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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 4: Darwin, that Lovable Genocidal Racist Next: Reading Number 6: Darwin the Social Darwinist
- Reading Number Five -
And Now a Word from...Adolf Hitler!
Excerpted from: Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. I, Chapters 3, 4
Speaking of genocidal racists, how about that Hitler? Sure, everyone (or most everyone) hates him now, but if you look at his writings, he really had some things to say that would warm the heart of any atheist, some good, Darwinian things. It’s nice to know that our boy Darwin had such a far-reaching influence, don’t you think?
[From chapter 3] In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim of human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a government, but the preservation of the species.
Hmm, sounds rather Darwinian, wouldn’t you say? But there’s more:
[From chapter 4] Nature herself...intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless. She diminishes...the conservation of the procreated, by exposing them to hard trials and deprivations with the result that all those who are less strong and less healthy are forced back into the womb of the eternal unknown. Those whom she permits to survive the inclemency of existence are...well adapted to procreate-in turn, in order that the process of thoroughgoing selection may begin again from the beginning. By thus brutally proceeding against the individual and immediately calling him back to herself as soon as he shows himself unequal to the storm of life, she keeps the race and species strong, in fact, raises them to the highest accomplishments. ...Nature, by making procreation free, yet submitting survival to a hard trial, chooses from an excess number of individuals the best as worthy of living, thus preserving them alone and in them conserving their species...
Yes, it’s all there. Adaptation, selection, preservation, survival of the fittest, all working to “raise” a species to greater and greater things (recall Darwin’s leap-of-faith claim that natural selection leads to the “improvement” of a species). And Nature as the all-wise author of it all. We should recall that the subtitle of Darwin’s The Origin of Species was The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Hitler didn’t need to be hit in the head with a hammer to get the message:
...For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to ' save ' even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues. And the end will be that such a people will some day be deprived of its existence on this earth; for man can defy the eternal laws of the will to conservation for a certain time, but sooner or later vengeance comes. A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals, in order to replace it by the humanity of Nature which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong.
Darwin had already said it was inevitable that the stronger races of humans will exterminate the weak. So what’s a true Darwinian like Hitler to do? Why, make sure that your own race is the one that wipes out the others! Now I’m aware that some of our atheist brethren are trying to claim that Hitler was a Christian. But this is sheer folly. Does a Christian claim that “the highest aim of human existence” is “the preservation of the species”? That we should not save the weak because it goes against the “will” of “Nature”? Hardly. Does a Christian revere someone like Friedrich “God is dead” Nietzsche, as Hitler did? Of course not. Hitler did at times make certain claims to being a Christian, but those were for propaganda purposes only. The goal of the Nazi party under Hitler was to take over the Christian churches in Germany and turn them into centers of what they called “Positive Christianity,” whose reforms included replacing all crosses in churches with the swastika and all Bibles with copies of Mein Kampf.* So please don’t try to argue that Hitler was a Christian. You only show your desperation as an atheist to find some Christian who was as much of a monster as atheists like Stalin and Mao. If we could look into Hitler’s heart, based on all we know of his actions, his true religion was the worship of himself—Adolf Hitler, “the herald of a new revelation” (as Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs called him). So I think we atheists can embrace Hitler as one of our own. Sure, he went a little overboard with that Holocaust stuff, but at heart he was a true man of godlessness who exalted himself to be the only authority over his own life, who arrogated to himself the power to decide what was right and wrong. There was a time when an atheist could openly admire Hitler, as did Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. That time is gone, but let us at least give Hitler his due as a true brother in godlessness.
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