Um, Bill, weren’t there a hell of a lot of Catholics complicit in Hitlers crimes? And isn’t it stretching the truth beyond recognition to call Hitler an “atheist”?
Anyway, here are some words from Bill Donohue:
The pope cited Hitler today, asking everyone to “reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century.” Immediately, the British Humanist Association got its back up, accusing the pope of “a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God.”
The pope did not go far enough. Radical atheists like the British Humanist Association should apologize for Hitler. But they should not stop there. They also need to issue an apology for the 67 million innocent men, women and children murdered under Stalin, and the 77 million innocent Chinese killed by Mao. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all driven by a radical atheism, a militant and fundamentally dogmatic brand of secular extremism. It was this anti-religious impulse that allowed them to become mass murderers. By contrast, a grand total of 1,394 were killed during the 250 years of the Inquisition, most all of whom were murdered by secular authorities.
Why should atheists today apologize for the crimes of others? At one level, it makes no sense: apologies should only be given by the guilty. But on the other hand, since the fanatically anti-Catholic secularists in Britain, and elsewhere, demand that the pope—who is entirely innocent of any misconduct—apologize for the sins of others, let the atheists take some of their own medicine and start apologizing for all the crimes committed in their name. It might prove alembic.
Honestly, no sane person would claim that it was the “atheism” of Hitler, Stalin and Mao that drove them to their crimes against humanity.
Sounds to me like somebody’s pissed off that his Church has such a soiled name around the world these days, for so many reasons. A lot of it is the child rape problem, which isn’t going to go away.
Oh well, this has been another edition of Words With Bill Donohue.
[h/t Mike Tidmus]
UPDATE: I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of fact checking this crap, but Joe Jervis did, so here you go:
As Donohue knows, Hitler was in fact a Catholic JUST LIKE BILL DONOHUE and sang in the choir at the Benedictine monastery he attended as a child.
Hitler publicly denounced atheism as inherently communist. “For eight months we have been waging a heroic battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant.”
The Catholic Hitler also denounced secular education. “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”
Joe also adds this picture of Bill Donohue’s Pope, for everybody’s viewing:
![PopeHitlerYouth Apropos of Nothing, Bill Donohue Calls on Atheists to Apologize for Hitler [UPDATED]](http://cdn.truthwinsout.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/PopeHitlerYouth.jpg "PopeHitlerYouth")
Hearing people call Hitler an atheist is almost as fun as hearing them call him a “Darwinist”. Especially since he seemed to think Darwin’s theory was a load of bunk and stated the “animals after their kind” stuff as reality.
PZ posted some fun quotes that show just how atheist Hitler really was.
[...] Myers reposted a long, long list of quotes from Adolf Hitler, who Bill Donohue stupidly thinks was an atheist. Here are a couple of them, and then go over to Pharyngula for the rest: “I [...]
Donahue said “let the atheists take some of their own medicine and start apologizing for all the crimes committed in their name”.
Unlike as has repeatedly been the case with religion no one has every committed a crime in the name of atheism. Saying atheists ow an apology for people like Stalin is like saying men with moustaches, or men in general owe an apology for people like Stalin.
Contrary to Donahues lies the pope was partly responsible for the child molestations – he played an active role in hiding those crimes and transferring the perpetrators to other places to do it again. The pope needs to apologize for his crimes because he’s guilty.
I think the behavior/motives of Christians today can teach us a lot about the likely behavior/motives of ancient people. Against the backdrop of today’s vast accumulated knowledge, We can observe how eager today’s Christians are to reject education, deny science, promote myths, and rewrite history. And then that observation can add insight (I think) as we imagine the likely behavior and motives of the ancient people who propagated religion at a time when virtually nothing was known about the natural world. It’s a disgrace that anyone today can view a holy book as anything more than an ancient artifact.
Richard, are you discussing only American Fundamentalist Christians or are you including a broad worldwide sample of Christians?
BTW, much of the accumulated knowledge you so proudly proclaim was generated in the Christian West by religious people.
Bob, that they were christian had no more to do with them accumulating knowledge than their possession of nose hair had to do with them accumulating knowledge.
The scientific foundations of the enlightenment came out of Islam. The so called great “christian” scientists of the enlightenment actually based their work on the earlier works of Islamic scientists. The only reason religious people were responsible for any accomplishments is that everyone was required to be religious, often under penalty of death. The scientific revolution happened not because of christianity, but in spite of it.
Sorry, Priya, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus were all religious. Copernicus was a preist. Islam preserved the knowledge of the Greeks more than anything.
But overall, the view that God created a comprehensable universe is what inspired people to pursue knowledge of the heavens.
Bob said “Sorry, Priya, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus were all religious. Copernicus was a preist
I never said they wern’t – you’re imagining things.
Bob said “Islam preserved the knowledge of the Greeks more than anything.”.
A pet lie of yours, but not true in anyway. Islam was responsible for the groundwork on the helio-centric solar system, geography and invented algebra – the very foundation of science.
Bob said “But overall, the view that God created a comprehensable universe is what inspired people to pursue knowledge of the heavens.”.
Utter nonsense. For starters as you yourself acknowledged you don’t understand your “god’s” actions so one can’t get the view that an imaginary being created a comphrehensible universe. People pursued a knowledge of they skys out of curiousity – religion had nothing to do with it. If scientists relied on religon we’d still be content to think the cosmic bodies are held up by the firmament and stars are little lights that can fall to the ground and be held in your hand. The church attacked Galileo for studying the nature of the skies, the church was a roadblock to science.
Stalin was sent by his mother to a Russian Orthodox seminar to train to become a priest.
Priya, Geometry is the fundamental mathematics that the scientists used to explain the much of heavens before Newton co-invented the Calculus and that goes back to the Greeks and Euclid. Yes, Muslims added imporvemnts. But it was refined further by Descartes and Fermat in Europe I believe before Kepler.
No, Priya, religion did have a lot to do with why people looked at the heavens and why they tried to explain it.
You seem to have an athiestic revisionist historical interpretation.
Bob, without algebra there would have been no geometry, without algebra there would have been no calculus. Islamic scholarship was the foundation for all later christian scientific works.
Religion has nothing to do with people looking at the skies or trying to explain them. Relgion encouraged people to think it was all simple and created by god and there was nothing to learn. Natural curiosity and wonderment at the beauty of the universe is what led people to try to explain the movements of the stars and planets – the church tried to put an end to those scientific efforts, the church was the major roadblock to science.
Bob said “You seem to have an athiestic revisionist historical interpretation.”.
Nonsense. I look solely at the evidence and go where it takes me. If the evidence were to point to magic and a god then that is what I would believe. It does not point to that, the evidence shows there is no need whatsoever for a god or magic, they add nothing to any explanation of the world so at this time unless counter-evidence comes forth we need not bother postulating a god or magic.
It is you who revises history to fit your religion filter. You’ve decided in advance (pre-judged) what you want to be true and then filter all evidence to only look at the scant bit you can torturously claim supports your view. It is you who looks at history through a warped lense, not I.
Priya, I believe that the Muslims redicovered, relied on and imporved apon the Greek mathematics worked out well before Christ was born. In fact, there was enought known for Ptolemy to have worked out Kepler’s three laws if he had just thought of the sun centered system. His book the “Almagest” was used till Copernicus wrote of the sun centered system. The Islamic world did not change that.
They did not invent the whole field of mathematics from scratch.
Geometry came well before algebra.
That’s one of the most absurd things you’ve ever said Bob. As we’ve seen before what you believe frequently has little to do with reality. The basis of your belief system is to decide what you want to be true before you look at the evidence and then to ignore the vast array of evidence that contradicts you and torture the scant remainging evidence that is neutral to claim you have “scientific” support for your prejudgement. You are not an honest dispassionate observer.
Priya, what are you saying is the “most absurd” thing, that saying geometry came before algebra?
Bob asked in #5, “Richard, are you discussing only American Fundamentalist Christians or are you including a broad worldwide sample of Christians?”
I’m obviously referring to the millions of Fundamentalists, but from there it is a graduated scale until you get to Episcopalians or Presbyterians (USA), for examples. But even these denominations contain factions that are fairly Fundamentalist. But still, I have to say that literal belief in even the most basic elements that define Christianity is preposterous.
Beyond answering your specific question, I won’t comment further because Priya Lynn is doing a fabulous job of elaborating (a better job than I could do).
Okay, yes I will comment just so I can repeat Priya’s great line from #13: “The basis of your [or anyone's religious] belief system is to decide what you want to be true before you look at the evidence and then to ignore the vast array of evidence that contradicts you and torture the scant remaining evidence that is neutral to claim you have “scientific” support for your prejudgement.” The only thing I would add is that, to be fair, people 2,000+ years ago had scant evidence for anything, so they can be excused for latching onto ideas that later proved to be false. Today’s Christians have no excuse.
Richard, priya is claiming what my thought process is without knowing what it is. She *believes* based on some preconceived notion of what Christians must do.
People 2000 years ago were just as intellectually capable as today. Carl Sagan in ‘Cosmos’ claimed that the Greeks took a wrong intellectual turn whan they divorced theory from reality. The Greek mathematicians could have discovered advanced modern mathematics. Sagan claimed we could be among the stars now if scientific revolution occured 2000 years ago and it could have.
Bob I know your thought process from our discussion on how Eve was supposed to know it was wrong to eat the apple from the tree of knowledge when she didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil. The evidence from the story shows that the god character is behaving immorally and your suggestion that he was testing their trust only adds that he was behaving irrationally as well but you couldn’t accept what the evidence was suggesting. You decided in advance that your god character had to be moral and rational and you ignored the evidence and said “yes, it looks immoral, but there must be something I don’t know and god must be moral and rational”. You refused to wait until after you examined the evidence to reach your conclusion. You refused to go where the evidence takes you. You decided in advance you wanted the god character to be rational and moral and you ignored the evidence of your book to the contrary to claim based on nothing that your pre-judgemnent was true.
Hence, its obvious and there is no doubt whatsoever that I was correct when I said “The basis of your [or anyone's religious] belief system is to decide what you want to be true before you look at the evidence and then to ignore the vast array of evidence that contradicts you and torture the scant remaining evidence that is neutral to claim you have “scientific” support for your prejudgement.”
Then predict Priya, what do I believe about the following things and why?
1) Darwinian Evolution.
2) Possibility of Extraterrestrial life in the universe.
3) Big Bang vs. Steady State Theory.
4) Paranormal Phenomonon such as ESP or Remote Viewing.
5) Panspermia.
6) Global Climate Change.
7) Creationism.
“You decided in advance that your god character had to be moral” . No, I believe the revelation that God is moral.
I’m not omnisicient Bob. I don’t know what your preferred conclusion is on every topic, but I do know that you’ll decide in advance what you want to believe and then you’ll rationalize why you hold that position.
Priya, just try to say something based on what you think you know about me.
Bob said “No, I believe the revelation that God is moral.”.
Unhuh, you took the conclusion before you looked at the evidence. You pre-judged. You refuse to go where the evidence took you. Unlike science your mind isn’t open to refining or re-appraising your conclusions. When you read the Eve and tree of knowledge story you saw all those inconsistencies and you said to yourself “I don’t want to believe they exist, so I’m going to say they don’t, that there must be something I don’t know that makes them consistent”. You don’t do science. You don’t look at the evidence first and make a dispassionate judgment about what the conclusion should be, you start with the conclusion and then say “I don’t care what the evidence is, I’ve already decided what I’m going to believe. That’s not science, that’s superstition.
So, tell me Bob, what reason do you have to believe that the “revelation” is true (other than you’re wanting it to be)?
Bob said “Priya, just try to say something based on what you think you know about me.”.
I already did:
“The basis of your belief system is to decide what you want to be true before you look at the evidence and then to ignore the vast array of evidence that contradicts you and torture the scant remaining evidence that is neutral to claim you have “scientific” support for your prejudgement.”
Priya, you know what I mean. It bothers me that you are afraid to try. You should try.
You’re just trying to change the subject Bob, I’m not going to play along. Our discussion on the Eve and tree of knowledge story and your admission that you “believe the revelation that god is moral” is proof that rather than suspending judgement until you’ve examined the evidence and then making a conclusion based on the evidence, you start with the conclusion first and then even if the evidence contradicts the conclusion you absolutely refuse to let any reality sway what you’ve chosen to believe. That’s not science, that’s superstition.
Bob said in #16, “People 2000 years ago were just as intellectually capable as today.”
Yes, I assume that is correct. I have no basis on which to disagree. What those people did not have was the accumulated knowledge that we have today, just as we do not have the additional accumulated knowledge that people will have 2000 years into the future.
Priya, your sqirming. You make demands that I answer all kinds of absurd charges so you need to have the courage to test your hypothosis that you know how I think.
Kinda funny that Galileo was mentioned, since he was [pro/per]secuted by the Catholic church and narrowly avoided being killed for blasphemy. Instead, he spent the rest of his life under house arrest — because he said the “heavenly bodies” weren’t perfect spheres, and that the sun didn’t go around the earth.
The Catholic church didn’t apologize for that little shenanigan until a few years ago.
This implication that without religion people would lack curiosity about the world and how it works is kind of weird. Considering the times, stating that past great advancements were made by Christians is about like stating that past great advancements were made by whites, and it doesn’t change the fact that overall there’s a much larger propensity towards nontheism in scientific academia than in the general population and the more zealously religious folks tend to dismiss scientific findings outright if they don’t coincide with their religious beliefs.
Makyui, not saying religion is necessary, Just saying it was involved and cannot be written out. Regarding scientific acedemia, keeping quiet about one’s personlal beliefs is almost a requirement these days. It’s really the reverse of the old days where non belief was persecuted.
A lot of powerful people grumbled when Francis Collins was appointed but the President is a fair minded man.
Okay, so long as we’re not saying religion is necessary…
Regarding scientists keeping quiet, honestly, I don’t really buy that, since there are still plenty of scientific folk who are religious, Dr. Ken Miller being one among them, and they don’t get persecuted for having religious beliefs.
Now, if they are using religious beliefs as justification for making up bad science, I could see that sort of “persecution” going on.
I think it’s funny that people like Donohue thing that atheism is a set of beliefs. The only thing atheists have in common is that they don’t believe in any gods. Beyone that there are numerous manifestations–some truly wacky. I know they like to say that atheists have just as much dogma as they do but it’s just not true. Atheists, unlike Mormons or Catholics have no strict set of beliefs, there are even atheists who don’t care about science.
I know we’re getting to point of splitting hairs here, but remember the winners are the ones who write the history books. Newton was an avid alchemist and poured over the Bible looking for hidden messages and the end of the world. Kepler was an avid astrologer and not just ‘to pay the bills’ as our science textbooks have propagandized us. Kepler even discovered/invented the so-called ‘minor aspects’ in astrology such as the semi-square and sesquiquadrate. Kepler was also quite successful at forecasting long-range weather using astrology. You may not like it, but there are lots of things in history that are purposely changed or left out.
Come to think of it, it’s always kind of weird to me when believers claim atheists are persecuting them in the same way nonbelievers were persecuted once upon a time, because when believers were persecuting nonbelievers, it involved killing and torturing and exile and taking away basic rights, but the persecution among nonbelievers basically involves saying rude things and demanding evidence for claims.
Gary is correct that we do have a sanitized picture of the process of the development of the scientific view.
Makyui, There is no comparison to the past but it remains a fact that the academic environment is quite hostile to active professing believers and also quite willing to persecute scientists with dissenting scientific views that universities may find embarrassing. That has nothing to do with religion but I believe with the fear of being criticized and jeopardizing funding.
That’s funny, because when I see people complaining about stuff like that, it’s usually because they’re trying to push bad science and don’t like the criticism that comes from it.
Bob, if academia “persecutes” people for professing religious beliefs in scientific studies it may be because those beliefs have no place in those studies. God has nothing to do with scientific studies, until there is some sort of evidence that a god exists it has no bearing in science.
The crazy religious beliefs of some scientists don’t invalidate their discoveries–nor do they prove the existence of God. That some great scientists believe in God doesn’t prove that there is a god. In science, when you reach a point that can’t be proved you don’t get to just make a wild guess and say it’s because of God–in science things have to be observable, repeatable and proven.
Makyui, Daniel, those could be reasons however when a person is denied tenure or even fired for expressing beliefs unrelated to their field one becomes suspicious.
Becky, I agree. I am not aware of any legitimate Christian scientists trying to “prove” God exists. The best one can do is try to make a convincing case. I think even Dawkins never claims to prove anything.
I find the claims that people were fired for expressing beliefs pretty suspicious. Usually you find out they went far beyond just expressing beliefs in the teacher’s lounge. I can’t think of any instance in which a science professor should testify about their belief in God in a classroom or a lecture.
Becky, what if they are asked? They should not have to live in fear of telling the truth.
Bob, pure science has little to do with the Bible, regardless of the religious beliefs of those who either discovered or elucidated scientific principles. I know you want religion to infiltrate anything but I would prefer science to be neutral as there are other beliefs out there which are in accord with science (think Hinduism and quantum physics).
The problem with injecting religion into physics is whose religion do you stress?
Merlyn, no I do not want my or any religion to infiltrate science. I see science as a human endeavor which is limited to natural causes that we can measure.
Bob, if they are asked in class they can say, “that has nothing to do with this class.” If it happens outside of class then it has nothing to do with the class. And the idea that all these science professors are living in fear of it being discovered they’re religious is just bunk. The only time it becomes an issue is when the professors make an issue of it and try to insert their beliefs into the studies. If you can find an instance of a professor who was fired merely for being religious I might take your argument seriously–but in every instance I’ve seen someone making that claim it has always turned out that the professor went far beyond just stating that they’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim etc…