A previous post looked at the common charge implicating atheism in the crimes of the Communists. There is another where it is argued that Hitler was an atheist and that the theory of evolution drove Hitler’s deplorable actions during the Holocaust. I will not tackle that claim here since I believe Hector Avalos has done a masterful job exposing this false charge. What I wanted to discuss today is one particular Christian’s response to Avalos’ arguments that Hitler was a Christian and that the Bible lead to the abolition of slavery.
This Christian blogger initially wrote a piece condemning an article Avalos’ had written implicating religious motives during the Civil War, since it was the bible which was a leading factor in the justification of slavery. Avalos responded to this individual in the comments to this post and this Christian responded to Avalos with a later series of posts. The first post discussed Avalos’ claim that Hilter was a Christian.
The author of The Passive Habit blog wrote in part,
[Quoting Hector Avalos:] “The Nazis hated VERSIONS OF CHRISTIANITY THAT DISAGREED WITH THE NAZI VERSION.Thus, the Nazis were doing nothing different from what we have seen throughout Christian history, where some Christian groups persecute other Christians they see as heretical.”
This is precisely my point. The Nazis attacked orthodox Christianity and sought to replace it with something less troublesome. How can Avalos blame orthodoxy for a movement in the church that it clearly repudiated? And, yes, there have been splits in Christianity in the past, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t determine which side in the arguments was correct, or that none of them were correct.
This has got to be one of the strangest rebuttals I’ve ever seen. The Christian author agrees with Avalos! In addition, he takes Avalos out of context because Avalos said nothing about Christian “orthodoxy,” but Christianity in general. The Christian author’s typical response that “They weren’t true Christians” doesn’t even begin to rebut Avalos’ argument.
The Christian author further cites a statement by Protestant ministers repudiating Hitler’s religious views. He then writes,
From this point, Avalos can only go on to argue that Hitler’s assault on the church wasn’t anti-Christian, only an assault on a certain flavor of Christianity; thus, religion is still evil and responsible for Nazism.
Strangely, he confirms Avalos’ argument. He continues,
[Quoting Hector Avalos:] “what you have here is not an anti-Christian movement, but a DIFFERENT interpretation of Christianity. You may not agree that this is “true” Christianity, but that would be a theological claim that is no more verifiable than the Nazi judgment that they were following the true form of Christianity.”
As mentioned above, this is nonsense. Orthodox Christianity is indeed an ancient religion, which can be verified to represent the teachings of Jesus and the early church. Unless Avalos is prepared to defend the sanitized, Nazi version of Christianity as the true faith, he should give this argument a rest – permanently.
He misses Avalos’ point. He is not trying to defend Hilter’s religious views. He is simply making the very accurate observation that due to the fact that there are multiple denominations of Christianity all claiming to be the “true” Christianity, there is no way to determine which one represents the true teachings of Jesus. These facts (which the author doesn’t even challenge, but confirms!) prove that 1) Hitler wasn’t an atheist and 2) Hitler followed a version of Christianity, which was actually very ancient itself. Hitler believed that Jesus was not a Jew, but was “fathered by a Roman legionary (a story that dates back at least to the 2nd century A.D.) and therefore he was a member of the master race.” [1]
I was hoping for a good series of responses to Avalos’ claims but it seems to be that this particular Christian likes to shoot himself in the foot and he never bothered to check any of his facts.
1. On the Trail of Bogus Quotes, by Richard C. Carrier – accessed 9-9-12
