The Blind following the Corrupt

Originally posted by sonhouse
you have that one backwards, its following a religion without your
own internal jugdement that IS the blindness not the other way round.
That is the main problem with religious organizations, very few
followers question anything, very few people step up and say,
"hold on here, this is plain not right, us being called to kill for you"
or whatever, th ...[text shortened]... e do you find in Islam or
the followers of Pat Robertson or the Zealots at Masada or Jim Jones?

I agree. We must each take our freedom to choose our leaders very seriously. The Bible itself says that we should 'test every spirit'. That it, the spirit behind a teacher, to judge whether he is accurately delineating the truth.

Originally posted by chinking58
I agree. We must each take our freedom to choose our leaders very seriously. The Bible itself says that we should 'test every spirit'. That it, the spirit behind a teacher, to judge whether he is accurately delineating the truth.

what do you do when the underlying spirit in christianity, in this
case not Jesus but Paul, how do you judge that spirit? You have
no choice but to believe what you have been told. You can't take
a time machine back and judge him. Personally I think he had
one too many hallucinations in the desert, his teachings are not
even close to that of Jesus so now what? So how much of your own
religion do you question? Is it a case where you say to yourself
'I don't like x, y and z but they are doing so much GOOD it doesn't
matter'? How much have you personally questioned the underpinnings
of christianity? Do you know for instance that it wasn't in fact started
by Jesus by by Paul? Do you dispute that? Do you dispute the fact
that the Nicene creed wasn't even around for 400 years after Paul?
Did you for instance know the 7 day story of creation isn't even
christian? I personally saw the cartuche of the 7 day creation story
in the Cairo museum of natural history, inscribed on stones,
dated about 4000 BC, before even jewish faith was around.
Does it bother you that those myths become an underlying tenet
of your faith?

Originally posted by lucifershammer
"Such deadly consequences"

Which are?

And are these "consequences" less, more or as deadly as those of the followers of atheistic philosophies such as Nazism and Communism?

Cheers,

LH

We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.
-Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934

In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.... I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty.... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths.... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on 27 June 1937

'nuff said?
or do you need more to retract pinning Hitler to atheists?
if you do need more:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

Originally posted by frogstomp
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests ...[text shortened]... pinning Hitler to atheists?
if you do need more:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

Bit late to the discussion, aren't you?

In any case, I've already said I'll be using the term "irreligious" to describe philosophies that explicitly rule out spirituality.

Originally posted by frogstomp
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests ...[text shortened]... pinning Hitler to atheists?
if you do need more:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

From the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" (1937).

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI
ON THE CHURCH AND THE GERMAN REICH

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html

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About the concordat and the partners with which the treaty was signed, the German rulers of the time, the Nazi's:


"The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to sow the seed of a sincere peace, other men - the "enemy" of Holy Scripture - oversowed the cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from many sources and wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they alone with their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today responsible, should the storm of religious war, instead of the rainbow of peace, blacken the German skies." (1937 !)

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About the "faith" of the Nazi's and their use of the Name of God in their speeches and writings:

"The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.

11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xI, 15).

12. The Bishops of the Church of Christ, "ordained in the things that appertain to God (Heb. v, 1) must watch that pernicious errors of this sort, and consequent practices more pernicious still, shall not gain a footing among their flock. It is part of their sacred obligations to do whatever is in their power to enforce respect for, and obedience to, the commandments of God, as these are the necessary foundation of all private life and public morality; to see that the rights of His Divine Majesty, His name and His word be not profaned; to put a stop to the blasphemies, which, in words and pictures, are multiplying like the sands of the desert; to encounter the obstinacy and provocations of those who deny, despise and hate God, by the never-failing reparatory prayers of the Faithful, hourly rising like incense to the All-Highest and staying His vengeance."

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If the Nazi's are to be regarded as theists or even as Christians, as you are claiming, they certainly weren't looked upon as such by the Roman Catholic Church. They weren't even regarded as believers in God. They were looked upon as "those who deny, despise and hate God".

If you, after reading the quotes I presented from the above Encyclical, still choose to believe one of the most notorious bunch of liars in the history of mankind, you go right ahead, but don't expect me to buy the rubbish, the filth and the lies these gentlemen presented the masses in those days.

Hitler & friends were not Christians. The Roman Catholic Church claimed this in 1937. History has proven the Church was right.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Bit late to the discussion, aren't you?

In any case, I've already said I'll be using the term "irreligious" to describe philosophies that explicitly rule out spirituality.

Hitler didn't and last I check he was the leader of the nazi's.

We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty 'Lord, make us free'!-- we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before Him and when we may ask of Him: 'Lord, Thou seest that we have transformed ourselves, the German people is not longer the people of dishonour, of shame, of war within itself, of faintheartedness and little faith: no, Lord, the German people has become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices.' 'Lord, we will not let Thee go: bless now our fight for our freedom; the fight we wage for our German people and Fatherland.'
-Adolf Hitler, giving prayer in a speech on May Day 1933

Originally posted by frogstomp
Hitler didn't and last I check he was the leader of the nazi's.

We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance, our will. We ask not of the Almighty 'Lord, make us free'!-- we want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the ...[text shortened]... r our German people and Fatherland.'
-Adolf Hitler, giving prayer in a speech on May Day 1933

Please read the quotes I gave from the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" from 1937.

Originally posted by ivanhoe
From the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" (1937).

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI
ON THE CHURCH AND THE GERMAN REICH

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html

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About the concordat and the partners wit ...[text shortened]... stians. The Roman Catholic Church claimed this in 1937. History has proven the Church was right.

notice I have carefully not said the RCC was tied to Hitler.

Originally posted by frogstomp
notice I have carefully not said the RCC was tied to Hitler.

I know you didn't say that.

You posted a site which claimed Hitler was a Christian and the site gives "proof" for that claim. Do you choose to believe the lies Hitler presented the German people at the time claiming he was a devote Christian or do you think he was rather using this in his propaganda war to strenghten his position ?

Some have taken these propaganda-lies and present them even today as truths to use them in their fight against the Roman Catholic Church. People like John Cornwell in his book "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII".

I wonder who are the blind and who are the corrupt in these instances.

Now, having read the quotes from the 1937 encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge", what is your conclusion about your claim that Hitler was a Christian ?

Originally posted by ivanhoe
I know you didn't say that.

You posted a site which claimed Hitler was a Christian and the site gives "proof" for that claim. Do you choose to believe the lies Hitler presented the German people at the time claiming he was a devote Christian or do you think he was rather using this in his propaganda war to strenghten his position ?

Some have taken t ...[text shortened]... "Mit Brennender Sorge", what is your conclusion about your claim that Hitler was a Christian ?

Whose claim the Hitler was a christian?

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922

add-on edit : He seemed to have thought he was , that ain't exactly Marx and Engels material

Originally posted by frogstomp
Whose claim the Hitler was a christian?

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. ...[text shortened]... edit : He seemed to have thought he was , that ain't exactly Marx and Engels material

Just a simple question: Have you read the quotes I provided taken from the encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" ?

Originally posted by ivanhoe
Just a simple question: Have you read the quotes I provided taken from the encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" ?

Wasnt anything in it I didnt already know.

Originally posted by sonhouse
what do you do when the underlying spirit in christianity, in this
case not Jesus but Paul, how do you judge that spirit? You have
no choice but to believe what you have been told. You can't take
a time machine back and judge him. Personally I think he had
one too many hallucinations in the desert, his teachings are not
even close to that of Jesus so ...[text shortened]... aith was around.
Does it bother you that those myths become an underlying tenet
of your faith?

sorry about the slight diversion but I thought that such historical error should be confronted. Besides it might more suitable in a thread entitled "The Blind following the lunatic"

Originally posted by frogstomp
Whose claim the Hitler was a christian?

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. ...[text shortened]... edit : He seemed to have thought he was , that ain't exactly Marx and Engels material

Hitler POSED as a Christian ..... the 1937 Encyclical exposes Hitler and his Nazi's and shows them for what they REALLY are: Unbelievers and people who "deny, despise and hate God".

There are still people willing to buy Hitlers posing and his lies, because they can use these lies in discrediting the Christian Faith and in particular the Roman-Catholic Church. In doing so they make themselves accomplices in Hitler's lies. However that doesn't seem to bother those fighters for truth, justice and reason.

Originally posted by sonhouse
This is the most terse statement I can come up with regarding the
insane following of religions, especially when it leads to such
deadly consequenses as we all see today.

I continue to be amazed at how Christianity, religion, God, etc., get all the blame for the evil in the world and satan continues to go scott free every time.