[MD] The End of Faith - Spirituality

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>:

> 
> Steve asked:
> What are the bad results of not believing in God?
> 
> Platt answered:
> National Socialism, Fascism, Communism.
> 
> dmb says:
> As Arlo pointed out, "Painting the Nazi's as "atheistic" is simply an historically
> invalid rhetorical attempt to disassociate religion from the holocaust". One of
> Hitler's top officers was so fanatical a believer that his failure to find the
> holy grail drove him to commit suicide. In fact, the Catholic Church has been
> criticized for its complicity with fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain. The
> history of anti-Semitism within Christianity goes back at least a thousand years.
> Mussolini and the Italian Fascists were given support by the Vatican and could not
> have come to power without that help. Likewise, Franco was very interested in
> reasserting the power and authority of the Catholic church in Spain and tried to
> re-establish the monarchy upon his death in 1975. 
> 
> In fact, a common theme among these fascist and their theist friends was their
> fear and hatred of "godless communism". Fascism was/is the attempt to reassert
> tradition in the face of secular democracy and so it is certainly no accident that
> fascism is essentially anti-intellectual, anti-democratic and religious. (And if
> you see a parallel between that and today's neocons, it is only because you're
> paying attention.) And even if fascism were entirely secular, it still would not
> fit Sam Harris's idea of legitimate position based on reason or evidence.
> 
> There's a nice little documentary called "Italian Fascism in Color" that is worth
> seeing on this point. Netflix has it, if you're interested.
> 
> See, the thing about drawing lessons from history is that one has to first learn
> what actually happened in history. Otherwise its just, "yea, team! Our side is
> good and the other side is evil", which is exactly the fascist attitude.  

If you really want to know what happened in history, read "Liberal Fascism."



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