Hitler's Neopaganism and Anti-Christianity

The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things...

The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity... And that's why someday its structure will collapse... The only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little...

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery...

I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors - but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.

Who said this? It sounds very much like Richard Dawkins, with its reference to evolution and science ("When understanding of the universe has become widespread") as antithetical forces to Christianity, not to mention its prediction of the latter's death.

The literary style isn't quite his, though. Sounds more baroque and archaic.

In fact it was said between 1941 and 1944, by a certain Adolf Hitler, and is found in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) .

One of the myriad unfounded accusations levelled at Christianity these days is the claim that Hitler was a Christian. The reality is that he was not a Christian at all, but very close to paganism.

Paganism is a generic umbrella term that encompasses various and different beliefs of pre-Christian European peoples, from classical Roman and Greek to Norse and Germanic.

Although Europe's paganism was replaced by Christianity, it did not die. In the 16th and 17th centuries some European thinkers began to rediscover paganism.

To its rebirth contributed in particular the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the movement of thought whose political result was the French Revolution. The French revolutionaries inspired by the Jakobin ideology made use of signs of pagan mythology.

The Jacobins, leaders of "The Terror", the bloodiest period of the French Revolution, were influenced by neopaganism and hated Christianity. Before Nazism, they first embodied the connections between neopagan ideas and violence.

They propagated a widespread rejection of Christianity, and establiahed a new "religion of reason", based on pagan symbols rather than Christianity.

Neopaganism also played a big role in 20th-century violent ideologies like Nazism and fascism. The American historian Gene Edward Veith, in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judaeo-Christian Worldview (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , defined fascism thus:

Fascism is the modern world's nostalgia for paganism. It is a sophisticated culture's revolt against God.

From an early age Adolf Hitler had a lifelong passion for pagan legends, which explains his obsession with Richard Wagner's music, with its "only grandiose themes" of "gods and heroes". Wagner's operas are said to have had a profound, almost religious effect on the Fuhrer.

Not only Hitler, but also many of his associates were fascinated by the history and mythology of the German Volk, which helped shape the political activities of these men.

The legends of German mythology, substantially the same as the Norse ones, are completely pagan and pessimistic in nature. The Earth and Heaven were destined to be utterly destroyed by the Frost Giants, in a final great battle between Good and Evil, in which Evil was predestined to win and the whole of creation to be destroyed. The only ray of light in all this darkness was the idea that dying a heroic death would make everything else pale into insignificance. This notion of heroism and fighting to the death against all odds was very congruous with the fanatic loyalty wanted by Hitler and Himmler.

Wagner held anti-Semitic views, and took great pride in being a member of the "German race" and in his German ancestry. He wrote that he considered himself "the most German of the Germans".

Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler, who studied books on Germanic lore, mysticism, and secret societies, came to regard Hitler as a god, another sign of non-Christian, pagan religiosity.

The secret initiation ceremonies of the SS were dominated by references to the ancient Germanic sagas. The Nazi Party was called by Hermann Esser "an association of visionaries, worshippers of Wotan", a Germanic god.

Presenting a similarity to today's environmentalism with its pantheistic streak were Himmler's proclamations of the sacred status of the German lands and peoples as a faith. He used ancient German and Nordic mythology as a source of the SS symbols, oaths and rituals. The rooms of their secret meetings were decorated with runes, prehistoric signs supposed to give the power of prophecy to anyone who could read them. The very symbol of the Schutzstaffel, twin twisted lightning bolts to indicate SS, is a runic symbol.

Initially Himmler wanted German women to adopt the same moral code of the heroines of ancient German legends, although he later changed his view to encourage them to have as many children as possible, whether they were married or not. He and Hitler had considered abolishing the "criminal institution of the Christian Church known as marriage", but realised that Germans were not yet ready for such a radical idea. How happy these supreme Nazi leaders would be if they could see what is happening now in our society.

As a ceremony for illegitimate children Himmler created a "secular christening", called an "SS name-giving", in which the child was wrapped in a blanket covered with embroidered swastikas and runes and set before an altar, with the parents laying their hands on him and solemnly speaking his name. For their birthdays these children received by the SS a gift of candles, manufactured at no charge by the prisoners at Dachau.

Himmler's mystical zeal exasperated even Hitler sometimes, although only temporarily and he never tried to rein it in. Hitler wrote:

What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants to start that all over again. We might as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave ...

And about Himmler's archeological excavations:

Why do we call the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past? It isn't enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mud huts ... All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler is making a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be having a laugh at these revelations.

This is the first article of a series of 3. To be continued tomorrow.


Photo by surfstyle (Creative Commons CC BY 2.0).

Has Science Eliminated God?

Certainty is a feeling, an emotion. Reason, on the other hand, gives rise to doubts and uncertainties.

Science is rational, and exactly for that reason it is uncertain, which is what many people fail to appreciate. A widespread myth is that reason brings about - and knowledge means - certainty.

This is what causes all the confusions of the kind that surrounded vaccines and autism in Britain a few years ago, for example, and the general confusions about probability and risk: what causes them is the fact that people expect certainties from science. Instead, in reality science is made up of theories and hypotheses, which may be refuted now, or temporarily confirmed until they are refuted and replaced by a better theory later. That's how science progresses.

Reason can be used to arrive at certainties, but not at pieces of knowledge. This is the case when reason is used in logic, but only because in logical deductions we never arrive at new knowledge.

It is certain that, in a logical deduction, if the premise is true the conclusion is always true, but only because the conclusion does not say anything which was not already contained in the premise. A very simple example is: "If A and B are both true, then A is true".

The logical conclusion makes what was already contained in the premise explicit, that's why, if the latter is true (or better, well founded), so is the former. But this process does not originate new knowledge. It is a process of transformation of one statement into another, not of discovery.

This is why non-philosopher atheists like Richard Dawkins generate confusion among their followers: because they themselves are confused in the first place.

To identify science with rationality, although correct - even if we must add that science is only one among the various rational activities of the human intellect, not the only one as Dawkins et al seem to believe, and a religion like Christianity, for example, is another -, condemns science to perpetual uncertainty.

Furthermore, science does not establish the limits of rationality, but only those of possibility. In other words, what science does is to say: "This is not possible because it goes against the laws of nature". But it doesn't tell you, within the multiple, mutually-contradicting possibilities, which is the true one.

It must remain understood, however, that the best scientific theory we have could be wrong and one day refuted.

But even presuming that it won't be, science - both as a whole and as single scientific theories - rules out, as I was saying, physical (or empirical) impossibilities, namely the phenomena that go counter to the laws of nature (i.e. the laws of science), but among the various remaining possibilities cannot tell you which is the true one.

That's why saying that science has eliminated God (a creator of everything) is absurd. For as long as a creator of everything remains compatible with the laws of nature, as it has always been and it is even more now that the Big Bang theory presumes a period preceding the birth of the universe in which laws of nature did not exist, the hypothesis of God as creator is a possibility. Science can ony tell you that it is possible, and not if it's true or not.

Atheists, and not only the people that Dawkins managed to mesmerise but the British zoologist himself, don't seem to properly grasp what they are saying. And I'm not referring to God or religion, but to science: they misunderstand science itself.

I am willing to admit that Dawkins is aware of many of the things I said, that's why he always uses qualifiers like "almost certainly" or "probably" when he says that God doesn't exist or that science leads to that denial. However, he doesn't act or write as if he had any doubts at all. And, as I said at the beginning, certainty is an emotional state, not the product of rational thought.

Who knows, maybe science, born out of Christianity, with the first scientists wishing to understand God's work - the creation - through it, after a period in which it's been dominated by naturalism (only nature exists) aka materialism (only matter exists), will turn out to be just the way in which in the end humanity arrives at God, which was science founders' original intention.

Photo "Sunset" courtesy of the website Human Health and Animal Ethics

Nothing Is Wrong with Satanism, You Bigot

We've gone full circle now.

First, Christianity was the main spiritual force of the West, so much so that the latter was known as Christendom.

Then, atheism prevailed, followed by paganism, and now it looks like Satanism is being recognised as a legitimate... what? Religion? Faith? Spiritual orientation, which anyone is entitled to practice as much as a sexual one?

And why not? After all, why should we discriminate? Discrimination is the last, or one of the last, remaining sins. And this applies to every sense of the word, good as well as bad, as in "taste discrimination" to indicate refinement, or in "discrimination between right and wrong". The only exception is reverse discrimination, which is always a virtue because it is meant to fight discrimination - if it sounds absurd it's because it is.

Satan worshipers want 7-foot-tall statue of devil put at Oklahoma state Capitol, headlines the UK's Daily Mail:

• The New York-based Satanic Temple formally submitted its application to a panel that oversees the Capitol grounds
• The application includes an artist's rendering of Satan as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings and a long beard
• They want it to sit where a Ten Commandments monument sat in 2012
• In the rendering, Satan is sitting in a pentagram-adorned throne with smiling children next to him.

This satanic group claimed that, if the Ten Commandments could have a monument, so should their idol figure. Thinking otherwise would be discrimination. Now, tell me: how can anybody these days object to such an argument?

It's the same line of reasoning that led to the passing of homomarriage laws in various countries: if people of different sex can get married, why discriminate against same-sex couples?

And, if the West is now post-Christian, why should we give Christianity a special place, especially after the influx of so many cultural enrichers who adhere to different religions, sometimes having a moral code directly opposite to our own - Islam springs to mind -, which is derived from Christianity but people have forgotten where it comes from and think it arose from nothing, the same as the universe, life and cosnciousness? We are used, by now, to the idea that something comes from nothing: that this is so counter-evidential, that nobody has ever experienced, witnessed this type of occurrence doesn't trouble our "scientific-minded" atheists half as much as the idea of a creator of all that exists.

'The statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation.'

The Satanic Temple maintains that the Oklahoma Legislature's decision to authorize a privately funded Ten Commandments monument at the Capitol opened the door for its statue.

The Ten Commandments monument was placed on the north steps of the building in 2012, and the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has sued to have it removed.

Perhaps we should have Nelson removed from his column in Trafalgar Square, and demand in his place a statue of Hitler, Stalin or Britain's own serial killer John Christie.

Why the Satanist statue should be allowed, or even considered as it seems to be, but not Hitler's, I doubt that anyone can provide good reasons for, that can be accepted outside of psychiatric hospitals of course.

On its website, the Satanic Temple explains that it 'seeks to separate Religion from Superstition by acknowledging religious belief as a metaphorical framework with which we construct a narrative context for our goals and works.

'Satan stands as the ultimate icon for the selfless revolt against tyranny, free & rational inquiry, and the responsible pursuit of happiness,' the website says.

Exactly. Call a nurse, please.


Photo by Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0).

First They Came for the Christians and I Didn't Speak Out Because I Wasn't a Christian

I am reproducing the last two paragraphs from Raymond Ibrahim’s fundamental book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK ):

The return of the persecution of Christians under Islam is the most visible aspect of a larger and more dangerous phenomenon: the return of Islam as a global force. The West ignores those being crucified again at its own peril — bringing to memory the words of German pastor Martin Niemoller, who came to understand — but only after being sent to a concentration camp during World War II — what it meant to face a totalitarian ideology hostile to all who reject it:

First they [the Nazis] came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

It may seem relatively peaceful now in Western countries, and we all have a natural tendency to avoid facing problems if we possibly can.

What happens to Christians at the hand of Muslims (the massacres of villages, burning of churches, beheadings, climate of constant fear) in remote parts of the world - even assuming that we somehow got to know about it amidst the silence and dissembling of our media and leaders - doesn't touch us, we think, so we prefer not to be troubled by it.

Even when something closer to home occurs, like the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby by a Muslim jihadist in a London street, or the use of British white girls by Muslim paedophile and sex slave rings, we continue to believe that these incidents are not part of a major trend, and we keep sleeping serenely.

But history has repeatedly shown that we should take the first hints because, if we wait for the macroscopic signs, they may be easily recognisable for a reason: the problem has become so big that we can no longer address it without violence and tragedy.

Muslims Killed 500 Christians in Nigeria

The religion of peace in action in Nigeria.

A quarter of the inhabitants of a village, about 500 Christians, were killed by Muslims. Some Muslim villagers who knew of the premeditated attack left without warning the Christians.

A man in the video says that Christians have not retaliated. He wants the world to know that "Christians never fight with Muslims. All that happens is always Muslims attacking Christians, in some cases Christians defending themselves."

We should be aware that whenever we hear or read, on our media, of "sectarian" violence, if it concerns Muslims and Christians it is not true. Violence is only from one side, and is brutal, as in this case, with children slaughtered and people's heads cut in two.

God Is a Not a Delusion but a Sensible, Rational Hypothesis

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what atheism is or entails. The fact that many - albeit not all - atheists declare that they have no faith or believe in nothing, in itself shows that they have not really taken the time and effort to understand the implications of the position they hold.

The question of God is the question of the origin of things. It is a typical philosophical, and more specifically metaphysical, question.

When Richard Dawkins or people like him compare the idea of God to that of fairies, they are hopefully disingenuous - the alternative being downright stupid.

The concept of God is a necessity in one of the two fundamental explanations of the origin of everything. The other explanation is chance. Fairies do not appear in either.

The question of God is also related to the question of what is the ultimate reality: mind or matter.

Philosophers have debated this issue since the beginning of their profession, answering that it is the former in the case of idealists, or the latter if they are materialists.

The vast majority of classical philosophers throughout the ages, including our time, have rejected materialism and think that mind is the ultimate reality. That doesn't mean that all idealists believe in God - although a great proportion does -, but that a simple materialism as the one espoused by Dawkins (I am referring to him because he is, by his own behaviour, the most vocal and visible of contemporary atheists) is generally found deeply unsatisfactory by those whose profession is to critically analyse common ideas and question what is often accepted unthinkingly.

Dawkins is not a philosopher himself. By training and trade he is a zoologist. But when he talks about religion he steps ouside his scientist's boots and puts on a philosopher's hat. Nothing wrong with that, provided he knows what he's talking about.

The first thing to notice here is how much many people, probably taking their cue from public figures like non-philosophers Peter Atkins, Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have trivialised the issue of belief in God as if it were simply the battle of the old versus the new, the forces of obscurantism v enlightenment, ancient v modern, irrationality v reason, superstition v logic, backwardness v progress, and obviously religion versus science.

The reality is that the battle of ideas surrounding the existence of God has always been present in the history of philosophy, and thinkers have predominantly tended to side with the belief in God.

That Christianity has a solid rational foundation in centuries of philosophical thought is something that - I suspect from the comments they leave in public forums - would surprise many atheists.

That among the greatest philosophers of all time are saints and founders of the Church like St Augustine, St Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas might shock them even more.

But let's get back to the question at the beginning of this article. Numerous - I presume the most naive - atheists appear to be convinced that not believing in God does not entail anything, and that it is just the default non-choice - in the same way as their guide and model Dawkins would consider not believing in fairies the default position.

The reality is different.

There are only three possible answers to the question "Does God exist?".

One, the easiest and probably preferred by lazy minds, is to sit on the fence and declare neutrality explicitly or, simply by not engaging with it, implicitly.

The second is to say that the universe (or universes) have an intelligent designer, God.

The third answer, atheism, in denying the second one is by mere logic taking the opposite view. If there is no design, we are left only with chance. If there is no mind, we are left only with matter.

I'll explore these ideas in more detail in other articles. For now, I'm anticipating that the theoretical, non-observational assumptions are necessary and very strong on both sides of the controversy.

There is no default opinion, no path of less resistance. Both stances require faith, and a belief that has many holes in the evidence for it.

The commonly-held opinion that atheism is not a faith - like a religion of its own kind - is totally unfounded.

Rational arguments live on both sides of the fence, not only one. And so do emotional stances or intuitive statements.

And, if anything, the most logically cogent reasons and scientifically powerful evidence seem to be increasingly supporting the belief of a mind creating all that exists. The progress of science, with theoretical constructs in physics that are necessary for explanation but escape observation, on one side, and the practical impossibility of matter, life and consciousness all originating by chance, on the other, far from supporting the atheist belief seems more and more to confirm the theist one.

The Philosopher Who Gave the New Atheists Their Theoretical Foundations Became Convinced that God Exists

British professor Antony Flew wrote over thirty philosophical works which established the foundations for atheism for half a century.

His 1950 paper "Theology and Falsification" was the most reprinted philosophical publication of the 20th century.

In December 2004 Flew announced in a symposium and subsequent video that he had completely changed his view and now, based on scientific evidence, believed that God exists.

In 2007 he wrote the book There Is a God (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , subtitled How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

This is the man without whose ideas the various Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dennett, Wolpert, Stenger, (not to mention Christopher Hitchens and Pat Condell) et al, none of whom is a philosopher, would not have had rational arguments to support their faith: atheism.

So it's not surprising that, when on 9 December 2004 the international journalist agency Associated Press gave the world the news about the British Professor of Philosophy's "conversion" with the headine "Famous Atheist Now Believes in God: One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence", atheists became hysterical.

Roy Abraham Varghese, in his Preface to There Is a God, wrote:

"One atheist Web site tasked a correspondent with giving monthly updates on Flew's falling away from the true faith. Inane insults and juvenile caricatures were common in the freethinking blogosphere. The same people who complained about the Inquisition and witches being burned at the stake were now enjoying a little heresy hunting of their own. The advocates of tolerance were not themselves very tolerant. And, apparently, religious zealots don't have a monopoly on dogmatism, incivility, fanaticism, and paranoia.

"But raging mobs cannot rewrite history. And Flew's position in the history of atheism transcends anything that today's atheists have on offer."

Photo of sea sunset courtesy of the website Human Health and Animal Ethics