@Jzyehoshua (#449):
> Ahuh. And I'm guessing the fact that the Nazis also arrested 800 Protestant pastors and
> 400 Catholic priests while executing the leader of the Confessing Church, Dietrich
> Bonhoeffer, not to mention persecuting other Christians (e.g. Geertruida
> Wijsmuller-Meijer, Cornelia ten Boom, Sister Anna Borkowska, Clement Sheptytsky,
> Ona Šimaitė, the Skobtsova family, Irena Sendler, Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, and Maria
> Kotarba), had nothing to do with religion either? Then of course there was the town of
> Le Chambon led by pastor André Trocmé as well.
If you would have read my post carefully enough to understand what i had written you would have noticed that the snippet you argue against above was a DIRECT QUOTE - by Morozov in #185, as i made quite clear. It is not my fault that what your fellow theists write all day long sounds like the drivel it is once i quote them. It seems i own a somewhat inverted Midas-gift: the gold of godly-sounding phrases turns into utter nonsense once i touch it.
Aside from that: the people you named for your counter-argument were in fact not prosecuted because they were christians. They were prosecuted because they were against the Nazis. You will also find some glowing anti-semites being prosecuted or even killed by the Nazis, which doesn't mean they were against anti-semitism as such.
As an example how Nazi-Germany and the catholic church interacted:
Conrad Gröber (1872-1948), bishop of Meißen and later archbishop of Freiburg, supporting member of the SS. Here is a quote of his sermon, given on Good Friday 1941:
______Quote_______
Als treibende Kraft stand hinter der jüdischen gesetzlichen Macht die abstoßende Heuchelei und böswillige Heimtücke der Pharisäer. Sie entpuppten sich immer mehr als Christi Erz- und Todfeinde
(As driving force behind the jewish force of law stood the disgusting hypocrisy and malevolent perfidiousness of the Phariseans. They emerged ever more as arch- and death-enemies of the Christ.)
____End Quote_____
And before you tell me that 1941 he was probably "forced to say that": 1933 he was instrumental in making the Hitler salute obligatory in religious education. He was also instrumental in forging the concordate 1933, the first international contract the Thrid Reich signed. Other countries than the Vatican were unwilling to enter diplomatic negotiations with the Nazis. Also notice that the pope who signed the concordate: Eugenio Pacelli, papal emissary in Munich, later pope Pius XII.. He was probably less "forced" in 1933, when the Nazis just had taken office, when he wrote (Oct. 10th, 1933):
______Quote_______
I will not betray any secret if I explain that in the course of the last few months the contacts of the Church government in Freiburg with the government in Karlsruhe have proceeded in the most friendly way. I also believe that I will not be betraying a secret, either to you or to the German people, if I say that I place myself unreservedly behind the new government and the new Reich.
____End Quote_____
So, lets not get started on the collaboration of the christian churches and the Nazis. Not only would this be a thread in its own right, it would also show the churches in a pretty dim light.
But this really takes the biscuit:
@Jzyehoshua (#449):
> Probably the same thing that studying a physics book to see whether it's a reliable
> source of knowledge on physics would produce--an opinion on whether the book is
> reliable or not.
The distinctive difference being that physical theories can be approved or disproved by experiment. If you just show us one experiment that proves the existence of god we will probably all convert to theism. Mind you, by "experiement" i mean something as rigorously defined as in physics textbooks - not soething like "in the book of youknowwho there is this prophecy which later in the book of whoeverknows was said to be fulfilled". I also will not accept "you have to feel it in your heart" or such nonsense. Having lived through two heart-attacks i know what my heart feels like and it is definitely not god. I mean repeatable, observable, measurable, quantifiable experiments.
krasnaya
> Ahuh. And I'm guessing the fact that the Nazis also arrested 800 Protestant pastors and
> 400 Catholic priests while executing the leader of the Confessing Church, Dietrich
> Bonhoeffer, not to mention persecuting other Christians (e.g. Geertruida
> Wijsmuller-Meijer, Cornelia ten Boom, Sister Anna Borkowska, Clement Sheptytsky,
> Ona Šimaitė, the Skobtsova family, Irena Sendler, Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, and Maria
> Kotarba), had nothing to do with religion either? Then of course there was the town of
> Le Chambon led by pastor André Trocmé as well.
If you would have read my post carefully enough to understand what i had written you would have noticed that the snippet you argue against above was a DIRECT QUOTE - by Morozov in #185, as i made quite clear. It is not my fault that what your fellow theists write all day long sounds like the drivel it is once i quote them. It seems i own a somewhat inverted Midas-gift: the gold of godly-sounding phrases turns into utter nonsense once i touch it.
Aside from that: the people you named for your counter-argument were in fact not prosecuted because they were christians. They were prosecuted because they were against the Nazis. You will also find some glowing anti-semites being prosecuted or even killed by the Nazis, which doesn't mean they were against anti-semitism as such.
As an example how Nazi-Germany and the catholic church interacted:
Conrad Gröber (1872-1948), bishop of Meißen and later archbishop of Freiburg, supporting member of the SS. Here is a quote of his sermon, given on Good Friday 1941:
______Quote_______
Als treibende Kraft stand hinter der jüdischen gesetzlichen Macht die abstoßende Heuchelei und böswillige Heimtücke der Pharisäer. Sie entpuppten sich immer mehr als Christi Erz- und Todfeinde
(As driving force behind the jewish force of law stood the disgusting hypocrisy and malevolent perfidiousness of the Phariseans. They emerged ever more as arch- and death-enemies of the Christ.)
____End Quote_____
And before you tell me that 1941 he was probably "forced to say that": 1933 he was instrumental in making the Hitler salute obligatory in religious education. He was also instrumental in forging the concordate 1933, the first international contract the Thrid Reich signed. Other countries than the Vatican were unwilling to enter diplomatic negotiations with the Nazis. Also notice that the pope who signed the concordate: Eugenio Pacelli, papal emissary in Munich, later pope Pius XII.. He was probably less "forced" in 1933, when the Nazis just had taken office, when he wrote (Oct. 10th, 1933):
______Quote_______
I will not betray any secret if I explain that in the course of the last few months the contacts of the Church government in Freiburg with the government in Karlsruhe have proceeded in the most friendly way. I also believe that I will not be betraying a secret, either to you or to the German people, if I say that I place myself unreservedly behind the new government and the new Reich.
____End Quote_____
So, lets not get started on the collaboration of the christian churches and the Nazis. Not only would this be a thread in its own right, it would also show the churches in a pretty dim light.
But this really takes the biscuit:
@Jzyehoshua (#449):
> Probably the same thing that studying a physics book to see whether it's a reliable
> source of knowledge on physics would produce--an opinion on whether the book is
> reliable or not.
The distinctive difference being that physical theories can be approved or disproved by experiment. If you just show us one experiment that proves the existence of god we will probably all convert to theism. Mind you, by "experiement" i mean something as rigorously defined as in physics textbooks - not soething like "in the book of youknowwho there is this prophecy which later in the book of whoeverknows was said to be fulfilled". I also will not accept "you have to feel it in your heart" or such nonsense. Having lived through two heart-attacks i know what my heart feels like and it is definitely not god. I mean repeatable, observable, measurable, quantifiable experiments.
krasnaya