(Hat tip Pharyngula)
For all those sensible people infuriated by the claims that Hitler was an atheist…
The text reads:
“The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life” (‘My New Order‘, Adolf Hitler, Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)
The Nazis burned books trying to teach evolution.
Does all this sound familiar?
Yes, this “Hitler believed in evolution so evolution must be Nazi” nonsense is –
(a) like saying Hitler breathed air- ergo all you airbreathers are like Hitler…. I bet you could count the number of people in 1930s Europe who disbelieved in evolutionary biology on the pews of one country church.
(b) It’s such a shameless attempt to link evolution to genocide, ignoring the endless real-world examples of religious beliefs being implicated in genocide.
(c) It shows the rock-bottom level understanding of logical argument that makes you wonder why we even have an education system.
But then there’s the argument of evolution played out in Hitler’s plans (eloquently spelled out in the movie Expelled). Hitler believed in evolution and that only the strong survive, so he tried wiping out weak humans.
So if he believes in evolution, he must be an atheist, right?
Well… No… and there are a lot of things wrong with that theory, but it sounded sexy to the Christians in our movie audience who applauded….