Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs have been a matter of debate; the wide consensus of historians .. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. . In Mein Kampf (), which was written while he was in prison after his failed putsch, Hitler combined elements of.
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Some critics of those policies compared them to those of Nazi Germany, and in political cartoons Jewish figures were depicted in a manner not dissimilar to Nazi propaganda. At the same time, many conservative Christians including many evangelicals voiced ardent support for Israel. However, the nationalistic, xenophobic far right—which often embodied an open or thinly veiled anti-Semitism while capitalizing on economic dislocation and discontentment with immigration—gained considerable political power in countries such as Greece and Hungary. Scholars and students of anti-Semitism struggled to distinguish between legitimate criticism of policies of the Israeli government and anti-Semitism.
In then Israeli cabinet minister and one-time Soviet human rights activist Natan Sharansky suggested three markers to delineate the boundary between legitimate criticism and anti-Semitism. Under his 3D scheme, when one of these elements was detectable, the line had been crossed: We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval.
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Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust The storm of anti-Semitic violence loosed by Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler from to not only reached a terrifying intensity in Germany itself but also inspired anti-Jewish movements elsewhere. Previous page Anti-Semitism in medieval Europe.
Page 3 of 3. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: The surprise German invasion of the U. The Soviets, during their hasty retreat, shot their political prisoners and, whenever possible, evacuated personnel, dismantled and removed industrial plants, and conducted a scorched-earth policy—blowing up buildings and….
Even before the Nazis came to power in Germany in , they had made no secret of their anti-Semitism. That Wagner harboured anti-Semitic sentiments is both well known and uncontested within the realm of musicological inquiry. The composer openly articulated his views in a number of publications, most notably Judaism in Music Das Judentum in der Musik ; , in which he identified Jewish…. The rise of organized labour and mass protests. Failure of the German Republic.
Where Marx had reduced all of history to struggles among social classes, in which revolution was the engine of progress and the dictatorship of the proletariat the culmination, Hitler reduced history to struggle among biologic races, in…. Spartacus Educational - Anti-Semitism. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
Help us improve this article! So, concluded Rees, "the most coherent reading of Mein Kampf is that whilst Hitler was prepared to believe in an initial creator God, he did not accept the conventional Christian vision of heaven and hell, nor the survival of an individual "soul" Paul Berben wrote that insofar as the Christian denominations were concerned, Hitler declared himself to be neutral in Mein Kampf—but argued for clear separation of church and state, and for the church not to concern itself with the earthly life of the people, which must be the domain of the state.
In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that Jesus "made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence.
In return, Christ was nailed to the cross. Hitler wrote of the importance of a definite and uniformly accepted Weltanschauung world view , and noted that the diminished position of religion in Europe had led to a decline in necessary certainties—"yet this human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of religious belief. The political leader should not estimate the worth of a religion by taking some of its shortcomings into account, but he should ask himself whether there be any practical substitute in a view which is demonstrably better.
Until such a substitute be available, only fools and criminals would think of abolishing existing religion. Examining how to establish a new order, Hitler argued that the greatness of powerful organizations was reliant on intolerance of all others, so that the greatness of Christianity arose from the "unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defence of its own teaching.
They never have been such. 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. For the future of the world, however, it does not matter which of the two triumphs over the other, the Catholic or the Protestant. But it does matter whether Aryan humanity survives or perishes. When he arrived in Vienna as a young man, Hitler claimed, he was not yet anti-Semitic: In an attempt to justify Nazi aggression, Hitler drew a parallel between militantism and Christianity's rise to power as the Roman Empire 's official state religion:.
Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created. Political parties are inclined to compromises; philosophies never. Political parties even reckon with opponents; philosophies proclaim their infallibility. Elsewhere in Mein Kampf, Hitler speaks of the "creator of the universe" and "eternal Providence. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. Derek Hastings writes that, according to Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann , the strongly anti-Semitic Hieronymite [] Catholic priest Bernhard Stempfle was a member of Hitler's inner circle in the early s and frequently advised him on religious issues.
Article 24 of Hitler's National Socialist Programme of had endorsed what it termed " Positive Christianity ", but placed religion below party ideology by adding the caveat that it must not offend "the moral sense of the German race". Hitler turned Lerchenfeld's perspective of Jesus on its head, telling a crowd in Munich:. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. My feeling 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! 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 against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before 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. In a speech, he said: In light of later developments, Rees notes, "The most persuasive explanation of [Hitler's] statements is that Hitler, as a politician, simply recognised the practical reality of the world he inhabited Had Hitler distanced himself or his movement too much from Christianity it is all but impossible to see how he could ever have been successful in a free election. Thus his relationship in public to Christianity—indeed his relationship to religion in general—was opportunistic.
He was not a praticising Christian, but had somehow succeeded in masking his own religious skepticism from millions of German voters", wrote Overy , who considered that Hitler found the arrangement useful for a time, but ultimately expected Christianity to wilt and die before "the advances of science". Hitler's movement was not united on questions of religion. The consensus among historians is that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it.
Author Steigmann-Gall has put forward a minority interpretation, that positive Christianity had an "inner logic" and been "more than a political ploy". Jesus as the son of God, dying for the redemption of the sins of all humankind. It is nonsense to state that Hitler or any of the Nazis adhered to Christianity of this form.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act of , under which Hitler gained the "temporary" dictatorial powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic , Hitler promised the German Parliament that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Through and into , the Nazi leader required a level of support from groups like the German conservatives and the Catholic Centre Party in the Reichstag, and of the conservative President von Hindenberg , in order to achieve his takeover of power with the "appearance of legality".
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. Two days later, the Nazis secured passage of the Enabling Act , granting Hitler dictatorial powers. Less than three months later all non-Nazi parties and organizations, including the Catholic Centre Party had ceased to exist.
What Trump does and doesn't have in common with Hitler
Hitler sought to gain the votes of the Catholic Centre Party and German conservatives for the Enabling Act with a mix of intimidation, negotiation and conciliation. The Centre Party asked for guarantees of the rights of the churches. Hitler promised that the institutions of the Weimar Republic and churches would be protected, and said his government saw the churches as "the most important factors for upholding our nationhood". Amid threats and talk of civil war, the Centre Party voted for the Act.
In January , Hitler angered the churches by appointing the neo-pagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist. The Fuhrer launched an effort toward coordination of German Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church under the Deutsche Christen movement, but the attempt failed—resisted by the Confessing Church. In The Aryan Jesus: In public statements made during his rule, Hitler continued to speak positively about a Nazi vision of Christian German culture, [] and his belief in an Aryan Christ.
Hitler added that Saint Paul , as a Jew, had falsified Jesus' message—a theme Hitler repeated in private conversations, including, in October , when he made the decision to murder the Jews. Ian Kershaw said that Hitler had lost interest in supporting the Deutsche Christen from around The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity.
It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines Lehren , and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today. The propaganda machinery of the Nazi party actively promoted Hitler as a saviour of Christianity, [] and Nazi propaganda supported the German Christians in their formation of a single national church that could be controlled and manipulated.
If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbour, i. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work. According to Bullock, as an adolescent in Vienna, Hitler read widely, including books on Occultism , Hypnotism , Astrology. However, his interest in these subjects was fleeting, and there is no evidence that he ever subscribed to any of these schools of thought.
Speer quotes Hitler as having said of Himmler's attempt to mythologize the SS: Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now [Himmler] wants to start that all over again.
Anti-Semitism - Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust | leondumoulin.nl
We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may, some day, be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave In a speech in Nuremberg Hitler rejected any form of mysticism, but expressed his belief in God, and that the Nazi's work was to fulfill a divine will:. We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else - in any case, something which has nothing to do with us.
At the head of our program there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will - not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord.
According to Ron Rosenbaum , some scholars believe the young Hitler was strongly influenced, particularly in his racial views, by an abundance of occult works on the mystical superiority of the Germans, like the occult and anti-Semitic magazine Ostara , and give credence to the claim of its publisher Lanz von Liebenfels that Hitler visited him in and praised his work.
Not at least due to the difficulty of sources, historians disagree about the importance of Ariosophy for Hitler's religious views. Comparing him to Erich Ludendorff , Fest writes: For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack. It is not clear if this statement is an attack at anyone specific.
It could have been aimed at Karl Harrer or at the Strasser group. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "In any case, the outburst clearly implies Hitler's contempt for conspiratorial circles and occult-racist studies and his preference for direct activism. Older literature states that Hitler had no intention of instituting worship of the ancient Germanic gods in contrast to the beliefs of some other Nazi officials. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund.
Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles in an article published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center assert alleged influences of various portions of the teachings of H. Blavatsky , the founder of The Theosophical Society with doctrines as expounded by her book "The Secret Doctrine", and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, through Ariosophy, the Germanenorden and the Thule Society, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler. In his childhood, Hitler had admired the pomp of Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organisation of the clergy.
Later he drew on these elements, organizing his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical forms into events or using phraseology taken from hymns. Although Hitler expressed negative views towards the mystical notions of some of his senior Nazi underlings in private, he nevertheless appointed Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg to senior positions in the Nazi movement. Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". In , during his imprisonment, Hitler had chosen Alfred Rosenberg to lead the Nazi movement in his absence.
Hitler had called his book "derivative, pastiche, illogical rubbish! Rosenberg was notoriously anti-Christian. But Rosenberg was in the end, a marginalised figure in the Hitler regime. Himmler saw the main task of the SS to be that of "acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" in order to prepare for the coming conflict between "humans and subhumans": This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but must be accompanied at every step by a positive impetus: During his career, and for a variety of reasons, Hitler made various comments against "atheistic" movements.
He associated atheism with Bolshevism , Communism , and "Jewish materialism". Nor was he a thorough atheist. His public utterances are peppered with references to 'God' and 'Spirit'. For Hitler the eschatological truths that he found in his perception of the race represented the real 'eternal will that rules the universe'; in the infinite value of the race and the struggle to sustain it men find what they might call God, an inner sense of the unity and purposiveness of nature and history [ The historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler courted and benefited from fear among German Christians of militant Communist atheism.
To be both was impossible. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen years when they went arm in arm with atheism?
No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these fourteen years when a party , theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government. Hitler's speech referred to the political alliances of the Catholic aligned Centre Party with parties of the Left, which he associated with Bolshevism, and thus, atheism. Eugen Bolz was forced from office soon after the Nazis took power, and imprisoned for a time. Later he was executed by the Nazi regime.
During negotiations leading to the Reichskonkordat with the Vatican, Hitler said that "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. In , the Nazis banned any member of the Hitler Youth from simultaneously belonging to a religious youth movement.
Religious education was not permitted in the Hitler Youth and by , clergymen teachers had been removed from virtually all state schools. In a radio address October 14, Hitler stated, "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. In a speech delivered in Berlin, October 24, , Hitler stated: We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement , and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious.
But that time is past. National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity. The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord.
These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles. Hitler's choice of the Swastika as the Nazis' main and official symbol was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural descent of the German people. They considered the early Aryans to be the prototypical white invaders and the sign of the Swastika to be a symbol of the Aryan master race. Hitler's views on Islam are a matter of controversy. On the one hand, Hitler privately demeaned ethnic groups he associated with Islam, notably Arabs, as racially inferior. On the other hand, he also made private and public statements expressing admiration for what he perceived to be the militaristic nature of Islam and the political cunning of the Prophet Muhammad.
Among eastern religions, Hitler described religious leaders such as " Confucius , Buddha , and Muhammad " as providers of "spiritual sustenance". During the unsuccessful —39 Arab revolt in Palestine , Husseini and his allies took the opportunity to strengthen relations with Germany and enforced the spread of Nazi customs and propaganda throughout their strongholds in Palestine as a gesture of respect.
Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Notwithstanding Hitler's apparent admiration for Islam and Muhammad, and his willingness to work with Arab political leaders, he saw individual Muslims as racial and social inferiors. Nazi-era Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer acknowledged that in private, Hitler regarded Arabs as an inferior race [] and that the relationship he had with various Muslim figures was more political than personal.
Such a creed was perfectly suited to the German temperament. As noted, Hitler was profoundly racist against the ethnic groups that practiced Islam. Regarding Hitler's wish that the Ottomans had conquered Europe, Speer notes that Hitler believed that their hegemony over Germans could not last, because of their racial inferiority, but that Islamized Germans would come to rule the world in their place.
Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash. National Socialist ideology developed a racial hierarchy which placed minority groups - most especially the Jews - as subhuman. The categorisation was based on the Nazi conception of race, and not on religion, thus Slavs and Poles who were overwhelmingly Christian were also grouped as inferior to the so-called "Aryan" peoples.
Hitler espoused a ruthless policy of "negative eugenic selection", believing that world history consisted of a struggle for survival between races, in which the Jews plotted to undermine the Germans, and inferior groups like Slavs and defective individuals in the German gene pool, threatened the Aryan "master race". Writing for the public in Mein Kampf , Hitler described the Jews as enemies of all civilization and as materialistic, unspiritual beings: The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos , etc, because it recognised the Jews for what they were.
In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognised. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented.
Anti-Semitism since the Holocaust and outside Europe
I do not set race over religion, but I recognise the representatives of this race as pestilant for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions". Scholarly interest continues on the extent to which inherited, long-standing, cultural-religious notions of anti-Judaism in Christian Europe contributed to Hitler's personal racial anti-Semitism, and what influence a pseudo-scientific "primitive version of social-Darwinism", mixed with 19th century imperialist notions, brought to bear on his psychology.
While Hitler's views on these subjects have often been called " social Darwinist ", Hitler's grasp of the subject has been argued to have been incomplete, [] [] [] [] there is little agreement among historians as to what the term may mean, or how it transformed from its 19th-century scientific origins, to become a central component of a genocidal political ideology in the 20th century. According to historian Lucy Dawidowicz , anti-Semitism has a long history within Christianity, and the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw.
Dawidowicz states that the similarities between Luther's anti-Semitic writings and modern anti-Semitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass which can be traced to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus , although modern German anti-Semitism also has its roots in German nationalism. Laurence Rees in contrast, notes that there is little emphasis on Christianity in Mein Kampf , which presents a view of the universe conspicuously at odds with traditional Christians notions long established in Germany.
Hitler's vision is ordered instead around principles of struggle between weak and strong. The notion of life as struggle Hitler drew from Social Darwinism , the notion of the superiority of the "Aryan race" he drew from Arthur de Gobineau 's The Inequality of the Human Races ; from events following Russia's surrender in World War One when Germany seized agricultural lands in the East he formed the idea of colonising the Soviet Union; and from Alfred Rosenberg he took the idea of a link between Judaism and Bolshevism, writes Rees.
Evans notes that Hitler "used his own version of the language of social Darwinism as a central element in the discursive practice of extermination In his rhetoric [ when? The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God—so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty.
Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. Nevertheless, I feel bound to accept it as I have no real evidence to dispute it. On the other hand, I think there is enough evidence from ongoing polls to show that a significant I know that's a fairly loose description number of Americans who harbor views that are not inconsistent with the above - more so than in Australia anyway.
I am not sure I can agree that most surveys contain inbuilt biases based on faulty methodology. Survey companies would surely find it difficult to stay in business if such were the general case. Anyway, thank you for providing a rational and courteous response. I wish more posters could be as civil. Hi ErichH, Thanks for your comments, it is certainly nice to be able to share a discussion with a reasonable person like you.
If I may, i'd just like to add that another exacerbating factor of bias which clearly exists in the Gallup Poll which saw the few respondents ie. Thus you can end up with very few responders ie. Only by looking at the raw data, and by taking into account the abundance of bias in the questions, inclination to respond, phone type ownership etc can you really get to the bottom of a poll.
Thus the land line group would tend to pick up approx. Now if these below 30's are predominately creationists they are going to provide a very inaccurate representation of the approximate 64,, Americans in that demographic. At least Gallup is decent enough to state at the very end of the poll results the following "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Hi JB, I don't dispute anything you have said, but maybe I was lucky in my limited survey methodology and analysis experience to be working under one of Australia's most respected and skilled statisticians. Hence our sample was carefully selected to match the particular demographic we were surveying. Thus, even though the sample number was sometimes a seemingly small total, statistically it was representative of the total demographic.
We also tried to match the question structure to the perceived comprehension levels of the demographic so as to enable responses to be measured as accurately as possible, especially with open questions. Yes, even with the greatest care, there will always be a margin of error, so professional poll and survey firm do their best to keep error margins to the absolute minimum, otherwise they aren't really helping their clients. Finally, one key factor that bedevils survey firms is that some clients expect a Rolls Royce result for the cost of a Mazda2. And that's where, sometimes, the results don't tell us exactly what we are seeking to find out.
And, of course, the survey firm gets the blame. Hi EricH, Yes the funding of surveys is a separate matter all together isn't it. I wonder how the Gallup Poll would have looked if the questions which there were a few weren't focused on religious beliefs, church attendance rates etc but instead approached it from an entirely different perspective. If they asked about sciences, say questions about physics, chemistry, biology and then included a question on whether the respondent supported the theory of evolution One would naturally expect an entirely different set of raw data as respondents would naturally be those people who have an interest in sciences and discussing sciences with strangers over the phone, which is likely to exclude a great number of creationists who are unlikely to a have a great interest in scientific fields generally.
But then that would not be much of a 'sensational' result, and the primary funder of Gallup being USA Today wouldn't have much of a sensational story to print. Surveys can certainly be useful, but only if you can get at the raw data, and understand the methodology used and the purpose of the poll itself and any likely bias. So I believe we were created, not evolved, but I'm well educated, middle class, running a small business. Once again Christians or those not sharing the lefts extreme agenda are somehow hateful or stupid? Yet it's those pushing that agenda that are on forums such as these bashing those that don't agree with their opinions.
Kind of ironic, those espousing they are for progressive policies of "love and inclusion" for everyone are often the most hateful in the way they talk about those who disagree with them. Oh, and yes I think climate change is real and man landed on the moon. I might be conservative in my values but I'm no conspiracy theorist. Oh also I guess the next day it popped animals birds and sea creatures to provide food for humans. Mike the stories that you have been reading to give you these daft ideas are the rantings of men borne a couple of thousand years ago. Imagine if today someone woke up one morning and claimed to have talked to god he would be considered delusional.
Bit like people like you. Christians believe I will burn in hell for all eternity on account of being atheist. This belief is hateful and a personal insult, so I respond to their faith accordingly. If they don't want me to treat them nasty, they should pick a nicer religion. One that doesn't involve my supernatural torture by an invisible sky ghost. He responds to humility All that I am not He is to me, all that I cannot do for myself He has done for me. PRIDE is the thing. And many Christians of the right and left believe we did evolve. Don't attempt to make denying Evolution a Christian thing.
I would even say you are in the minority of Christians on that one, but I don't have any evidence on that. But there is plenty of evidence of Evolution. Surely you mean there is plenty of evidence that is consistent with evolution? Similarly there is plenty of evidence that is consistent with Newtonian Gravitational theory. Sadly 'plenty of evidence' is simply not enough.
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Now some proof would be good. Is there any proof of evolution itself? I would like to know, it is a genuine question. Has anyone, in a reproducable manner, shown creation of new species from previous existing species? That should do the trick. Cox explains and demonstrates it far better than I could.
BTW, your comment about creating new species from existing ones, is I believe, part of what Darwin demonstrated to be not only possible, but evident, albeit occurring over hundreds of thousands of years. Correct me if I'm wrong. Or did you mean "creating new species from nothing".
If so, also have a close look at Cox. The Holy See under Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical stating in part; "Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.
Conservative Mike, You say "I believe we were created" That statement is incorrect. The correct statement is "I was indoctrinated as a young child to believe [insert religious doctrinal teaching like "we were created"]" So despite all your education and adult mental capacities you continue to "believe we were created" because the religious indoctrination process that was applied to your young immature mind was successful in inserting this belief into your mind in spite of logic, facts, reason and education.
What you have just demonstrated is the reason why religious organisation should not be allowed to indoctrinate children and other vulnerable people until such time that they have the mental capacity to provide informed consent a legal definition to the process of religious indoctrination. The quote comes from the Gullup poll of May , This was a random sample of 1, adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U. Firstly, Creationism is more widely accepted by older people as compared to younger people.
Couple that with the fact that approx. Thirdly, consider the likelihood of a person who does not believe in creationism and religion to want to engage in a phone survey about a whole series of questions on religious beliefs, church attendance, differences in doctrine ie. As such it is not at all surprising that the Gallup poll produced such biased results which have been ceased upon by sensationalistic journalist to promote their agenda that the majority of the population of the USA is fundamentally religious and in effect crazy.
Take statistics with a grain of salt. That's a great post JoeBloggs, kinda makes looking at polls like that a waste of time when you consider the potential bias from most of them. Kvothe, Note too it is also about how you frame a question. There is a really simple way of removing your theory.
All call centers have screening so they cover a variety of groups. Thats why they ask you the questions about your age bracket and where you live. You call a land line Oh yeah nw get over here young individual and deal with this survey person. Never heard of that happening? Kyser, that sounded fine in theory Polls do have a set criteria for the population being polled but the criteria isn't necessarily designed to remove bias, but can as with the Gallup Poll instead be designed to create a bias.
There was no requirement to ensure that a set percentage of an age group was spoken with. Then on top of this the actual data set is then weighted in order to create a representation of a overall national demographics for sex, age, ethnicity which then enormously exacerbates the bias. Thus if just a handful of creationist below 30 respond and few if any atheists below 30 do as why would you! To understand a poll you have to understand the mechanics of the criteria, the bias and the weighting. PW, I believe most evolutionary scientists say they can find no evidence to support the view that life forms began as the result of a divine hand.
Certainly, none that I know of support the fundamental creationist view that humans were created, all finished and complete, by a divine hand. Nor is there any scientific evidence to support the view that the universe or universes are the work of a divine creator. And the more we learn about the universe s and living earth organisms the less it seems possible they might have a divine origin. People are entitled to believe otherwise, but they are not entitled to force their faiths on those of us who do not share such beliefs.
Scientists who find a compatability between their faith and the scientific evidence of our origins are welcome to do so. I just don't know how they manage it. I wonder how many Aussies, if they recieved a phone call asking if they belived that man landing on the moon was a hoax would answer "of course" and then hang up laughing their head off that someone actually asked them such a stupid question.
I wonder how many Americans would do the same. To further your point Mathew. Any nation that considers a national health scheme, and is opposed to the restriction of guns based on some archaic constitution and fear of the loosing their freedoms Are you saying you agree with those opinions? While I agree that the views listed by Nugsley do sound silly, they are the actual views held by a sizable percentage of the American public. While I seriously doubt that that percentage will enough to give Trump the Presidency on its own, there may be enough other "disaffected voters" who are just angry enough with the system, as pointed out by the main article, that it will remain a possibility - we will see during the months leading up to the poll in November.
Just about every survey I have seen of the views held by US citizens indicates that a very large proportion believe in creationism, disavow climate change, and are convinced that "angels walk amongst us", amongst other "notions". These figures are noticeably higher amongst Republican supporters. Depressingly, Australia's average IQ is listed as being about the same.
Not disagreeing with you Carryover, but the IQ measure of a population is based on measuring a range, with being the median IQ result. So yes, for an average IQ of , half of the population must be below that level, and that half of the population with a few exceptions is entitled to vote, so yes, politicians need to relate to people of below average intelligence. Which is one major argument in favour of abandoning current undemocratic democracy practices. And the average IQ of those being forced upon us developed nations via immigration and open borders policies is well below that, closer to So keep those borders open and watch that average IQ fall even further.
That's right Aussie, we need to lower immigration from European countries and bring in more East Asians. That should raise the average IQ of Australians. People in the comments sections love to go on about IQ, I realise that. The only place you will find more references to IQ than on here is in the average Phillip Adams column.
That bloke is obsessed with IQ. I think, just quietly, that the obsession might have grown out of feelings of inferiority centred around his lack of formal education. Anyway, if people are going to go on about it, then maybe they could at least try and learn how it works, before they use it as the basis of an argument.
Of course a large proportion of the US population has a below-average IQ, because half of the people in the world have a below-average IQ. Nuglsey, this is exactly the lazy comparisons that the Author is complaining about. There may be some people who have at some time said something as stupid at "Barack Obama supports ISIS" and some of those people may support Mr Trump, but to say by implication from your statement ALL "the people who support trump believe Thank you for seemingly being the first to say it, instead of just jumping on a US hate train.
There is no "type of person" that is typically or uniquely American. There are crazy people everywhere, they just usually aren't members of the world superpower who have their funny opinions aired where others can see. There are plenty of Russians who believe just as crazy things. Plenty of Iraqis, Israelis, Canadians, Indians, etc.
Americans aren't dangerous because they're stupid or crazy, they're dangerous because they're very, very angry and very, very globally powerful. People believe all sorts of nonsense, and all politicians pander to those beliefs. That's why we have the politicians we have. Gone are the days of government by sober-sided and detached representatives. The sound bite and door-stop interview rule. Take that to the extreme and you get Donald Trump, among others.
I dislike Trump but I don't think he is a Hitler His popularity says a lot about the USA Yank The commentariat should be stripping away the politics and ideology or lack thereof and asking the fundamental question is he fit to be President, does he have the qualities and ability required to lead a country? They should be throwing this question into the face of the voters. These flawed character types keep rising to the surface, eg. That is for the voter in the USA to decide, his fitness to be President and I doubt they will pay attention to what a lawyer in Sydney has to say on the issue.
Speaking for myself what is of importance for Australians is IF he is elected what should Australians do? This country has been joined at the hip since WWII and maybe with good reason after all what were the choices? However with the election of Trump we here will be faced with a very hard choice but lets wait and see.
As I have said in the past Trump should not be able to win this election because his polling with minorities and the independents isn't strong and past winners have needed their support. All the contenders seem to promise jobs and pay rises by antiglobalisation and tariffs, even Clinton, for now.
Thankfully Australia has a more centre-right and sensible government now than when the Abbott parrot cage had power. You mean we know they are both false and everything that comes out of their mouth is pretty much bull yet still seem to elect people seeming less capable and less respected than a class of preps watching parliament time is a great, nice to see grown men acting like 4 year olds , oh and for the main author you too marx too literal history repeats itself all the time. Well, if Trump becomes President there could be a rush by Australians to learn Mandarin, so it won't be all bad.
I don't and I live here. So why would they? These flawed character types keep rising to the surface This is getting oh so very tiresome and reflects on the generally dumbing down on the nation. We will always be disappointed by those that we choose to lead us thankfully we still are a democracy of sorts.
Really, are we not intelligent enough to realise that all humans suffer from the same inner malaise and politicians are not exempted from the human condition. When we are disappointed we seem to put our trust in "saviour" type politicians. Just look at what has happened here. We looked to Kevin in 07; we looked to Mal in 15 and both have proven to be quite useless.
So now we sit back and poke fun at the Yanks, for doing exactly what we have done and continue to do - look for the "saviour" type. The only difference is of course, if he gets in they really can't do anything about it for a minimum of four years short of some mentally deranged type taking a pot shot at him. The only "blessing" in that is that they know what they have for the next four years so personal adjustments can be made. Here, with our new leadership paradigm, no leader can really concentrate on any governmental program for the nation because they spend all their time and energy simultaneously watching polls and their back.
So policy gets left behind. We really have become quite stupid - far too much reality TV. I for one still admire the capacity of the Americans. Given there is over ,, of them crammed into a nation roughly the size of Australia, they still manage to provide some of the best opportunities for human development on the planet.
Their competitors in the quality of life stakes are a mere fraction of their size. Just imagine if Australia was double the size it is now in terms of population. I'd suggest that given the inanity and self-righteousness of some comments here, we'd be a much worse off than the Yanks - even if we ever had someone to lead government for more than three opinion polls in a row!!
One big plus for Australia is that the PM doesn't have the power to initiate a nuclear strike, so we have that going for us I guess. Funny you should mention that. I wondered where the commentariat was, at least on the ABC, when Palmer and his Pups burst onto the scene. Just a sense of glee that he would be splitting the conservative vote. Never forget that the commentariat is as much a part of the establishment that the Americans are rejecting as is the most corpulent of Wall Street bankers.
Different political systems Frangipani. Here we have compulsory voting and a preferential system. If someone dislikes the candidate of the party they support they will invariably vote for another with that party's general ideals and that vote will flow to the side of politics they support. In the US it is a non-compulsory voting system with a first past the post system. If someone doesn't like Trump they can either abstain from voting or vote against him.
They could even vote for a third party candidate but that won't go as a preference in the count back to Trump or to someone else. So Trump splitting the Republican vote and this wrecking their overall performance is a real possibility. My thoughts are that if they go to a brokered convention and Trump loses he will run as an independent and take an election losing number of Republican votes with him. That is not a bad thing as the Republicans do need to lose the Tea Party element that has led to this silly situation where their two front running candidates are both unelectable if one wants a sound government.
I realize the electoral system is different, but that wasn't my point at all. My point was the disconnect between the "establishment" and the average voter - and I believe it's just as wide here as in America. The last Senate results are evidence of that, I think. It will play out differently, but it doesn't change the essential issue, which is that the establishment and the majority of the electorate are two solitudes. I think the cause of the disenchantment here lies in what happens once they are elected.
Politicians, more particularly the ministers, are captured by their departments and the departmental appointed advisers. These are the people who actually run the place - the politicians are just there to give us poor voters the impression, albeit mistaken, that we have a say in policy. The "expertise" of advisers is never questioned and is always taken in preference to that from more informed people outside of the public service. There is a peculiar myth that tells us that these public servants are well-trained experts who give neutral advice free from political taint.
They provide only the facts and thus deserve to be listened to. Of course this is nonsense. Public service careers are built on the politicized networks formed in the various departments and any public servant wanting to rise to the top makes it their goal to always be on the side of whichever is the dominant faction. It is a political system independent of the sham political system that we voters have access to. I am afraid that we will never break this so-called dominance of the "establishment" if we forget that it isn't based in the established political parties but is a whole hidden establishment based in the unelected public service.
Forget changing things through the parliament - the chief public service advisers will kill any such moves quite quickly once they see their power sliding back to our elected representatives. I look back with sadness at the number of meetings with ministers I have attended where people, with real expertise in the work in which I am involved, had sensible suggestions overturned by public servants with no real experience but with the backing of their departments.
The ministers were simply there to be a departmental rubber stamp and advice from outside the department was simply not accepted. We industry representatives were there because we knew our subject - the public service advisers were their simply to protect their preferred policies, and they always win. I know what you're saying, but I don't entirely agree.
In fact, I disagree quite heartily. As a disclaimer, I was a civil servant myself at one time, though not in Australia. My experience back in the day was that civil servants, while never entirely objective, were not nearly so monolithic as you describe. They, like the rest of us, are a mixed bag politically, and while there are certainly leanings in one direction at the top of the departmental tree they tend to be more progressive than the average punter civil servants, especially senior ones, are also well used to the swings and roundabouts of elections, and prepared to adapt to whoever happens to be in government.
That's their job, after all. To serve the elected government of the day, even if they have to hold their nose to do it. Depending on subject area, some are highly expert, others not. When it comes to public policy issues foreign policy, immigration, that sort of thing they are the experts. When it comes to commercial or service delivery issues, not so much. That I certainly agree with. However, the real problem lies not with the career public servants but with the Ministerial staffers, whose only interest is in preserving the status of the Minister and the party, and who have, over time, turned the public servants into servants of the Minister rather than of the public.
And it is they who make and break careers, with no accountability at all. They have far more power than senior civil servants, and no expertise at all. And they are very much part of the establishment. Fragipani, as you know the "commentariat" was right there swinging, and copping flak from Clive's idiot fans for daring to speak ill of their messiah. Some of the commentariat was. The ABC wasn't all that hot to go. Remember all those sycophantic moments with Tony Jones? Won't hear a bad word said about Liberal Party "wets" at our aunty though. Turnbull and Baird are irreproachable.
Frangi is right - the "commentariat" is part of the establishment and part of the problem. I think they were moire bemused than anything, they never took Clive to be a serious threat, yhe same can be said now of Donald Drumpf. There are two good things about Trump. The first is that he will win the Republican nomination and lose the election for them. The second is that by doing so he will have absolutely finished Cruz as a candidate now and in the future.
Cruz is by far the most dangerous of the two an avowedly anti-science Tea Party, Bible Belt phony who seems to want turn the US into some Norman Rockwell fantasy land managed from Texas. We all remember the last product of Texas who became President - that was George W Bush and look where that took the world. Trump isn't Hitler, he isn't the Antichrist, he isn't an evil genius - he is just a serial bankrupt with a salesman's glib tongue.
The other point you might consider is the Republican loss in the Senate. It seems Republicans are fearful that Trump will turn off voters so much that they might lose control of the Senate, interesting thought. Yank if he does manage to turn off Republican support in the congress then that will be another plus in his favour. We have seen that Republican intransigence and deliberate flouting of voter wishes managed to make the Obama Presidency more difficult than it ought to have been.
That absolute horror Cruz was a star performer in that behaviour. It seems to be a conservative trait that if they can't have the power then no one else is going to have it either - the Republicans, just like our own Coalition have a born to rule mentality. The republicans aren't scared that Trump would lose the election, they're scared he would win it. I agree with most of what you say. Trump is certainly in no danger of winning the presidency. In polling for potential general election face-offs, he consistently comes in last.
And Cruz does poorly, too. But it is enough of a margin to suggest they'd have a pretty strong chance. And most people voting for Trump know that. They are not voting for a President, they are voting for a Republican nominee - that's a different thing. And in the end, only bout 3. That's quite a high turn out for a primary season, but you can only read so much into it. There is a big gap between Primary and Presidential voting - it's one of the problems in the American system.
The saving grace is that usually people end up slowly coalescing behind someone they think can actually win the election. They are just too angry with the establishment to keep it in anymore. Most people voting for Trump are more rejecting the Republican "establishment" than hoping Trump will become President. And i kinda get were they are coming from. At the end of the day, i'm not sure this an entirely bad thing. One of the interesting things that has happened with this campaign on both the Republican and Democratic sides is that money hasn't really made a difference.
That of itself is a good thing. Message has better campaign spending. A lot of what ails politics both here and in the USA is about a preoccupation with campaign funding, resulting in a preoccupation with favourable treatment of donors. It has resulted in a massive move towards a quite libertarian brand of conservatism and it has seen the rise of the Tea Party, and it has favoured the likes of Cruz. If anything, it has hurt them. Trump is fundamentally a rejection of Tea Party politics, while borrowing much of the same dogwhistle tactics.
The Koch brothers and libertarian conservatism has killed the Republican Party - it is the underlying pathology. Donald Trump is just the mechanism of death. I saw a very interesting poll the other day. They polled Republican voters on what they wanted to happen to see happen to government spend.
They actually want MORE government interference in the econo. This repetition of the fiction about the Koch Brothers and political donations is getting very boring. Those donations went exclusively to Democrat candidates. The three serving politicians who have gained most from Koch Brothers donations throughout their careers are Obama, Clinton and Kerry, in that order. Complete and utter nonsense. You are only including direct donations, which nobody actually does anymore - it's via SuperPACs, which are essentially undeclared and untraceable.
If Trump becomes the Republican candidate it never may be. So you are basing your argument on "SuperPACs, which are essentially undeclared and untraceable" are you? So, if they are undeclared and untraceable you have absolutely no evidence to back up your claims and you are relying on scuttlebutt. On the other hand, the Koch Brothers donations are specifically listed.
Those listings are easily researched. That Forbes report is all speculation.
- Charisma: The phenomenon and its psychology: A mental health perspective.
- Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and The Way.
- ¿Quién Soy Yo?: La Senda del Autoconocimiento (Spanish Edition).
- Religious views of Adolf Hitler?
The Koch Brothers "will spend" aka "might spend" it claims; the spending "hasn't been activated yet" aka "might not be activated"; If Trumps wins "it may never be". How about relying on declared, published and audited financial reports? I'm relying on the testimony of Charles Koch. He'd probably know, wouldn't he.
You give a most excellent example of what has killed the Republican Party, and why the electorate are desperate for anything that even vaguely resembles plain speaking. Even Donald Trump is more honest than this kind of argument. Donald Trump has been able to completely successfully argue that, relative to him Ted Cruz is a liar. And you know what. There you go again - attempting to avoid facts by relying on "word-of-mouth" comments. Don't take what Koch said in that slanted report.
Take note of what he has done, and will do. And get your information from declared, published and audited financial records. I detect the voters are angry and just want change. Surely change is a good thing, especially in the 21st century. There will always be people Whenever people say things are different now and the rules of the past don't apply you know these people aren't thinking just hoping.
Not to sound alarmist but how are we so sure he is not like Hitler? To understand how close he is to Hitler or indeed any other political leader from history we need to know what his policies are. What are his policies? So many of his policies are dismissed out of hand, like building a wall along the Mexican boarder. But what happens if he gets in and his supporters start demanding their wall?
The big difference you'd think is that the US constitution is set up in such a way that there are safeguards of sorts. Basically he'd never get funding for the wall through Congress. But you do have to wonder what would happen if Trump did become president and then had to start implementing polices. And what happens if he faces a George Bush moment post?
Bush's presidency could easily have just been remembered for economic incompetency if had not happened. Without it would've been more difficult to start the War on Terror and it would've been much harder to drum up support to invade Iraq. The fact is we don't know what Trump actually stands for.
Personally my gut tells me he would be more like Biff in Back to the Future II than Hitler but either way it's still concerning. On the outside chance that this dude becomes President people need to start drilling down on his policies. Trump s what he has always been a wheeler dealer looking to make a fast buck by selling the punter a dream.
When you look at what Trump has spent on his election campaign you understand how cleaver he is. While Bush spent millions and lost badly Trump, by the figures I've seen, has spent only a pittance. He gets coverage by saying what are considered outrageous things and the media eats it up. He gets his 'message' out and doesn't spend a dime. He is the sort of guy that if he patted you on the shoulder I'd quickly check for my wallet. What happens if he has a post moment? Actually just look at the world right now, how does he actually plan on dealing with the current mess?
Bush tried to stay out of it before but the US has a tendency to great drawn into things whether it likes it or not. How will Trump respond? Why does he want to be President? I recon Trump and Turnbull went to the same source for their policies, some little frog under a rock. Bend over and I think you remember what to do after that. We are talking about the USA here. I don't know what happened to the America of my youth.
I think it started to die with the assassinations and riots of the 's, from there to the corruption and re-election Reagan and Bush, and the pure bloodimindess of the Republican controlled House and Senate under Obama. Besides that the Cubs have yet to win a World Series so there is not much to live for.
I remember being in the US in and thinking what an idiot Bush was. I remember looking at the invasion of Iraq in and thinking what a dangerous idiot Bush was. The whole thing may be farcical now but there are serious issues at stake. Trump should not be underestimated. I don't see why you need every aspect of Hitler and Germany at that time to match up with Trump and America.
The second half of the articles suggesst that the same situation could be occurring and the end result may well be the same. His own party will, behind the scenes, replace him with a light, more acceptable conservative. Therefore a closer comparison would be between Trump and Abbott, unless that comparison is too extreme? His party cant dump Trump It will only make him stronger Trump wants to be remembered as a great president and being elected as an independent gives him more power.