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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: LLCF who wrote (28087)2/16/2010 12:07:39 PM
From: Solon1 Recommendation  Respond to of 28931
 
Just some quotes from the crazed fellow...

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”

( Adolf Hitler, from John Toland [Pulitzer Prize winner], Adolf Hitler, New York: Anchor Publishing, 1992, p. 507. )

“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, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 562. )

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65. )

“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! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight 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. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago — a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

“Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

“And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 19-20. )

“For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!’”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, pp. 632-633. )

“I may not be a light of the church, a pulpiteer, but deep down I am a pious man, and believe that whoever fights bravely in defense of the natural laws framed by God and never capitulates will never be deserted by the Lawgiver, but will, in the end, receive the blessings of Providence.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered on July 5, 1944; from Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power, Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989, p. 208. )

“I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a warrior. It calls my attention to the man who, lonely and surrounded by only a few supporters, recognized what they [the Jews] were, and called for a battle against them, and who, by God, was not the greatest sufferer, but the greatest warrior. . .

“As a human being it is my duty to see to it that humanity will not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did that old civilization two thousand years ago, a civilization which was driven to its ruin by the Jews. . . I am convinced that I am really a devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as Christ did two thousand years ago, against those who are steeling and exploiting these poverty-stricken people.

“Two thousand years ago a man was similarly denounced by this particular race which today denounces and blasphememes all over the place. . . That man was dragged before a court and they said: he is arousing the people! So he, too, was an agitator!”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered on April 12, 1922; from Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power, Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989, pp. 261-262. )

“And now Staatspräsident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. 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.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Stuttgart, February 15, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 240. )

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered in Berlin, October 24, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 378. )

“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, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 383. )

“We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people. […] It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech to the 'Old Guard' of the Party at Munich, March 19, 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 406. )

“The anti-Semitism of the new [Christian Social] movement was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 119. )

“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, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 375. )

“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. A fight for freedom had begun mightier than the earth had ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction dawned on even the broad masses that this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved, but whether the German nation was to be or not to be.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 161. )

“As far as this variety of ‘folkish’ warriors, are concerned, I can only wish the National Socialist movement and the German people with all my heart: ‘Lord, preserve us from such friends, and then we can easily deal with our enemies.’”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 565. )

“It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 436. )

“What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 214. )

“Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Reichstag, Berlin, January 30, 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 383. )

“The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral basic values. The national government regards the two Christian confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality: their rights are not to be infringed.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Reichstag, Berlin, March 23, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 371. )

“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.”

( Adolf Hitler, in 26 April 1933 in a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933; from Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979, p. 241. )

“[T]he world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free…”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 622. )

“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 152. )

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

( Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message, January 1, 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 382. )

“National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. For their part the churches cannot for a second doubt that they need the protection of the State, and that only through the State can they be enabled to fulfill their religious mission. Indeed, the churches demand this protection from the State.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a Radio Broadcast July 22, 1933; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 375. )

“I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not that we have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends.

“There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. 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 to-day, 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.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 386. )

“It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 403. )

“At the head of our [National Socialist] 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.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Nuremberg, September 6, 1938; from Adolf Hitler, My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 500. )

“May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Berlin, February 1, 1933; from Adolf Hitler, My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 147. )

“The judgment whether a people is virtuous or not virtuous can hardly be passed by a human being. That should be left to God.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Wilhelmshaven, April 1, 1939; from Adolf Hitler, My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 621. )



To: LLCF who wrote (28087)2/16/2010 12:16:49 PM
From: Solon1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 28931
 
It is extremely important to know that Hitler was taking up the mantle and picking up the sword of Germany's most revered son--Martin Luther.

"Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance.... I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp [Schrot und Korn]."
-Volkischer Beobachter, 25 Aug. 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]

Here are some quotes from Germany's most esteemed son--Martin Luther:

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:

First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire...

Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted...

Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country...

Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it..."..."we must drive them out like mad dogs..."..."They must be driven from our country."


Quotes from Martin Luther's "On the Jews and their lies," 1543



Luther's Introduction:

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it.

But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies-- that is, longer than two thousand years.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...Christ and his word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they such the marrow from our bones.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



In brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us. . . . With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering, cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:

First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire...

Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted...

Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country...

Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



He who hears this name [God] from a Jew must inform the authorities, or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...they remain our daily murderers and bloodthirsty foes in their hearts. Their prayers and curses furnish evidence of that, as do the many stories which relate their torturing of children and all sorts of crimes for which they have often been burned at the stake or banished.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...that everyone would gladly be rid of them.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Undoubtedly they do more and viler things than those which we know and discover.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



If I had power over the Jews, as our princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



They [rulers] must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did...

If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)

Addendum: a note to critics

Because of my pointed aim at revealing the anti-Jewishness of Martin Luther, I have received accusations that I've unfairly painted Luther in a bad light over the alleged "good" he's done in the name of Christianity. I want to briefly make clear my position on this.

Although I can certainly understand, from a perspective of a Protestant, Luther appears to have freed believers from the dependency of an orthodox hierarchy of God-Church-Man, and promoted the vaunted ideals of Christianity, I cannot imagine a more circular argument based entirely on superstitious beliefs. Nor has Luther's Protestantism shown a freeing effect on the lives of its believers when you take account of the paranoid-like protection of its tenets, the theologically based justification of war, cruelty against enemies, and the reliance on faith in place of scientific reasoning.

However, I fully grant that Luther, in his Ninety-Five Theses, may have called for the ending of indulgences and this, I think, could put him in some regard. (Note that although people generally believed that Luther nailed these theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, some scholars have questioned this story, which does not occur in any of his own writings). But on the evidence from his voluminous tomes, I can find little else to admire the works of this man.

Luther not only wrote 'On the Jews and their lies,' but also dubious and intolerant works such as 'Against the Sabbatarians', 'Against the Antinoman,' and 'Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants.' In the latter, Luther called for the stabbing and slaying of peasant rebels which triggered the death of an estimated 100,000 human beings. These rebels were not only Christians but were mostly slaughtered after their surrender to the German princes. Nor did Luther apologize for his treatise even after world criticism. In his response to his critics in "An Open Letter on the Harsh Book," Luther reiterated his venom: "Therefore, as I wrote then so I write now; Let no one have mercy on the obstinate, hardened, blinded peasants who refuse to listen to reason; but let everyone, as he is able, strike, hew, stab, and slay, as though among mad dogs, put to flight, and led astray by these peasants, so that peace and safety may be maintained." In all these harsh treatises, Luther provided an abundance of Biblical passages to justify his attack on his enemies. And, or course (sarcastically speaking), his actions were always through Christian "love" of his enemies, as he audaciously wrote: "The merciless punishment of the wicked is not being carried out just to punish the wicked and make them atone for the evil desires that are in their blood, but to protect the righteous and to maintain peace and safety. And beyond all doubt, these are precious works of mercy, love, and kindness. . ." [Bold characters, mine].

Most Christians staunchly defend their ideas of "true" Christianity (never seemingly to realize that other Christians have their own ideas, or if so, they get labeled as false Christians), but Luther had power and influence, and he vehemently opposed anyone who went against his version of True Christianity. One cannot deny Luther lived as a Christian, and an influential one at that. So to oppose him for practicing his brand of religion cannot serve to justify Christianity anymore than Oskar Schindler can be used to justify "true" Nazism, or neo-communists to justify Communism, or war to justify murder.

But perhaps the most lasting damage of all came from Luther openly advocating the abandonment of using natural reason (Luther considered his use of theological reasoning different from natural reason, i.e., scientific reasoning) . His theological message to live by faith and to abstain from listening to reason has mentally enslaved the lives of millions of Christians to this day. Throughout his literary life he wrote statements such as, "Whoever wishes to be a Christian, let him pluck out the eyes of his reason," "We must give reason a vacation and enter a different school. We must refrain from consulting reason. We must bid reason hold its peace; we must order it to be dead. We must gouge out its eyes and pluck its feathers...," "You must kill the other thoughts and the ways of reason or of the flesh, for God detests them." I can find no other influential writer who has spent as much ink, ad nauseum, against the very investigative tool which has kept the human species alive-- reason.

Therefore, I not only hold against Luther's Jewish hatred and his merciless attacks against his enemies, including Catholics, Protestant peasants, Turks, atheists, and infidels, but also because of his extraordinary intolerance, adherence to faith and superstition, unworkable morality, and his rejection of reason and science. I cannot imagine a man who has spread more dangerous beliefs than Martin Luther.

And no one should ever forget that his justification for these atrocious works came entirely from Christian Protestant beliefs fueled by the Bible. I don't know how Protestant Christians will react when faced with the realization of Luther's mad intolerance, but they will have to deal with the fact that this man stands as the Inventor and Creator of their Christian denomination.

The history of Luther provides just one example of why religion (not just Christianity), and ideology, whether it comes in the form of Buddhism, Judiasm, Islam, communism, Nazism, or any other belief system, creates the intolerant play against life and nature."

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