I claim that we have quite enough food in the world; we just have too many humans. Population researcher Hans Rosling is famous in stating that what we need is a rise in living standards in developing world to stop the rise in population.
He has shown that a rise in living standards will bring with a drop in number of children families are having, as history shows that number of children per family has always dropped hand in hand with a rise in the living standards.

I however think that the thing works even more the other way around; living standards tend to rise when the number of children per family does actually drop.
I don't say that Hans Rosling would have it wrong; I'm just suggesting that the thing works both ways and the other is a necessary and vital component of the other and it is very difficult to have the other without the other too.

Admittedly everyday logic is not always the best tool in economy, but here it works in a quite straightforward way. The more people there is to share of the accumulated wealth of a nation, the less a single individual will get.
Of course the accumulated wealth is just a small part of the equation, as the important thing in modern growth economy is producing new wealth. One can well suggest that the more there are consumers, the more they will produce and buy and make the economy go around faster.
However things are not so easy at all in economics. One very important thing is that the more there are new children, the more resources must be used to educate them. In fact the share of a individual will be the smaller the more there of them are to share the limited resources.
So the more children are born, the less education they will get individually and the less useful they will in general be for the economy.

Even bigger thing is that in a situation where the number of available work-force greatly outnumbers the available openings in the workplace, the price of work will not rise.
The average income of the workers in western world has risen for a great deal during the last century largely because there has been scarcity of labor.

Employers have simply had to pay more to attract workers. This is largely because the rise of easy to use and safe methods of population control kicked in and greatly diminished the flow of new workers to the markets.
Modern western mass-markets were born when the scarcity of labor and of course also the major work done by labor-movements did cause a rise in the pay of the workers to such a level that they could finally start consuming.

The great paradox of capitalism is that in the end it needs workers that have a enough money to create a market for the very goods capitalism produces, but single capitalists are never willing to pay for their own employees more than they are forced to do.
A single enterprise looks at only after its own narrow interest and pays just as much as it is forced to do by the current circumstances to be able to give as much money as possible to its owners, as it simply exists for the sole purpose of creating short-term profit for its owners.

A very important factor in this situation of course is the impact of trade unions and also of leftist political movements. Unions are however also in a major disadvantage in situations where there is a oversupply of workers available, as is currently the case in the developing world.
I would go as far as to say that that the rapidly expanding population in third world countries is in fact one of the greatest obstacles in achieving any kind of economic, social and political progress in these countries.

Economy is of course a immensely complex thing and population is only one factor. It however affects so many other moving parts of the economy that it may be one of the most wildly underestimated and universally not-openly-spoken of factors of economy.
There are many different reasons for this rejection. One important thing is that it does not fit into political agenda of the anti-imperialist movement´.
Considering over-population as a factor would seemingly in their mind diminish the importance of their ideological agenda of imperialism and colonialism as the major or even sole cause for underdevelopment in the Third World.
They seem to fear that taking local factors into account would undermine their overriding single Great Idea.

The sad fact is that have all too often wielded an unholy alliance with the major religions.
A sad fact of life is that do all too often even wholly oppose population control, as the Catholic Church is or are so interested in growing their support-base that they do in practice oppose population control as is the case with Islam and more or less with Hinduism, even if no real doctrinal reasons for this opposition do not exist.

This highly unholy alliance has produced a situation where even discussing population control as a remedy for the economic ills of Third World seems to be all too much for many.
When ideologies like religions come to play the very simple and practical matters become all too often complicated and impractical.
The rise of China after the madness of strict Maoism was possible largely because of the one-child policy, that was the cornerstone on which the current rise of China is built.

I would suggest that real, fast and extremely concrete investments in population control would produce results that would outshine soon the results of all of the current aid to developing world.
The developing countries simply would soon have more to invest to every child that is born and their way to respectful and full life would soon be made much easier than it is now.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

Comments

Why there is no British Empire anymore? Not because the subjects of the empire would have revolted and destroyed it by force, but because it suddenly was seen that it is not appropriate for a democracy to subdue other people against their will.
The British Empire imploded, it did not explode. In the case of demise of the British Empire it was the people who were in charge of running the empire that lost faith in it.

I claim that this was a example of zeitgeist or “The spirit of the age” at work at its purest. The universal perception of what is good and permissible behavior had simply changed in Great Britain.
After the mental change there was just rear-guard actions to make the change possible in real world.
There were of course people in Britain who did not see any need to change the existing order, but they were just overrun be the incredible force of the zeitgeist in this case.

Of course the changes in zeitgeist do follow and mostly are direct results of real social and economical changes in societies.
When for example the new class of wealthy bourgeoisie emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, this emergence caused a major change in zeitgeist of the time.
Ultimately even the legitimacy of the god-given order of feudalism was questioned when this new social and economical force wanted to have a say in running affairs of the society.

I would even go as far as to say that many or even most of the true big permanent changes in human history have in fact been caused by changes in prevailing zeitgeist.
The rising zeitgeist often gets often a practical implementation in some new form of formal ideology. However ideologies do change societies much more subtly than just recruiting followers and gaining power, as the reactions towards a new ideology can have more even important consequences than the ideology itself would ever produce.

The role of zeitgeist has of course been greatly intensified by the advent of the mass media, but it has always played a great role, as just a few book could change the way the elite perceived the world. In the world before advent of democracy a surprisingly small group of educated humans governed and guided whole societies and their development.
A major change in their thinking could change the way how the society was run quite instantly.

Many scholars think that the American revolution and war for independence were finally triggered by publication of a handful of treaties and books by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and other future leaders of the revolution.
Of course there were deeper economical, psychological and social reasons for the revolution, but in the end the new breed of writers changed the prevailing zeitgeist in America to such extent that rising against the god-given order of things finally did became mentally possible.

How would the revolutionary movement of the "Mad Year" of 1848 have affected in a few months countries all over Europe, if the emerging zeitgeist would not have been preferring revolution?
However, the year 1848 is a good example of how changes in zeitgeist does not always immediately lead to permanent changes in societies, as in the end these revolutionary movements were destroyed with the use of brute force in the year 1848.
Changes in zeitgeist do not often affect those in positions of power and raw physical power is often the thing that really counts in the end.
Similarly the rapidly spreading revolutionary zeitgeist of the year 1968 was crushed under the Soviet tanks in Prague in the spring of 1968 and in the street-fighting in Paris.

The changes in zeitgeist can be sudden and unpredictable. For example suddenly it was on lips of every thinking person that it is a really a evil thing to own slaves, even if a thinking person like Mark Twain saw nothing wrong with it in is his childhood as late as in the 1840’s.

This incredible force of zeitgeist is in my mind also the force behind the incredible transformation of the modern Christianity. It is all too easy to forget how incredibly dictatorial, closed-minded, change-resistant, bigoted, ultra-conservative and anti-intellectual the Christian world was just 300-400 short years ago.

Of course there are strains of Christianity that are still all that, but overwhelming majority of the modern Christians do not look at world though their religion at all or religion has very little real influence on their thinking in practical matters of running a society at least.
If religion is observed at all besides the traditions in use at the holidays it does not dictate or even guide in any way their views on matters with real importance.

There has happened an incredible transformation from the quite recent times when in Christian lands one was bound to see in fact all issues through the distorting lens of religion. Religion ultimately dictated the whole mental outlook of most Western societies as late in as in the 19th century.

The rise of humanism in Renaissance and the re-discovery of the great humanistic philosophers of the Antiquity started a road to change.
The rise of science and finally the Reformation did help to foster produce a incredible change in the zeitgeist of the western world that did in the end change also the modern Christian churches in a way that was never seen before.

At first dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of books, pamphlets and treatises did show that one can just quite forget the teachings of the Church altogether and use reason to find out new things.
The final blow for the earthly power of the Christian churches was the secularization of the state that was carefully tried out first in emerging United States, but started in earnest in the revolutionary France in 1789 and continued to spread even if force of that revolution itself was spent.

The most important single thing was of course the simple observation that secular science works and it can bring real world benefits with it.
This simple observation did slowly eat away at earlier times so solid and closed Christian world-view. It was slowly and laboriously replaced with a more open zeitgeist in which religion played a smaller and smaller part.

In this process also the Christian churches were often changed beyond recognition when they accepted values that had earlier been propagated by secular humanists.
The core values of most of the Western Churches were turned into a radically more human and humanistic direction.

This change in zeitgeist of the age is the main reason why so many Christians were in the end prominently involved in the abolition of slavery, even if the Christian doctrine had always blessed and sanctioned slavery and serfdom and the very core texts of that religion still do openly approve and bless that evil institution.
This process is of course the reason why so many religious leaders are so impatient in debates where they are reminded of the original "divine" articles and dogmas of their faith.
They know quite well that the practical policies of their religious movements are just man-made constructions that are in a constant state of evolution.
They know very well that the original articles of faith are something that are just paraded at big feats to please the crowds and amuse the slow ones.

For example they know quite well that their sacred texts do tell that slavery is a god-given thing, but they do not think that their god had it right.
They know also that if they would admit this publicly, the "divine" base of their religion would fall off, as then they would admit that their religion is just a man-made thing that men do constantly alter.

The claims for divine origins are however the only things that do differentiate religions from other ideologies and no religion wants to be treated like a normal ideology it really is.
The more so as they have fought long and bitter campaigns to secure special privileges to any ideology, if it just claims to be a religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist

Comments

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." Karl Popper in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945)

Karl Popper was of course talking about the Nazis and Communists in this quote, but there is a much earlier case where this quote just might have been applicable also.
As paradoxical as it may sound, but I think that the Romans who fought against the rising tide of Christianity were quite possibly not acting out of intolerance but they were out to defend tolerance. I admit that claim of this magnitude needs a little further explanation.

The basic thing is that Christianity was the first modern world-religion to claim to be the holder of The Universal and Only Possible Truth, and its followers consider it to offer the only righteous way to live for every human being on the planet.
Later there have been others that have followed suit, but Christianity definitely started this fashion.
Up to that point religions had the very practical purpose of binding together a certain tribe or later a political entity like the Roman Empire. They also gave a common reference point on what would be the preferred and allowed mode of behavior in the tribe or society at question.

Until the rise of Christianity most people understood that the neighboring tribe or people just had a different religion, but that was not better or worse than one's own, it was just theirs. They also often had a different language that was not better or worse than one's own language; it just was strange and unintelligible.
The religion of the neighbors was of course normally seen as inferior, as all the things one's own tribe do are normally seen as superior, but there was generally no need to make others worship your own gods even if you achieved political dominion over them.
The Persians allowed all of the people they conquered to continue worshiping their own old gods if they did not challenge their over-lordship of the empire.
The Romans had a very similar policy of tolerance as a central tenet and policy of their empire-building.
In that sense the Persian and Roman (and later Parthian) empires were very modern.

There was a definite freedom of religion and belief as long as the religions or beliefs of the subjects did not hurt the best interests of the empire.
Christianity was born out of Judaism, which was a basically just a tribal religion without any evangelical ambitions. Jews of course considered their religion to be superior than the others, but they did not see the need to convert their neighbors.
More so as according to their holy book the right way to deal with unbelieving neighbors was simply to kill them and plunder their possessions.

However, even in that religion there were embedded the seeds for the coming trouble, as Jews did already make a claim that their religion contained the Only Possible Truth about everything and it was just not Jewish version of the truth, but the Only Truth.
However, they were just not interested in the fate of other people than their own tribe, as their religion was still a tribal affair and would remain as such to this very day.

The idea of being the carrier of The Only Possible Truth was taken over from Judaism to Christianity, but the dangerous thing was that the Christianity was soon pulled out of the original Jewish tribal roots.
In the extremely multicultural environment of the Rome the brand new cult of Christianity was developed into a universal system of belief that was not tied to any particular nationality or tribe.
It must be remembered at this stage that only the existence of the Roman Empire made the spread of this new non-tribal religion possible in the first place in a manner that did really happen.

The act of creation of this empire had broken the national and tribal borders that would have made very difficult to spread a universal belief-system like Christianity before the rise of the Roman Empire.
Even more important was of course the religious tolerance of that empire, which made possible to spread this brand new cult in the first place.

This new model of universality in Christianity was largely derived from the mystical cults like the cult of Mithra and Isis that were very widespread in Roman empire the time of launching of the new cult that was to be a new religion later.
The amalgam of ideas of The Only Possible Truth and universality produced finally a religion that loudly pronounced that it could not live side by side with any other religion.
By doing this Christianity introduced a quite new class of religious intolerance into to that point a religiously very tolerant society.

This is a point where a person familiar with only the traditional Christian narrative asks; how can you claim that Rome was tolerant when Christians were persecuted for hundreds of years?
The point is that Rome was tolerant towards only those who were tolerant themselves, as only tolerant ideas that can live side by side with other religions can really live in a society built on the idea of tolerance.
Of course the thing that triggered most of the persecutions was that early Christianity was seen as a real danger to the empire, as Christians refused to acknowledge the ultimate overlordship of the Roman emperor on religious grounds.
In the end the power of Emperor was the only thing that did hold the Empire together at that point. This obstacle was removed at last by the conversion of the emperor to Christianity.

Romans destroyed mercilessly all those who stood up to their political power and for example the political entities of the Jews were utterly destroyed after they had challenged the Roman rule with their uprisings.
However, even after their failures Jews were however allowed to continue their old worship, even if the future political uprisings were made impossible by the physical dispersion of the members of the physical Jewish nation, that ceased to exist.

If you really think about it, it is not surprising that a new ideology that was seen as a direct physical threat to the idea of Empire was a subject to persecution.
The persecutors of the Christians quite correctly saw that they were defending their own religion and even their whole way of life from a new kind of ideological threat.
I must beg for forgiveness in forehand for the following figure of speech, but there is definite vision in my mind of leukocytes or white blood cells in the immune system fighting a bad case of severe mental infection; a infection that takes over completely the mind of its victims and makes them believe that no other idea has any worth anymore.

The element of intolerance towards all other religions was very easy to see in Christianity from early on. It was very easy to see at a very early point that given enough power Christianity would not simply let any other religion live.
This is also just what also happened when Christianity could eventually wrestle the ultimate power in Roman empire through succeeding in locking a ruling emperor to its fold.

All other religions were soon enough completely rooted out from the whole length of the vast Roman Empire.
The job was so thorough that in the end not a single village or even a single living person was left that would have been able to worship the old gods of the Romans after a century of persecutions, relentless official indoctrination and forced conversions.

All this was possible also because the original end-of-day cult of misfits and slaves was in the same time transformed into a tool for governing empires. This incredible transformation was carried out under the watchful eyes of the newly converted Roman emperors.
Emperor Constantine took personally part in the big church meeting in Nicea at 325 that took the big decisions that transformed Christianity beyond recognition.
These decisions made it possible to turn this religion of the poor and downtrodden to be the true and trusted friend of the mighty and powerful, but still retain an illusion of being also still the former also.

However, I must hasten to add at this point that one must not read this as an endorsement of physical persecution of even of the most intolerant people.
What Romans did to Christians was simply humanly wrong and I personally never could accept a policy like this to be applied to followers of any ideology, tolerant or intolerant.
On old problem is to see that understanding the reasons for actions is not the same thing as accepting or endorsing them.

Rome was a cruel and barbaric military empire, that was build with cruel and barbaric military campaigns. All enemies of the empire were treated mercilessly and cruelly.
As long as Christians were seen as enemies of the Empire and of the established order they were treated as mercilessly and cruelly as any other threat to the Empire and to the established order.

It is good to remember that after Christianity had become the chosen religion of the rulers of the Empire, Christian themselves started the persecution of their own to destroy all the other religions, which they also swiftly accomplished and there ensued nearly two millennium of a extraordinary intolerance and uniformity of thinking.

This strong embedded tradition of extreme intolerance in Christianity was broken only by the advent of the secularist humanist ideas in the beginning of the 18th century.
Slowly also the Christian churches were forced to lose their traditional system of extreme intolerance, as societies around them became more and more secular.
The real turning point came after force of the Catholic Church was eventually broken by the Reformation. In its aftermath the new national versions of Christianity started adapting in earnest to the tremendous changes that were happening around them that were largely brought about by the advanced in science.

This happened also because some of the religious leaders of the time were seeing the light of the message of western humanism. This development brought about also the renaissance of the religious tolerance.
The modern mainstream Christian churches are generally quite tolerant forces in society in stark contrast to their Roman and medieval predecessors.
This tolerance had by then been missing for millennium and half after the Romans had lost the battle to the forces of intolerance.

PS. The quote by Karl Popper in the beginning of this piece continues like this:

"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

PPS. Many ideas concerning the tolerant empires presented in this little essay come originally from Amy Chua, see: http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2010/01/03/can-intolerance-make-empires-fail-7687330/

Comments

Wholly religion-based morality is the ”it just is so and you don't need to know why” answer to moral dilemmas. It is a shortcut that says: ”you don't need to worry about these things, we have it all sorted out for you”.
Everything is nice and dandy as long as a religion really offers meaningful and usable answers for people facing moral dilemmas in their lives.

The major problem however is that the moral codes of all major modern religions were born in a quite different ancient societies. Their answers to moral dilemmas facing people in extremely different modern societies are very often simply outdated and even wrong ones by now.
For example 2000 years ago overpopulation was not seen as a problem as there was no means to control it anyhow.
Now overpopulation is a major problem threatening the whole future of humanity, even if we have the means to keep it in check, if only some of the most widespread religious moral codes would allow using these means to control populations.

Some religions have responded to the tremendous change in societies better than others even in this respect. For example the modern Western Christian Protestant state churches of Europe are top pupils in this respect and Catholic Church and Islam the real problem cases.
The basic problem of course is that things that are seen as good and bad in different societies are not absolute truths, even if religions like to claim some kind of absolute “divine” source for their ideas in morality.
The sad truth however is that even they are just human ideas, even if people might have learned them from a source they trust very much and could be shared by many people they know.

Of course the idea of good and bad is underlying all decisions we make as humans. Every human being has thanks to the social evolution of human species in his mind an inbuilt device for asserting bad and god and most people normally act according to it.
There really is strong evidence that we all human beings share this inborn evolutionary sense of justice, as Marc D. Houser has argued in his fine book “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right & Wrong”. (More about this at: http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2010/01/25/is-there-an-inherent-sense-of-morality-shared-by-all-humans-7873171/ )

Sometimes of course these devices are corrupt or missing altogether from the minds of criminal or mentally ill people, but all normal people have this faculty.
The problem is that there still are endless variations on how this inner device works and culture, inherited traits, societal pressures and personal history can make different people see different and even contradicting things as good or bad.

This is of course the reason why we have commonly agreed laws in all developed societies, as a successful society just needs commonly agreed rules on what is seen as bad and what as good behavior in a society.
Religions were an understandable attempt to create moral stability in ancient unstable societies. Remembering this one need to remember that the monks and priests who burned old ladies in medieval Europe thought that they were acting extremely morally just by burning these old ladies.

We know now that they were wrong, but they represented the absolute moral high ground of their day in their culture.
The thousands of priests and monks involved in burning witches generation after generation were not personally mostly bad or insane people at all.
They were just led to believe that there really is a source of objective morality that is outside the reach of humanity and cannot be changed of challenged by mortal men.

They were just implementing this divine moral vision and that did lead to an insane implementation.
A sad fact is that it happens all too easily when people see themselves just implementing a higher "objective morality" that is out of their reach and cannot be questioned at all.

All societies all over the world have very similar sets of moral rules. The inner sense of justice that is grown out of the needs social life of a extremely social animal is one factor.
The other is that any larger human group just needs a certain set of very similar rules of conduct to flourish. After all humans in all societies have basically very similar basic needs.

However, I do see that the practical implementation of the shared basic common human vision of right and wrong is always inevitably culture-dependent and has always been that way.
Anything like "absolute morality" just does not exist and has never really existed.

I do not think that this diversity in morality of different human societies is a real problem in normal circumstances.
On the contrary I do see that culture-dependent morality is not a problem, but a solution to the problem of how to create moral rules that suit different kinds of societies in very different stages of development and needs.

I do think that for example just the widening gap between the Catholic morality frozen in time and the reality fast changing world around it was a major cause for the Reformation, as there simply was a direct need to mold the moral code in society to represent better the reality.
However, the inevitable cultural relativity of morality becomes a pressing problem in situations where members of cultures with very different views on morality live mixed in the same society for extended periods of time.

For example the Islamic honor-based culture of morality does very often become a problem when it is used inside societies that have long ago abandoned this very ancient model of morality.
This can become a major problem, as life becomes much easier if people sharing a common society should share a similar vision of basic moral outlines.

A clash of cultures is a inevitable result of trying to enforce two very different basic ideas of morality at the same time in the same society.
We have of course already seen these culture-wars during the last decades, but clashes do become the more dangerous the bigger the differences remain.

I do also think that we can judge different versions of morality on their usability and the good they do produce for the society in practice, as morality is in the end a tool for producing and maintaining good and healthy societies.
Different visions of morality can be objectively judged only by the practical benefits they do produce also for the individual, but mostly for the society, because morality is a social tool. A person living totally alone does not need morality.

One should also remember that morality is at very basic level just the inner willingness to accept the inevitable common social rules that do make living in large human groups possible.
Some kind of morality just has to be there, as social life would become impossible without the predictability of action that a commonly shared basic moral codes does produce.

PS. There are of course people like Sam Harris who think that science can ultimately give objective criteria also for morality, but I do think that true universal objective morality is pipe dream in moral issues.
However, I wait for Sam Harris's forthcoming book "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" to see if it can convince me out of this opinion.

Comments

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." - Bertrand Russell in "Sceptical Essays" (1928)

Come to think about it, it really is quite funny that we need a separate word for skepticism. In the end skepticism is just accepting only things that can somehow proven to exist, but we don't have a similar word for those who believe in things that have no real proof.
It is really a funny situation where believing in unproven and even wholly un-provable things has somehow gotten to be the default position and those who don't share these unfounded beliefs are classed under a special term.

The basic thing is of course that there are no real cases of paranormal or supernatural phenomena working also in well controlled or laboratory conditions.
There simply is no "dogma of science" fighting against the paranormal or supernatural things just because its followers would not want to admit them to be true. There is just a simple lack of real, trustworthy scientific evidence.

If somebody can produce really such scientifically valid results, science will change accordingly.
That is the way science works. If there is new evidence, old "truths" fly out of the window, if they turn out to be wrong.
Until that happens I am making simply an observation of existing reality when I state that paranormal or supernatural things do not exist. It is not an opinion, or belief, but a statement of a known fact.

One must of course also remember that things are classed under the labels of "paranormal" and "supernatural" simply just because they are unproven, as if they are proven and explained, they would not be "paranormal" or "supernatural" anymore, but normal parts of our reality and also normal parts of the scientific inquiry.
To re-phrase an old quotation from Bertrand Russell: nobody can prove or disprove that there is not a teapot circling the star of Andromeda, if I happen to make such a claim so for my own reasons, as we have no means of checking this claim out.

One can still quite safely assume that I have no means of knowing this fact either and I make a false claim if I claim to know about the teapot circling Andromeda.
If you say that there are things that cannot happen in controlled situations or in a laboratory, but which do happen regularly in homes of believers of paranormal and supernatural, you simply are slipping away from reality.

Modern science is of course basically just a method for gathering information and it just happens to be the only reliable way to do it that we know of now.
You don't have to "believe" in science for it to work; airplanes fly without faith, vaccines work without you believing in them and your mobile phone works fine, even if you lose faith in it.

There are people who seriously claim that people trusting only in things that can really be proven to exist are "believers of science" and are followers of some kind of "scientism".
This is of course an age-old trick and it is used all over again in countless discussion all over the world.

The basic trick here is simply trying to make it seem that "believing" in the existence of provable, real things and believing in unproven and unreal things are similar "beliefs". This is all too easy cop-out for all believers in paranormal and supernatural.
The big thing here is of course where to draw the line; what unproven thing do you accept, if you start accepting unproven things at the face value?
Is Atlantis really a valid theory? Have aliens really abducted millions of people? Did my grandfather really come secretly from Venus on a golden chariot in the year of 1896?
Or to look at it from other direction: to make you believe in a unproven and unscientific thing, do you need a hundred, or thousand or a million of other people to have believed in it first? Or could just one, but very deeply convinced person be enough?

Again, there is no such a thing as absolute truth in science; even all the most established old "truths" do change if we receive new information that contradicts them.
If we receive valid scientific proof that for example "remote viewing" is true, it will be part of science in no time and it will be studied and used to advance our knowledge as any other finding is.

Of course one needs to have a certain level of trust in science, but this trust can be based on millions of real word things that science has really produced.
One must of course ask oneself that if you don't trust science in these things, can you similarly lose your trust in medicine, geography or physics also, if they just happen to contradict any point of your beliefs or somebody just makes unproven and un-provable claims that you just find very intriguing?

For example the blood types of all humans have never been tested and will never be tested; can we therefore honor a claim that there are dozens of unknown blood types, if I just make this claim for my own reasons, as I just happen to believe in this kind of things?
Will only blood-testing all humans make my claim invalid? In science it is just the other way around; only things that are somehow proven to exist can become part of the scientific knowledge, but new things are added there as fast as they are proven to really exist.

All people are of course entitled to all of their beliefs if they make them happier persons, and I don't have problems with that.
The only problem for me arises when believers of these things do claim them to be "true" even if real proof does not exist for these things.

Comments

One bumps quite constantly to quite sane and in other ways rational people who still believe in things like remote viewing, astral projection and out-of-body -experiences.
However the cold and simple truth is that if these things would really exist we would know it by now, as these things have been studied over and over again with no real results.
Their proponents have been disappointed time after time, as these things have never been proven to really exist in a single verifiable case.

One must only ask oneself a few questions to get to the bottom of this issue.
How is it possible that these esoteric things never work in laboratory and in controlled situations?
How we always have only anecdotal evidence, that is just stories of strange happening that can never be repeated under the weary eyes of real scientists?

Could it just be that there just are a lot of people who really would like them to be true?
Could it just be that these people will always shrug off all evidence that contradicts their beliefs and they will gladly believe all charlatans and tricksters who have found out how easy fame and even money is to be made on things like this?
Could be so that there a lot of people who see that their religious ideology benefits from clinging on to these claims?

However, apparently even the CIA has given up on these things. According to Wikipedia "Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a $20 million research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was terminated in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community."
In other words the whole thing appeared to be just bullshit, as there simply was nothing to it.

Wikipedia tells also this; "There is little beyond anecdotal evidence to support the idea that people can actually "leave the body". The so called "out-of-body -experiences" have been scientifically explained for a long time. We know now that they can be induced in a person at will using several well-known and documented techniques: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
There is really nothing supernatural in these sensations that are really caused by the basic functionality of the brain.

As I see this thing myself, the incredibly complex human mind is a product of long evolution. It has evolved over millions of years to steer a bit by bit more and more complicated biological system, when more and more less central functions have been transferred for the subconscious part of the mind to work on.
So the human mind does a lot of things we are not aware of and this subconscious activity can very easily mislead a person to understand some processes as happening somewhere outside his "mind".

So, it is normally just the good old physical brain working, even when we see the results of our mind produces as something we could not have foreseen at a conscious level.
The human mind is simply a collection of central functions of the brain and when the brain stops to function, there is no mind no more. The mind is a just a fancy name for the higher and more complicated mental faculties.
We do not know how the "mind" of other primates or other animals does work, but I could bet on that that the real difference is just in the complexity of the processing their "mind" does.

These beliefs of a "mind" existing also outside the brain are of course an old and widespread ones and there are a lot of people who really wish from the bottom of their hearts that they would be true.
Even a sincere and widespread wish does not however transform a wish to status of a fact.
The more so, as the motives for which these wishes are spread are well known. These ideas simply fit in nicely in many kinds of religious ideologies that do employ millions of people full-time all over the world.
A cold fact of life just is that according to what we know, the human brains does not have any kind supernatural capabilities.
The inner workings of the brain are however far too complex for us to really comprehend. This fact easily causes the feeling that there is something unworldly going on.

On a lighter vein, there are people who believe that some people can alter the mind of others with using just mind-power. I think that they are of course referring to the television, that really is a powerful tool for projecting ideas and images to other people's minds and ultimately to even control their minds remotely.
A handful of people can make for example a whole nation of millions hate a single person on a flip of switch, when they feel the need for it.
They just project this idea through to other minds with the extremely powerful tool they have, that is called the television.

The same kind of effect is of course achieved also through use of radio, newspapers and books, but the effect is not as instant and sure.
Television just is a tool that affects through strong emotions and to all of your senses at the same time and the especially the strong images projected can stop rational thinking altogether.

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When a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim talks about morality I fear that all too often he or she does not really mean a personal sense of right or wrong that many see as the real form of morality.
I fear that he is not talking about personal ability to judge what would be the most beneficial way of action for one’s near and dear ones or even for one's society, but he really means just plain old unquestioning submission to authority.
However, fundamentalists dress this submission up as some kind of 'absolute morality' where religious moral codes are of some kind of 'divine origin' and cannot therefore be questioned at all.

Things that are seen as moral and immoral in Christianity or in the even more un-evolved Islam have, however, changed immensely during their existence.
For example for hundreds of years owning slaves was seen as a quite moral thing in both religions to do. Also only a few hundred years ago burning old ladies on big bonfires ceased to be a highly moral thing to do.

The plain truth is that this ‘divinely’ ordained morality has always been created by mortal men. It has always changed according to the current requirements of the society, as all morality basically do exist to protect society and its members from behavior that can harm the harmonious co-existence of its members.
There can't be a society without a moral code in use, as it would fall down very rapidly. There is only the question about its origins; is morality derived from outside the humanity or is morality something humans themselves create to further the interests of their societies and through this also to ensure the happiness of their own family and ultimately of themselves?

The fundamentalist approach of unquestioning obedience to all rules has some clear-cut advantages. It makes accepting the current moral norms automatic and if these claims are accepted at face-value, a automated response to moral problems is created that can be beneficial for a individual facing moral dilemmas.
A big thing in this religiously motivated morality is that not being able to question the basis of what is currently deemed as moral or immoral eases the mental load of a individual.

A person can rely blindly on tradition without a need to really analyze ones actions at all. Many people find this very liberating, as really answering questions concerning morality can be very difficult in many cases.
In fact a person can return to a status of a child with the fundamentalist approach. A child has the ability unquestioningly accept all that is handed to him by persons in positions of authority.
Many find this kind of situation extremely liberating, when they are relieved from the need to make personal choices and decisions in difficult issues.

Freedom is much more difficult in this respect than a state of submission, as a free person is held accountable to his or her own decisions.
The cat is however often out of the bag when one realizes that these religious rules are in fact laid out by ordinary human beings, who all too often use the their Holy Texts as only as vehicles for furthering their own prejudices and conservative agenda.
On the other hand there are of course also a lot of progressive and well-meaning, warm-hearted people also who see adopting the Christian or Islamic morality as a good short-cut to ensure a better and healthier living and especially as a tool in ensuring that the coming generation does not fall outside the civil society.

We are in fact facing a dilemma here; do the dangers inherent in automatic submission to authority out-weight the benefits gained from such a system, when we know that this kind of submission can save some people from falling outside the society?
This is a tough question and I do understand the pain of people from have put their faith in this system and who feel threatened by those who reveal the human origins of their faith.

A very basic problem is that the automatic submission built in this system falls easily apart when the real nature of religions as man-made ideologies is revealed to a person.
So a system based on absolute submission cannot really flourish in a situation with a fully free flow of information in place. The worst part is that striving to curb the flow of information will inevitably foster undemocratic and totalitarian tendencies and undemocratic and totalitarian societies tend to fall behind in overall development.

A system that ensures that our sons would not fall into drug-use and would keep our daughters home on the evenings sounds like a very tempting preposition, if only it would really work.
There is however no guarantee that it will work in the end and there is also a heavy price to be paid.
A very real danger is that this requirement gives all too much power to people who in many cases are drawn from the ultra-conservative fringes of the society.

The fundamentalists all too often oppose equality, social justice and even the very basic freedoms in society that so many of us take for granted.
Relying on a religious ideology to supply the needed basis for morality has also the very clear danger that the base for this version morality disappears, when one loses faith in the ideology itself.

If this happens a person is all too easily left hanging in thin air on moral issues.
However, I would suggest that there is are alternatives for building a true sense of morality in young people which does not require submission to just one religious ideology.
In a world where multicultural societies are becoming the norm, also the idea of morality supported in a society cannot be tied to a single overwhelming ideology like a dogmatic monotheistic religion anymore.

I think much is already gained if a person learns from his or her earliest childhood that families, kindergartens, schools and societies have rules that are in place to protect all their members besides the need to ensure their smooth working.
It would be important also to learn that all societies all over the world have quite have similar rules for quite similar reasons. If a person understands that these rules are in place because we all will benefit from them one goal is reached.
A small victory is won if he or she also understands that a person can also work try to change these rules, if he or she feels that they the rules are somehow wrong.

When a person really also learns to understand that 'do others what you want others to do to you' is a universal, golden rule of all human societies, that is not only part of a single religious ideology, I think the risk of losing the sense of morality by losing faith in a single ideology is a lot smaller.
If young people ultimately could learn to help and protect all other humans just because of their common shared humanity, we could just have reached a new level in morality.

I would claim this level of universal humanity is unattainable in more fundamentalist versions of religions at least, where the circle of those who belong to the group of 'us' is often frighteningly small and all other humans are classed as 'them' who deserve no respect from the believers.
I would even claim that a strong input of universal humanistic ethics in kindergartens and schools would give children a very strong basis for building a real personal sense of morality, if it would be done in all seriousness and in a way a child can really relate to.

To finish this thing off, here is a fine example of how universal humanistic thinking can work:
"Ten Humanist Commandments
By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay
1. Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings.
2. Respect the life and property of others.
3. Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the choices and life styles of others.
4. Share with those who are less fortunate and mutually assist those who are in need of help.
5. Use neither lies, nor spiritual doctrine, nor temporal power to dominate and exploit others.
6. Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems.
7. Conserve and improve the Earth's natural environment - land, soil, water, air and space - as humankind's common heritage.
8. Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively without resorting to violence or to wars.
9. Organize public affairs according to individual freedom and responsibility, through political and economic democracy.
10. Develop one's intelligence and talents through education and effort."

From: "The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles" Prometheus Books, (ISBN: 978-1-61614-172-1), 2010.

PS. Ram Swarup writes in his book "Understanding the Hadith: The Sacred Traditions of Islam": "Morality does not determine the Prophet’s actions, but his actions determine and define morality. Muhammad’s acts were not ordinary acts; they were Allah’s own acts."
(Prometheus Books, ISBN: 1591020174)

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"The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected." -Karl Popper

The rise on the so called New Atheism has not by change coincided with the rise of cheap broadband, blogging, social networks and most of all Wikipedia.
All these things have simultaneously eroded the old top down movement of information that was the norm in the old quite uniformly religious societies preceding the “Age Of Information”.
A simple fact of life is that the more people have real information, the less they have use for myths. One just must remember that these myths were originally created as placeholders for real information in an age when real information was simply not to be had.

The rise in the general level of knowledge and ability to find things out things on one's own have produced a quite new kind of level of awareness in societies. It has in fact already risen to a level that has existed never before.
It is just more and more difficult to make irrational or false claims of reality and expect that they can pass unrevealed, when most of the people have the necessary sources of information a few mouse clicks away.

Spreading myths and misinformation of course not impossible even now, as there are so many people who are comfortable in just accepting only the information that suits their closed view of the world.
There are however always the moments of doubt. Now there is an easy to find route to all kinds of information available to everyone, that is there waiting for you round the clock every single day of the year.

I would go as far as to say that the one single thing that has changed the landscape of knowledge most is the Wikipedia.
There is a very good reason why so many theists attack and belittle Wikipedia as a source of information, as the free availability of reliable information is simply poison to systems of thought whose propagation has always so much relied on the ignorance of the recipients.

Wikipedia has simply revolutionized the availability of information in our society. One must just remember that of course all content is in Wikipedia too for a reason. Every writer has also there his or her own motives for writing.
One must simply take this fact of life to account when one reads things in Wikipedia. However, when you learn to always think and question the motives of the writer of each item first, you soon learn to use it quite safely.

For example most of the articles concerning Islam or Christianity in Wikipedia are written by followers of those traditions.
They are however also usable just because of this, as by reading them one can understand their way of thinking and one quite can easily see the bias, when one just first realizes its existence.

With keeping this important limitation in mind I could however say that the simple existence of a single generally very reliable source of information that is most of all easy to access, has simply also revolutionized the general level of discussion in our societies.
People in positions of authority are not able (as easily as before at least) to barricade themselves and their ideas behind a solid barricade of catchphrases and fine and difficult words.
Now anybody has the ability to easily check out what they really mean and what they are trying to hide behind their fine words.

However, the single most important thing in Wikipedia is that it has an inbuilt system of error-correction and it is in my mind fact very much like science in this respect.
I'd like repeat here what Karl Popper said in the quote in the beginning of this piece; "The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected."

Now we have a source of information (maybe the first in human history) where there is a similar inbuilt system of constant, round-the-clock error-correction in place.
Building Wikipedia is of course very human activity just like is science too. There will always be mistakes and errors, but the inbuilt system of constant error-correction will lead to steady rise of quality of the content.

Of course there are always subject that simply do not have a single simple "truth" and there will always be a tug of war in Wikipedia in certain issues.
However just this fight will also help to rise the quality of the content, even if a wholly impartial repository of information will always remain just a pipe dream, simply because we all are just humans.

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"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."
- Adolf Hitler in "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1 Chapter 2

Adolf Hitler was quoted as late as in the year 1943 by General Gerhard Engel as saying in private, as a personal statement: “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
On the other hand there is a league of Christian apologetics who claim that Hitler was always a "secret atheist". They also claim that his atheism grew in secret during time and he ended up a Stark Naked Atheist, but he just did not ever admit this alleged secret atheism to anyone.
I however strongly suspect that they are saying these things mainly because they are trying to hide away from view the darkest family secret of Christianity.

A sad fact of history is that all the major Christian denominations in Germany embraced Nazism and Adolf Hitler openly until his downfall. Also all too many of the Christian organizations abroad saw Hitler as a savior or Western civilization against the godless Communism. One of them was the papacy of Rome.
This hideous failing of judgment has been carefully blotted out of the history that is taught to us.
Commonly are ever mentioned only the likes of Christian opposition men Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who were later sent to concentration camps.

The fact that what these men really opposed was the official Nazi line of their own official Christian church is never really mentioned.

In his study The Holy Reich, the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall writes:
"The insistence that Nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past fifty years. ... Exploring the possibility that many Nazis regarded themselves as Christian would have decisively undermined the myths of the Cold War and the regeneration of the German nation. ... That Nazism as the world-historical metaphor for human evil and wickedness should in some way have been related to Christianity can therefore be regarded by many only as unthinkable."

The Christian apologetics very commonly persist on their claims, even if they are presented with formidable new evidence saying that they are wrong.
As true believers they just brush aside all new evidence as lies. They just want to believe in their invented inner states of mind for Adolf Hitler that do not in fact have any kind of real evidence.

The hidden, secret inner convictions of Adolf Hitler will of course never be known. We however know very well what Nazis did in the real world. We know that all humanistic and atheistic organizations were strictly forbidden in Germany in the very first year of Nazi rule, that is in the year of 1933. On the other hand no established official Christian organization was never even harassed during his whole reign because of religious reasons.

In a speech in the year 1933 Hitler proudly declared: "We have… undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
The prewar great freethinking movement of Germany was crushed without leaving a trace, when church bells were rung to rejoice the victories of the Fatherland during the whole of reign of the Nazis.

Among the chairmen of German Freethinkers League was Max Sievers, who was beheaded at the guillotine by the Nazis in 1944.
The German Freethinkers League had by 1930 a membership numbering around 500,000.
The League was closed down, however, in the Spring of 1933 when Hitler outlawed all atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany. 'Freethinkers Hall', the national headquarters of the League, was then converted to a bureau advising the public on church matters.

The only true Christian opposition ever to materialize against Hitler was the Confessing Church, that was formed by some brave lonely souls who were actually fighting against the official Nazi line of the German Protestant churches.
Its leaders like Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were later sent to concentration camps. They formed however just a tiny splinter group with around 12 000 members according to some sources, when the official Protestant churches that supported Nazis had 45 million members.
So it is true that also individual Christians were targeted and persecuted, but only if they were presenting real opposition for the system. One has also to bear in mind that similarly targeted were all other individuals of any creed who caused any similar trouble to the system.

A sad fact of life is that the official Christian institutions of Germany never caused such trouble.
One of the main assets of the Christian apologists has been to present those Nazis who advocated a twisted form of ancient German mythology as some kind of atheists.
However, these people were theists, who just chose to switch the Christian god to the old Germanic ones. A person advocating even an old god is not an atheist. These beliefs did however never gain the upper hand even in the Nazi Party, and both the Nazi Party and the Nazi Germany remained a overwhelmingly Christian entities to the bitter end.

It is also good to remember that Nazis did persecute Jews because they had a strong belief in the inherent inferiority of the Jewish "race".
This belief did not rest on any kind of true scientific basis, but rested on their willingness to accept unproven strong beliefs and unsupported strong claims as basis for real world actions.

In the real world Hitler also made a amiable agreement of power sharing with the Catholic Church or the famous Reichskonkordat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat with the papacy as one of his official acts as the Chancellor of Germany.
The Nazi relations with papacy were admittedly strained at times, as papacy was seen as a threat to the absolute control of the party. These issues were however always resolved.

The Catholic Church did never officially oppose the Nazi government of Germany and the Nazis never attacked the official institutions of Catholic Church in Germany.
Of course also Catholic individuals who opposed Nazism were persecuted, as were all other known opponents of the regime.

Hitler had even more amiable relationships with also the all of major German protestant Churches of his day, which at times could not think enough things to do to please him.
The Protestant Reich Church or the Reichskirche was formed in 1933 to merge the 28 regional churches into a unified state church that espoused a single doctrine compatible with National Socialism.
There was also a powerful and openly Nazi Protestant group called the Deutsche Christen. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Christians

I would however never claim that Hitler was a "true Christian" the more than Winston Churchill was. Churchill was in fact in private even more skeptic in religious matters than Hitler was.
At least in the "Churchill: A Life" by Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill is quoted as calling religion "a delicious narcotic" and indicating people shouldn't be too concerned with the afterlife.

I know that there is an old tradition in Christian circles in claiming that if Christians do commit crimes, they have simply renounced Christianity for the duration of committing those crimes, at least.
Building on this base it is easy to say that Hitler was not a Christian because he did un-Christian things.

It is of course also clear that he did not do the terrible things he did to promote Christianity either, but because he had invented a new kind of ultra-nationalistic creed and in the end he only used Christianity to further this ideology.
We however have no kind of evidence for that he would have done the things he did because of some kind of "hidden atheism" either.

He simply used a religion that propagates total submission to authority as a extremely handy tool for achieving his own ends, as well as Winston Churchill was very apt on using religious sentiments to further his own goals, even if he did not personally have much faith in religion.
This however does not make Hitler an "hidden atheist", as some Christians stubbornly still claim just because it makes them feel better and what is most important; it helps to hide away the terrible secret of Christian Nazism.

To really finish this thing off, here are some of original quotes by Mr. Adolf Hitler himself on the issue of religion:

"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5

"Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children."

- Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 7

"What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8

"But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people, especially faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life. The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us in thinking that they might usefully replace the existing denominations. ...There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10

"In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11

"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1

"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1

"It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2

"That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?"

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2

"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. 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."

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10

"To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk."

- Adolf Hitler in speech about the need for a moral regeneration of German, February 10, 1933

"The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgment of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism is hostile to religion is a lie."

- Adolf Hitler, speech to members of the Nazi Party on the Nazi-Vatican Concordant, July 22, 1933

"May divine providence bless us with enough courage and enough determination to perceive within ourselves this holy German space."

- Adolf Hitler, Speech, March 24, 1933

"We don't ask the Almighty, 'Lord, make us free!" We want to be active, to work, to work together, so that when the hour comes that we appear before the Lord we can say to him: 'Lord, you see that we have changed.' The German people is no longer a people of dishonor and shame, of self-destructiveness and cowardice. No, Lord, the German people is once more strong in spirit, strong in determination, strong in the willingness to bear every sacrifice. Lord, now bless our battle and our freedom, and therefore our German people and fatherland."

- Adolf Hitler, Prayer, May 1, 1933

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."

- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936

Source for the quotes: http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/AdolfHitlerReligiousFaith.htm

More on the issue of Nazis and Christianity: http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/a/NaziChristian.htm?nl=1

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