging values of God
have been rejected (Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, Viet Nam, China)
have seen the worst crimes against humanity that have ever happened in the
history of the world. If you reject God's unchanging standard, you are left
with a human standard The trouble is, who establishes this standard?
Would not all standards be equal? Wouldn't the Nazi "standard" of social
Dawinism, and that Jews were evolutionary degenerates, and that Darwin's
"survival of the fittest" legitimized not only Arian dominance,
but the killing of millions upon millions.
(a) Wrong again!
Have you ever read Hitler's "Mein Kampf"? It is revealing.
People often make the claim that Adolph Hitler adhered to Atheism, Humanism
or that his religion involved ancient Nordic pagan mythology.
None of these fanciful and wrong ideas hold. Although one of Hitler's henchmen,
Alfred Rosenberg, did undertake a campaign of Nordic mythological propaganda,
Hitler and most of his henchmen did not believe in it
He justified his fight for the German people and against Jews by using Godly
and Biblical reasoning. Indeed, one of his most revealing statements makes this
quite clear:
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Hitler's anti-Semitism grew from his Christian education.
Christian Germany in his time took for granted the belief that Jews held an inferior
status to German Christians. Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from
the preaching of Catholic priests, and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for
hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred
for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On
the Jews and their Lies,"
Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until
World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.
Hitler did not have to prove his belief in God, as so many American Christians
do now. He did not have to justify his Godly belief against an Atheist movement.
He took his beliefs for granted just as most Germans did. He did not have to
preach God to his audience. His thrust aimed at politics, not religion.
Although, through his politics he had wanted to create a German Reich Church
to instill dogmatic beliefs in the German populace.
Here are a few quotes that show Nazism was not based
on Atheism
or Humanism:
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.
- Hermann Goering
For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Only the Jews, he shouted, had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people, he charged, of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."
-Julius Streicher (See John 8:44)
A Jew is for me an object of disgust. I feel like vomiting when I see one. Christ could not possibly have been a Jew. It is not necessary to prove that scientifically-- it is a fact.
-Joseph Goebbels
Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
As soon as the theoretician attempts to take account of so-called 'utility' and 'reality' instead of absolute truth, his work will cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will become a prescription for everyday life.
-Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I (Mein Kampf)
Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth... Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...that is why the prophet seldom has any honor in his own country.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
("For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country." John 4:44)
(b) Now Stalin, etc. These dictatorships are the opposite of Humanism.
A dictatorship makes some people more divine than others, with disastrous
consequences. In a dictatorship freethinkers are not tolerated
-- this is true in all religious dictatorship, including Stalin's Russia
(Personally I have lost a number of relatives by execution and death in Siberia
in Stalinist Russia). Also, China. This is why Humanists are some of the most
ardent supporters of democracy.
>Of course the "standard of living" you refer to has only gone up for
everyone,
>right? What about those in the interior of Africa? Does the improvements in
>technology that is being used against the general population (guns, jeeps,
>radio communications) by the bands of armed men calling themselves an army.
>The human standard most "popular" around the world is war: kill your fellow
man
>and take what he has as your own.
Much of Africa has been a basket-case.
When cultures are completely disrupted physically, they either disappear altogether,
leaving a devastated people behind (i.e. Native Indians in the Americas) or
they lapse into barbarism. It seems to take centuries for healthy cultures that
have been devastated to recover. Remember that the slave trade by mostly the
Western Christian nations (also some by East Indians) completely devastated Africa.
It will take a long time to heal. It is up to the world community of nations to make
a supreme effort using science (and of course applied science) to help establish
a healthy culture in Africa.
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