Or, put in less artful terms, “Hitler is a better object of worship than your god”. The point here is not to make you angry, rather it is to get at the core problems not merely about waging war and otherwise compelling outward profession of belief, but about all sorts of attribution about the goodness of political policy and social movements. There are two main issues:
- The historicity and significance of miracles in their time
- The fact that these miracles do not persist
If these two items come under consideration, even a seemingly absurd proposition like Hitler worship becomes relatively credible. Hence we should recognize the deficiencies in our thinking, such as indefinite attribution of phenomena, that would allow us to reach that historically unsupported conclusion.
We should recall the arguments people present for actually believing in religion (vs. doing so for social reasons, or as some roundabout means of personal discipline or call to charity) with some sort of attached belief system (vs. saying “there is a creator” without any meaningful doctrine attached):
- Because God, or some messenger of God/gods, personally has spoken to them via a spiritual channel
- Because the messenger of God presented earthly miracles
- Because the messenger of God and his followers had military or economic success as a result of their adherence to the faith (in some ways a lesser, in some ways a greater miracle)
- Because people subscribe to some version of the Pascal argument (risk-adjusted belief is superior)
- Because they believe that some type of action (e.g. prayer healing the sick, performing a specific religious ritual according to the tenets of the faith) has some beneficial or otherwise significant observable consequence, when performing same according to non-faith doctrines or in the hands of non-believers does not have similar benefits
As for the matter of personal inspiration, of course one cannot refute your own feeling in the matter as such. It would be the same as saying what you see with your eyes, and feel with your hands, is not in fact the sensation you feel. That doesn’t mean that the properties of the object other than in relation to those two senses, is known; it only speaks to the reality of the perception in so far as you, a fallible mortal, has the ability to recognize the truth. If your senses are so horribly unreliable that you cannot take any truth value out of them, then any attempt to reason is futile.
However that is your sense, not necessarily shared by your listener. In our ordinary concept of self, the blind cannot share your sight. Indeed, if they could, they also would at least be able to recognize the reality of the message you perceive, which they do not claim to be able to do. Hence this fundamental truth is inaccessible to your listener. Moreover, others also claim personal inspiration, but for other gods, facts, and creeds. Consequently they cannot distinguish the correct faith on this basis alone.
Earthly miracles are meaningful. There are several ways to address the historicity of various miracles in various religions, but in this tract, I would appeal to you on the basis that these all actually happened. However, as presently no one is able to demonstrate such miracles on any sort of consistent basis. Consequently we have to deal with phenomena that happened once and never happened again. Normally when we conceive of such things, we talk about “that person died”, “the material was removed”, “they’re no longer here”, “they lost their power”. Miracles beyond immediate physical explanation of course could admit of their own operating principles beyond those of the physics we currently can reproduce; however, if the claim that a god exists with certain creeds and manifestation/aims is based upon the performance of earthly miracles, then the lack of those miracles therefore implies at some level that the god’s existence status/purpose/power has changed. Moreover, if we are to admit the existence of these various miracles without regard to the historicity of religions, then we must contend with multiple competing miracles (e.g. Jesus’ healing, angels fighting alongside Muslims) amongst these mutually exclusive traditions.
Likewise, we must consider that the military and economic miracles also were experienced by various faith traditions.
In other tracts on this site, the Pascal argument is exposed as ineffective because there are far too many competing faiths.
In regards to the specific type of action having an impact, the best of which I am aware is the prayer for hospital patients, but I am unaware of any evidence that suggests this slight effect is tied to one particular belief system, hence it can’t currently be used to distinguish amongst religions. Moreover, as this effect is very small in comparison, to, say, the religion of mainstream medicine in which God’s existence is basically irrelevant, it is hard to assert God’s meaningful power (e.g. for heaven and hell) if he only can influence survival by a very small amount while scientists, engineers, and technicians have far more worldly influence.
At a sweeping level, we can summarize the assumed reality in our world, based on which we continue the discussion, as:
- A significant number, but not all, believers testify to personal messaging.
- Faith-dependent accounts of miracles (but each faith gets its own).
- Some faiths do and some faiths don’t get economic or military miracles.
- Pascal’s wager doesn’t matter.
- Currently, there are no strong rituals that indicate one god/pantheon/their belief system exists to the exclusion of the others.
So after this review, let us consider how well the worship of Hitler ranks against conventional religions.
- I am unaware of large numbers of people who profess Hitler spoke to them supernaturally. (negative indication)
- Hitler apparently did not work significant numbers of extraphysical earthly miracles. (strong negative indication)
- Hitler beat the pants off the Christians and atheists of Europe, while leading a major German economic renaissance after the humiliation of World War I and the Versailles settlement (strong positive indication); to our modern perspective, this is far better known and documented than the conquests of the past
- As noted, Pascal’s wager doesn’t matter. (no indication)
- Hitler did not have a specific religious ritual per se, but National Socialist fanaticism definitely produced results when the partially Catholic liberalism of the Weimar Republic did not. In general fanaticism (not religious-specific) definitely has shown results at other times in history. (weak indication)
Hence, Hitler worship as a religion (historicity aside) can claim the strong economic and military miracles, and hence can compete with Christianity and various animistic or personal religions such as Pure Land Buddhism. Its relative claim is weaker against old-school Judaism (large miracles + some military conquest) and Islam (smaller miracles but larger military conquest than Judaism).
Where Hitler worship has a stronger case than Judaism or Islam is that its miracles clearly manifested in the recent past. One could argue that the pan-anti-Jew agenda, which countries such as the United States manifested, has had even more success. If we further were to expand this to encompass a notional political National Socialist German Worker’s Party agenda that included state control and guidance of enterprises, then we easily could pick out a number of very successful examples in the industrial era.
The clear weakness of Hitler worship as a religion is the lack of supernatural messaging or extraphysical miracles. This is where one of the fundamental issues lies: are these miracles historic? In the context of mutually exclusive faith traditions, the possible answers vary depending on your critical estimation parameters and historical methodology.
The other, more fundamental question, is whether these miracles have any current significance. Have the Jewish or Muslim gods died? Another variation: if for example we consider the Muslim claim that Muslims now enjoy the favor of God once reserved for the Jews (who came from the same religious pan-tradition), then these religions already assert that the belief system (not necessarily the existence of) old miracles are superseded by those of the new. These types of possibilities clearly are in play as these mutually exclusive religions assert them.
How could we resolve the question? Should we just take which miracle is newer? If so Hitler is the winner. Then we could say post-war Japan is the winner, too. Should we require that a religion use extraphysical means in order to be considered valid? That contradicts various direct religious assertions where God and his agents intervene on behalf of believers. Moreover the question directly bears back to historicity: do you believe walking on water is easier to forge, or conquering an entire peninsula? Which admits of more reliable witness?
The matter becomes nastier when you start to bring in faith healing: this clearly would be extraphysical. Jesus’ faith healing was not readily reproducible by others. Is the answer to disqualify all the faith healing and similar non-reproducible claims as not proof of miracles? If so then there is no extraphysical miracle currently known to exist, hence in the line of religious traditions the last reliable extraphysical healer (or other similar performer of miracles) would win? How should we decide who that is? Only with reliable history could we convince others of our choice – but what happens if there isn’t reliable history to distinguish the last extraphysical miracle worker? Do you guess? Do you take the last non-extraphysical miracle worker instead? Is there any way we could figure out what the best decision rule here is?
Ultimately it is not clear what the larger implication of the last miracles is. We have to deem them as miracles, decide they are historic, and then we must make a decision about the implications of them. With ill-defined scope and succession principles, it is not obvious how best to define the concept (let alone its truth value) of what the miracle really means. There are reasonable arguments for a number of approaches – and if the only guideline is reasonable, then clearly the worship of Hitler is amongst those religions that qualifies for consideration.