Does loving dogs make you a genocidal monster?

Ok, that may sound like a stupid question, but let me refer you to the picture above. Hitler loved his dog, and he was responsible for the Holocaust. Surely, according to this logic, I’ve made a powerful case against owning canines.

If you think I’ve gone insane, rest assured that I’m only trying to make a point. There’s an article on Proud Atheist that tries to debunk the claim Christians make about Hitler’s personal religious beliefs. It encouraged me to write my thoughts on the matter.  I’ve usually avoided this subject in the past, mostly because it’s spurious reasoning to begin with. However, it’s one of those old arguments that doesn’t go away, no matter what anyone has to say about it. It deserves to be talked about, and more specifically, to be put to rest.

If you want to know why Christians love telling people that Hitler was an atheist is because he was one to some degree. I know that there are a lot of examples in his book and speeches about him making reference to God, but the reason isn’t  that he personally believed in a higher power; merely that he understood the appeal of it. He thought, as Karl Marx did, that religion was the opium of the people.

Hitler’s beliefs were pragmatic to say the least. He  identified more with Islam than Christianity, which he felt was meek and shapeless. In other words, Hitler favored ideologies and belief that were more suited for his own purpose, or what some would call “politically convenient”. It’s why he allied himself with the Catholic church in an attempt to eliminate Jews from society.

The Church likes to think that we’ve all forgotten about Christian complacency in the light of the holocaust simply because Pope Jean Paul II later apologized for what had happened. His hollow words were of little comfort for the millions dead, many of them the direct result of the church’s involvement (or lack thereof).

The Nazis have come to symbolize evil in this world, and it’s not without merit. They were not, however, an organization that was atheistic in any sense. Hitler took great care to mask his non belief specifically because he knew that support for his monstrous initiatives would come from the largely religious German population. And because antisemitism had such a log history in Europe, it was easy to turn their mistrust of the Jews into all out genocide.

Still, the specter of Hitler still haunts the world, and his ghostly image is often distorted to suit the needs of history’s revisionists. Rather than admit to their participation in the Holocaust, Christians want to put all the blame on Hitler, as if he alone killed every single Jew. His atheism, they believe, must have been the cause of all his evil. Well, Hitler also loved his dog, but you don’t hear a lot of canine lovers being compared to him very much, do you? Obviously we understand the weakness in trying to make a link between loving dogs and being a murderous psycho. Why is atheism any different? How does not believing in God suddenly lead a person to aberrant behavior?

The real problem is that Christians haven’t put much effort into understanding our position as atheists. They believe that the rejection of a metaphysical god somehow erases all moral impetus from a person. It is this lack of empathy that I find frightening, because it is specifically our ability as humans to empathize with others that is our real moral compass, not some ancient manuscript. It’s why the best way to entice a population to act outside of their normal moral framework is to first dehumanize the enemy in order to make empathy impossible. If there’s a lesson to be learned from the tragedy of genocide it’s that once a population begins to see other people as less human, less moral, and less righteous than themselves, the consequences are indeed dire.

So next time you hear a Christian tell you that Hitler was an atheist, simply tell him/her that he was also a dog lover, painter, and budding architect. Surely those must have counted for some of his evil as well, no?

Spread the outrage