Just moronic how you generalize all religions. Not all Christians are the way you described. Guess who saw Christianity your way also?
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains." - Adolf Hitler
I have an entire post of two dozen quotes, one after the next after the next in which Hitler affirms his Xianity. I had to abbreviate the post because I could have kept going. His religious devotion and motivation is well documented by historians.
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains." - Adolf Hitler
Said by somebody with a sick brain. 🤷♀️
Here's a taste:
In a speech delivered in front of a Nazi audience in April 1922, Hitler made a more explicit reference to Christianity, referring to Jesus as “the true God.” He made it plain that he regarded Christ’s struggle as direct inspiration for his own. For Hitler, Jesus was not just one archetype among others, but “our greatest Aryan leader. ” While emphasizing Jesus’ human qualities, Hitler in these instances also alluded to his divinity. At a Christmas celebration given by the Munich branch of the NSDAP in December 1926, Hitler maintained that the movement’s goal was to “translate the ideals of Christ into deeds.” The movement would complete “the work which Christ had begun but could not finish.” On another occasion, this time behind closed doors and to fellow Nazis only, Hitler again proclaimed the centrality of Christ’s teachings for his movement: “We are the first to exhume these teachings! Through us alone, and not until now, do these teachings celebrate their resurrection! Mary and Magdalene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man. But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ!” In a nearly evangelical tone, Hitler declares that the “true message” of Christianity is to be found only with Nazism. He claims that, where the churches failed in their mission to instill a Christian ethic in secular society, his movement would take up the task. Hitler not only reads the New Testament, but professes - in private - to be inspired by it.
-- “The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945″ by Richard Steigmann-Gall, pp 27-28.
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“We are a people of different religions, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls… We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity … in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people.“
-- Speech in Passau 27 October 1928 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945:
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“I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a warrior. It calls my attention to the man who, lonely and surrounded by only a few supporters, recognized what they [the Jews] were, and called for a battle against them, and who, by God, was not the greatest sufferer, but the greatest warrior…
As a human being it is my duty to see to it that humanity will not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did that old civilization two thousand years ago, a civilization which was driven to its ruin by the Jews… I am convinced that I am really a devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as Christ did two thousand years ago, against those who are steeling and exploiting these poverty-stricken people.
Two thousand years ago a man was similarly denounced by this particular race which today denounces and blasphememes all over the place… That man was dragged before a court and they said: he is arousing the people! So he, too, was an agitator!”
-- Speech delivered on April 12, 1922; from Charles Bracelen Flood (1989). Hitler: The Path to Power
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“Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, ’I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so,’ he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God– so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty.”
-- John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” (1992)
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“The movement’s goal was to translate the ideals of Christ into deeds.”
“The movement would complete the work which Christ had begun but could not finish.”
-- Speech in Munich December 1926; from Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945
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“Without a doubt the chancellor lives in faith in God. He recognizes Christianity as the foundation of Western culture…”
-- Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich (quoted from Ernst Christian Helmreich. “The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue.” (1979))
So, sweetie, that ain't gonna work. Hitler was a Xian. He put "Gott Mit Uns" ("God With Us") on the Nazi belt buckles and other paraphenalia, for Santa's sake.
Not all Christians are the way you described.
This is a covert No True Scotsman Fallacy.
Do you know what all of them have in common? The bible. Xian doctrine and dogma. Belief in Jesus Christ as a resurrected savior. "Faith" as a way to decide what is true. They cite the same scripture as you. Their bible is your bible. Their savior is your savior. Their heaven is your heaven. Which is the entire problem.
You admit that nobody can be certain of what Xianity is about. All of those "not all Christians" can point to parts of the same book, the same doctine and ideas as you, and be certain they're correct. They will tell you that they have faith they are right about the views of theirs that you oppose.
My view of that is this arrangement is unreasonable, and not deserving of respect. Y'all don't even respect each other. The Catholics think the Protestants are deluded, the Protestants think the Catholics are misguided, the progressives think Westboro are going to hell for their hate, and Westboro think everyone else is going to hell because they know the Truth™.
But the problem is that I have the wrong view of all this? Are you even for real?
Xianity's diversity is proof of its falsity. There is no version of Xianity that someone can't point to something in the bible to justify. They will cite chapter and verse, and know they are right. Of course, they can't be all right, but they can be all wrong.
“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”
-- George Bernard Shaw
If Xianity was actually true, then it would be obvious. There would be a shared, unified understanding of Xianity, just as there's a shared, unified understanding of gravity, evolution, electricity, flight, and so on. Over the last 1600 years, the "understanding" of Xianity has only gotten more divided and discordant, not less.
If Xianity becomes more abstruse as human knowledge grows, rather than less, then how true could it have been in the first place?
Believers regularly inform us that it's all in interpretation, and then they demonstrate this by none of them agreeing on any interpretation.
With this in mind, there is literally, absolutely no basis whatsoever for you to sit there and insist that my view is either incorrect or unjustified. Because the pedestal you've put yourself on is a house of cards in a burning dumpster.
That is not my fault. I'm just the one pointing it out.
Guess who saw Christianity your way also?
My view of Xianity is what Xians themselves tell me. That their god is real but immaterial and undetectable in this reality, loving but will send me to hell, works in mysterious ways but good, allows evil but punishes people for the free will he gives them, perfect but in need of worship and praise. My view is that none of y'all can figure out how to make this creature coherent, or even simply non-self-contradictory, much less believable.
They tell me to just read the bible to find Jesus, and when I do, I discover a Grandiose Narcissist god who (supposedly) murdered and destroyed millions throughout the Old Testament, and a Vulnerable Narcissist savior who made it so that you couldn't escape the Grandiose Narcissist even in death, then manipulates humans into a bloody spectacle of self-immolation, which then forms the basis of an inherited blackmail debt in the New Testament. Not liking it being described that way doesn't mean it's not accurate.
The only reason I have the view of Xianity that I have is because of everything Xians bring to me. It's not my fault the god and savior they and their scripture describe to me is some of the most evil villainy I've ever heard of, secondly only, perhaps, to Islam and the quran. (If you were to read the quran, unburdened by the moral urgency to protect and defend it at all costs as you do Xianity, I would hazard you would come to the same conclusions as me.)
I ask, and this is what they give me. I would rather never hear anything about the Xian god at all, but that's not the world we live in, is it? As long as I'm hearing about it, I will draw conclusions from that information. And if I feel so inspired, I will certainly say so publicly, if I wish, with no guilt or angst.
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In any event, this isn't the argument you think it is. Let's for one second pretend that Hitler was not a devout Xian. If you've read Mein Kampf, there is no possible way you could come to that conclusion, but we're in PretendLand now. Cue ripple dissolve and visual tonal shift to indicate we're in a parallel universe...
So what? He can be right about Xianity, and wrong about everything else. Hitler says 2+2=4? Guess what? I agree with him. Am I going to go, "well, Hitler says 2+2=4, and since he's a bad guy, I can't agree with him, so 2+2=something else, because reasons"? That'd be completely stupid.
What you're trying to pull is called the Genetic Fallacy. You should learn about it before trying this argument again.
More specifically...
Reductio ad Hitlerum (/ˈhɪtlərəm/; Latin for "reduction to Hitler"), also known as playing the Nazi card, is an attempt to invalidate someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party.
This a feeble and pathologically dishonest attempt at "guilt by contrived association." I am not one to fall for such dishonesty.
Xianity has a shared doctrine and scripture. Non-belief does not. Non-believers are not a group. We are the ones outside your group.
You're a non-believer too. You disbelieve dozens of the same gods Hitler disbelieved. You and Hitler both disbelieve in Zeus, Ra, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, Vishnu, Raijin, and a pantheon of hundreds, if not thousands, of gods. So, what does that say about you?
What are the shared beliefs, values, principles of "we don't think Atum is real"? How much genocide does "I see no evidence for Baiame" advocate? Lots? A little? None?
How prone to world war and genocide does the disbelief in Ahura Mazda and leprechauns you share with Adolf Hitler make you?
You see the problem, right? Saying what I don't believe in tells you nothing about what I do believe in. But saying you're a Xian associates yourself with specific mythology and ideas. Not liking this asymmetry doesn't mean you get to play pretend to try and make belief and non-belief equivalent.
If you're going to accuse me of something, you better bring something better than a circuitous, fabricated dotted line.
Because that "?" at the end of your question is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Here's the thing though: I don't hold you to be comparable to Hitler just because you share the same god-beliefs. Unlike you. You're so desperate to take a swing at me, and your morality is so corrupted, that this is the kind of tactic you'd try to pull.
My point isn't that you're the same, it's that you're different. But both of you came to different conclusions with the same doctrine and scripture. If Xianity can lead people to bad ideas as justifiably as it can lead people to good ideas, why use it at all? How is Xianity better than "no Xianity" in terms of success? And why is it such a crapshoot? Why is it Xianity doesn't result in disproportionately and obviously good behavior and morality... you know, because it's True™ and stuff?
And why is it your god's word is so opaque that anyone can take it any way for any purpose? And why has this existent, loving god not come back down here to fix the problem and sort out the misconceptions?
Seriously, sweetie, how did you think this was going to achieve anything?
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My point is that Xian doctrine itself, the bible, the dogma, the "blood of Jesus" immunity from consequences, supports both the "nice" Xianity (necessitating ignoring the violent, immoral parts), and the Hitler-kill-all-the-Jews Xianity.
Both occur by hooking into the believer's existing morality. The believer gets to decide what god really wants. You yourself admitted that up front, that not all Xians are the same way? Why? Because they don't want to be. It's not because there are clear guidelines that prevent it. It's because you make your own morality authoritative.
"You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world; rather, we must depend on the prescriptions of the bible. You are using your own moral intuitions to decide that the Bible is the appropiate guarantor of your moral intuitions. Your own intuitions are still primary, and your reasoning is circular."
--- Sam Harris, "Letter to a Christian Nation"
The difference between the believer and the non-believer isn't our morality, since we're both using our evolved, secular morality. The difference is the believer simultaneously projects it onto their imaginary friend and carefully curates that god's morality in order to make it personally acceptable. "iT'S A NiCeR TyPe oF OwNiNg pEoPlE As pRoPeRtY" and "iT WaS A MeTaPhOrIcAl gEnOcIdE AnD AlSo tHeY DeSeRvEd iT!"
Your god is simply the justification you use to do what you planned to do in the first place. I don't have that luxury. I don't have the ability to claim that it's "the will of god." I don't get to commit some atrocity and say that I was acting on behalf of some imaginary greater wisdom, in aid of some mythological divine plan.
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."
-- Steven Weinberg
My goal is that we are going to stop pretending that your religion, your belief in a god you can't substantiate, your "faith" - belief without evidence, and in spite of evidence to the contrary - makes you a good person. It doesn't make you a bad person, either. But you are not going to receive respect simply because you profess it; rather because of how you behave, and what you do, not because you hold up your crucifix as a magical talisman.
And your religion is entitled to no respect whatsoever. It's a belief. An idea. Beliefs aren't entitled to respect, least of all the ones which we have no reason to conclude are true.
If this bothers you, then there are things you can do about it.
- Be more consistent in your skepticism, for starters. Consider the religions others believe in that you don't, the evidence they offer that you reject, and how you as an outsider appear to them.
- Decide to care about what's true and how you can know it, rather than what feels good.
- Study the origin of the bible - very few Xians know how fraudulent it is, and this isn't even a controversial conclusion among those who've studied its origins. Scholars even invented the word "pseudepigrapha" to obfuscate bible lies. The bible isn't what you think it is.
In the meantime, you should probably stop expecting people to describe your baseless superstitions only in ways that you find personally agreeable.