[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Richard Dawkins Furious At Pope For Tying Godless To Nazis

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Have at it, folks. --Jenifer

--- On Sun, 9/19/10, fransears> wrote:

Richard Dawkins Furious At Pope For Tying Godless To Nazis

Posted in Liberaland by Alan • September 17, 2010,

Pope Benedict’s speech to Queen Elizabeth in England praised how
Britain fought “Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from
society,” prompting one of the world’s best known atheists, Richard
Dawkins, to proclaim it  “a despicable outrage.” What set off Dawkins
is this paragraph:

“Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders
stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society
and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were
thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to
Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed
the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect
on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth
century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and
virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man
and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his
destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).”

Dawkins responds:

Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not
based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was
arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he
enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in
Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if
Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file
Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were
Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to
their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about
‘Christ-killers’ and by Martin Luther’s own seething hatred of the
Jews. To mention Ratzinger’s membership of the Hitler Youth might be
thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are
off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.

Dawkins is urging a letter-writing campaign to British media in protest, adding:

I am incandescent with rage at the sycophantic BBC coverage, and the
sight of British toadies bowing and scraping to this odious man. I
thought he was bad before. This puts the lid on it.

 


      
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