Adolf Hitler, Creationist

If Adolf Hitler was an atheist, as some argumentative religious loons keep insisting, he was the oddest atheist ever: a member of the Roman Catholic church who wouldn't shut up about his self-proclaimed role in doing God's holy work.

Hitler was a Christian (if one of a particularly warped nature) and a man of faith even beyond the borders of religion. That's so obvious and well-known that you have to wonder why True Believers keep bringing up "Hitler the atheist" when the claim backfires on them every time. Yet what's pointed out far less frequently (although it's not the least surprising) is that Hitler the Christian was also Hitler the flaming Creationist.

Yes, it turns out that "Hitler the Darwinist" fails as decisively as "Hitler the atheist". PZ Myers points this out while smashing yet another "evolution leads to Hitler" bleating, offering and then commenting on a quote from Mein Kampf: 

"...Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law–one may call it an iron law of Nature–which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind."

That's creationist thinking; Hitler could have been a baraminologist. Don't try to blame evolutionary biologists for the actions of an obvious creationist, like Hitler. 

Zing. But that's not all! A commenter going by Coel added many more quotes to the Hitler Creationist oeuvre. I hate to see that excellent comment remain buried and lost within the mountain of text on Pharyngula. With great thanks to Coel, I am pasting it below, the Hitler quotes and Coel's comments. Friends of reason, put these words to work whenever you hear "Hitler the Darwinist"!

Beginning quote: 

PZ gave a good quote from Mein Kampf, but it is worth pointing out that the whole of that book, and the whole of the justification for the holocaust contained within it, is explicitly creationist and is incompatible with Darwinism. It is simply untrue that Hitler ever used Darwinism to justify the holocaust. Here are some quotes.

Essentially, Hitler regarded different races as God-created, with the Aryan race created supreme, but considered that the Aryan ideal was being corrupted. Hitler spends much time criticizing the churches for opposing each other rather than Jews:

"Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another to their hearts' content, while the enemy [Jews] of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve. Look at the ravages from which our people are suffering daily as a result of being contaminated with Jewish blood.

"... Think further of how the process of racial decomposition is debasing and in some cases even destroying the fundamental Aryan qualities of our German people"

Note that this is the *opposite* of Darwinian ideas, of mankind's *improvement* and ascent from apes. Instead it is a notion of a *previous* ideal, a created "fundamental" archetype, that is now subject to "racial decomposition" and "debasement".

"This pestilential adulteration of the blood, of which hundreds of thousands of our people take no account, is being systematically practised by the Jew to-day.

"Systematically [Jews] corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something which can no longer be replaced in this world."

Again, the notion of a *prior* ideal that "can no longer be replaced". It's the very opposite of Darwinism.

"The two Christian denominations look on with indifference at the profanation and destruction of a noble and unique creature who was given to the world as a gift of God's grace."

Note- again the concept of a *created* Aryan race as God's ideal. An ideal that is being corrupted.

"Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound ... to see to it that ... he fulfills the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork to be debased."

Again the concept of debasement of God's Garden-of-Eden handiwork, the degeneration from a *prior* ideal. This is entirely the opposite of Darwinian ongoing improvement.

"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will."

No comment needed!

"In recent years things have gone so far that patriotic circles, in god-forsaken blindness of their religious strife, could not recognize the folly of their conduct even from the fact that atheist Marxist newspapers advocated the cause of one religious denomination or the other"

Again the criticism of churches for not opposing Jews. "Atheist Marxist" is also code for Jews.

"Over against all this, the VOLKISCH concept of the world recognizes that the primordial racial elements are of the greatest significance for mankind."

Note the concept of *primordial* race! I.e. Original creation by God of *separate* races, that are now being mixed by the sin of interracial marriage.

"In principle, the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind."

Again, *conservation* of an ideal, the very opposite of Darwinism.

"Therefore on the VOLKISCH principle we cannot admit that one race is equal to another. By recognizing that they are different, the VOLKISCH concept separates mankind into races of superior and inferior quality. On the basis of this recognition it feels bound in conformity with the eternal Will that dominates the universe, to postulate the victory of the better and stronger and the subordination of the inferior and weaker."

This might superficially seem Darwinian. But it isn't, note the "eternal Will" (ie God), which is not in Darwinism. The idea here is that *God* created the races as seperate and UNequal, and placed one above the other. This was a standard idea in Christendom pre-Darwin. It was used to justify slavery, and apartheid South Africa (the Dutch Reformed Church there believed exactly that).

"But, on the other hand, [the volkish principle] denies that an ethical ideal has the right to prevail if it endangers the existence of a race that is the standard-bearer of a higher ethical ideal. "

Excusing what might be seen as unethical (oppressing Jews) by appeal to higher ethics!

"For in a world which would be composed of mongrels and negroids all ideals of human beauty and nobility and all hopes of an idealized future for our humanity would be lost forever."

Note that, rather than *improvement* *to* an Aryan super-race, Hitler is worried about degeneration *from* a *past* Aryan ideal.

"On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth."

Ditto.

"To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its founders and custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who believe that the folk-idea lies at the basis of human existence."

Ditto. Again note the Aryans as past *founders*, and the conservation ("custodians") of a past ideal.

"Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures [ie. Aryans] would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise."

The "expulsion from paradise" again being the idea of a lost ideal: an Aryan race God-created in it's ideal form as God's ideal handiwork, originally created for the Garden of Eden. That's entirely the opposite of a Darwinian ascent from apes.

"If the Aryan, who is the creator and custodian of civilization, should disappear, all culture that is on an adequate level with the spiritual needs of the superior nations to-day would also disappear."

"Thus for the first time a high inner purpose is accredited to the State. In face of the ridiculous phrase that the State should do no more than act as the guardian of public order and tranquility, so that everybody can peacefully dupe everybody else, it is given a very high mission indeed to preserve and encourage the highest type of humanity which a beneficent Creator has bestowed on this earth."

Lastly, Hitler advocates celibacy of "lesser" non-Aryan people. He thinks they could be induced to accept this.

"Why should it not be possible to induce people to make this sacrifice if ... they were simply told that they ought to put an end to this truly original sin of racial corruption which is steadily being passed on from one generation to another. And, further, they ought to be brought to realize that it is their bounden duty to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He himself made to His own image."

Note the revealling "truly original sin" -- that is, the destruction of the past ideal of the Aryan race in the Garden of Eden. And the concept that it is *Aryans* who were made in God's image.

End quote.

Aryans are "a gift of God's grace". All aspects of man's form are "by the Will of God". We (or at least the favored race) are "God's creation"; we are "His creatures"; we are made in "His own image". You simply can't get more Creationist than that. 

So. What's the point of all this? Hitler was a Creationist, and that's an indelible smear against Creationism, right?

NO. This is a really important item to grasp: Hitler's association with (a bizarre and loony form of) Christianity does not, in itself, make Christianity wrong or evil. Likewise, his firm belief in Creationism does not, in itself, make Creationism wrong or evil. Both Christianity and Creationism stand or fall on their own merits – on the evidence for or against them – and not on the observation of what saint or lunatic may have embraced them.

The point, then, is simply this: Religious claims of "Hitler was an atheist" and "Hitler was a Darwinist" are not standard, one-ply stupid, but are doubly stupid. First, it would be irrelevant if the claims were true; they wouldn't at all change the validity of evidence for or against non-theistic evolution. But second, the claims aren't true. It's trivially easy to show by Hitler's own insane words that he believed strongly in a God and Creation. 

So while we don't get to beat Jebusites over the head with God-fearing Adolf – we have to pound them with evidence and evidence alone – we are perfectly justified in Hitler-quoting any believer who's fool enough to invoke a self-defeating reductio ad Hitlerum. 

I'll settle for that!