Ben Shapiro's end of the year Devil Talk

[Ana the Ist]

Yes. You'd expect a proportion of votes to be under duress. But read the quote by Kershaw I included. If there's anyone with comments on Nazi Germany and Hitler that you'd likely trust, it would be him. One of the world's leading experts on the German nation of that time. If he says 'Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people', then it's worth taking on board.

Uh huh....well, you can believe what you like.

I find it hard to imagine those parties so recently outlawed viewed their new leader as preferable to the ones they had willingly chosen of their own free will just a couple of years prior.

That's the nature of a brutal authoritarian state though...you aren't allowed to express other opinions in public....often not even in private. Speaking ill of Hitler was a punishable offense....so how Kershaw believes he could tell the true believers from the fearful pretenders I'm sure I don't know.

 

[Bradskii]

That's the nature of a brutal authoritarian state though...you aren't allowed to express other opinions in public....often not even in private. Speaking ill of Hitler was a punishable offense....so how Kershaw believes he could tell the true believers from the fearful pretenders I'm sure I don't know.

I guess you could be right. Or maybe Kershaw, one of the world's leading experts on Hitler and Nazism, has got the edge on you. Let me think about it...

 

[FireDragon76]

That's news to me....has DID been effectively proven by some metric and I wasn't aware of it?

It's in the DSM-V.

The movie Sybil is fairly realistic and typical.

Freud seemed to have encountered similar post-traumatic disorders but dismissed them as fantasies, because he didn't want to believe horrific sexual abuse was so widespread in his society. So for decades there was alot of prejudice against the notion of repressed trauma.

He had a wife, multiple community groups he was involved in and respected by, a small construction business I think....though he's most remembered for his part time clowning at birthday parties.

It seems people have a generalized tendency towards gullibility. Maybe charm covers over many sins. It could also be that in certain environments, people are acculturated with a great deal of social trust. Like in the midwest, for instance (where alot of notorious serial killers have operated.

I've encountered people before that were psychopathic on malignantly narcissistic, and people haven't seen it until they are hurt by them. It's hard to convince somebody that's enmeshed with somebody that's charming, that they are actually a bad person.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Right....but we're gaming out what a devil would do, reveal himself or not.

Implicit in the question is that he can reveal himself to be the devil. I suppose no matter what that means there's a possibility of those who won't believe.

If we're considering the question though....the implication of being able to reveal himself is that he can reveal himself. If no one believes him....then he isn't able is he?

Y'know, for the purposes of 'this' thread, it'd probably be interesting to see how you guys either agree or disagree with Lewis on this matter of the devil's incognito approach to the world, especially since it comes up as an issue in The Screwtape Letters.

I get that the Nazis and Dennis Rader are interesting cases of psycho-social study and all, but...I'm wanting to keep things real here.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

There but for the grace of God...

If you asked 100 people if they would have done what the Nazis did, or even simply turned away, what number would you think would say they'd do the same?

And in passing, I am physically unable to listen to Shapiro.

Some of the extent to which Volks turn away from a rising dictator may depend upon the economic despair they're feeling at the time. At least for a lot of them.

Economic despair might not be so influential on the whole, though, for those with a stronger or more complex form of moral concience, like that of an Oskar Schindler or a Dean Heinrich Gruber or a Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Yes. You'd expect a proportion of votes to be under duress. But read the quote by Kershaw I included. If there's anyone with comments on Nazi Germany and Hitler that you'd likely trust, it would be him. One of the world's leading experts on the German nation of that time. If he says 'Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people', then it's worth taking on board.

Kershaw sounds interesting. But right now, I'm focusing on Claudia Koonz' take on it, along with that of Mary Nolan and Doris L. Bergen, and a few additional but minor sources.

Maybe you could bring all of this back to the OP in some way, and tie it in to Lewis' Screwtape Letters, even if you disagree with Lewis?

 

[FireDragon76]

Some of the extent to which Volks turn away from a rising dictator may depend upon the economic despair they're feeling at the time. At least for a lot of them.

Economic despair might not be so influential on the whole, though, for those with a stronger or more complex form of moral concience, like that of an Oskar Schindler or a Dean Heinrich Gruber or a Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Two things seems salient about Bonhoeffer:

1) Bonhoeffer was Prussian, and Prussians traditionally were known for individualism and education more than other Germans.

2) Bonhoeffer's family wasn't especially religious. His religious vocation was singular, and he always stood out. He used to lay in bed at night as a child, and think about deep things, like eternity. As an adult, he had eclectic interests at a time when conservatives in Germany were detesting all things un-German, and he had plans to travel to India and study under Gandhi. So he was a much more open-minded person not willing to go along with a herd.

Schindler is harder to explain. He came from the Sudetenland, from the modern Czech republic. He also was a spy for the Germans, and was somewhat nationalistic. The spying perhaps suggest a degree of moral agency, not somebody given to automatic loyalty to a cause. Like the character Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov, he was a sensualist, but perhaps that is why he retained his humanity.

 

[QvQ]

Well I've never been taught history by the wind.

Your entire history is determined by the wind and the waves.
Forces beyond your control.
Every single historical fact in your life is determined by the circumstances of your birth and the availability of resources to sustain that life.

Take water, for instance.
If the well runs dry...
Man cannot manufacture water.

There is a belief that man can predict the past. It is predicated on the assumption that by analysis, we can determine cause. The idea that the Nazi's only happened because of certain components which if altered would have changed the outcome. Therefore, by identifying those events and ferreting out similar events in the present we can alter the present and predict the future.
However, WWII was an unpredictable surprise. No one knows what caused it or what combination of events would have uncaused it.
Because, because, because is always an "after" book published by experts when the experts "before" were thoroughly surprised.

 

[Bradskii]

Some of the extent to which Volks turn away from a rising dictator may depend upon the economic despair they're feeling at the time. At least for a lot of them.

Economic despair might not be so influential on the whole, though, for those with a stronger or more complex form of moral concience, like that of an Oskar Schindler or a Dean Heinrich Gruber or a Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I think that we recognise the names of these handful of men goes someway to proving the point.

 

[Bradskii]

Your entire history is determined by the wind and the waves.
Forces beyond your control.
Every single historical fact in your life is determined by the circumstances of your birth and the availability of resources to sustain that life.

Take water, for instance.
If the well runs dry...
Man cannot manufacture water.

There is a belief that man can predict the past. It is predicated on the assumption that by analysis, we can determine cause. The idea that the Nazi's only happened because of certain components which if altered would have changed the outcome. Therefore, by identifying those events and ferreting out similar events in the present we can alter the present and predict the future.
However, WWII was an unpredictable surprise. No one knows what caused it or what combination of events would have uncaused it.
Because, because, because is always an "after" book published by experts when the experts "before" were thoroughly surprised.

I tend to agree. After the nation is lost, it's easy to point to the war that caused it and the battle lost that caused that. And the fight that lost the battle. Down to the shoe that the horse lost. So for the want of a nail, a nation falls. And there's no denying the line of reasoning that leads to that. But you have to ignore the infinity of other causes.

Predicting the past is easy. The future is a tad more difficult.

 

[QvQ]

There is an old Christian saying about hell raisers raising hell just for the hell of it.
Fun and profit by the hell raiser's reckoning. A deal with the devil and we all lose.
That is as good an explanation as any.
Shapiro mentions that.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I understand that, but the fuller context is that regardless of Lewis' actual apologetic ability, he was a professor at Oxford...who was an atheist turned Christian and just happened to have written a somewhat successful series of children's books in addition to presenting a somewhat prolific number of apologetic works.

Obviously, C.S. Lewis won't be meaningful to everyone and I know that while the fuller contexts around who he was doesn't imply that you have to personally value him any more than you do a cricket on your porch, it still remains a fact that he achieved what he achieved, was who he was, and wrote all of what he wrote. Some of it has been useful and helpful for Christians; some of it less so for others.

Personally, I'll admit that I haven't read much more of Lewis than a handful of his books, but The Screwtape Letters is one book of his that has meant a lot to me over the years.

I didn't actually comment on his ability as an apologist as such things. I have never read any apologetics and have no interest in such. I would know how to evaluate apologetics.

I know. And I find it very strange that what "holds interest" for you is to land upon a Christian Forum and push for scientific literacy.

Science literacy is nice, but my original interest was in pseudoscience. I've found that often the best discussions are in the tangential or off topic parts of a BB. My favorite board for discussing current events or politics was the board for my favorite sports teams. It's all about the community of participants, and I checked that out here for over a year before joining.

To me, that's about as nearly futile of an interest as it would be for me to go to Ex-Christian.net and tellr Ex-Christian (mainly atheists) folks there to become better educated about contending with a demonically ridden world.

I think you have a rather low opinion of your fellow Christian CF participants vis-a-vis science.

And of course they won't; what's more is that we all know they'll take their hard cover copies of something like Carl Sagan's book, The Demon Haunted World, and duly swat me into a senseless delerium.

Sometimes it feels like you put yourself in that place all by yourself. Try giving yourself a break from worrying about what others don't believe, and I'll leave you to your demons and go back to worrying about the perils of psuedoscience just like Carl warn me when I read his book a few years ago. (Softcover of course, hardcover is a waste of money.)

 

[Ana the Ist]

It's in the DSM-V.

Ok....if that's your measure of uncontroversial.

The movie Sybil is fairly realistic and typical.

I think I saw it. Might have fallen asleep.

Freud seemed to have encountered similar post-traumatic disorders but dismissed them as fantasies, because he didn't want to believe horrific sexual abuse was so widespread in his society. So for decades there was alot of prejudice against the notion of repressed trauma.

Yeah I don't know much evidence about repressed memories or experiences etc. Has anyone ever had one that proved verifiable?

It seems people have a generalized tendency towards gullibility.

Well he was family.

I think we only need to remember that anything presented as normal early enough is seen that way later on.

Maybe charm covers over many sins. It could also be that in certain environments, people are acculturated with a great deal of social trust.

Where was Rader from?

Like in the midwest, for instance (where alot of notorious serial killers have operated.

I honestly don't know what the geographic distribution is.

I've encountered people before that were psychopathic on malignantly narcissistic, and people haven't seen it until they are hurt by them. It's hard to convince somebody that's enmeshed with somebody that's charming, that they are actually a bad person.

I don't think I could spot one.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Your entire history is determined by the wind and the waves.
Forces beyond your control.
Every single historical fact in your life is determined by the circumstances of your birth and the availability of resources to sustain that life.

Take water, for instance.
If the well runs dry...
Man cannot manufacture water.

There is a belief that man can predict the past. It is predicated on the assumption that by analysis, we can determine cause.

Well this is a big relief....thank you. I cannot possibly be held responsible for my actions when it was always the wind at fault.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I tend to agree. After the nation is lost, it's easy to point to the war that caused it and the battle lost that caused that. And the fight that lost the battle. Down to the shoe that the horse lost. So for the want of a nail, a nation falls. And there's no denying the line of reasoning that leads to that. But you have to ignore the infinity of other causes.

Predicting the past is easy. The future is a tad more difficult.

Presidicting the past huh?

If predicting the future were only so difficult....I wouldn't have known the position you'd take on the humanity of nazis before you said it. The future isn't all that difficult.....so long as we're talking about people.

 

[QvQ]

Well this is a big relief....thank you. I cannot possibly be held responsible for my actions when it was always the wind at fault.

Are you held responsible now and by whom? If a person acts within the societal norms of his particular place and time, then "accountable" or "responsible" action is merely the consensus of the mob.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I didn't actually comment on his ability as an apologist as such things. I have never read any apologetics and have no interest in such. I would know how to evaluate apologetics.



Science literacy is nice, but my original interest was in pseudoscience. I've found that often the best discussions are in the tangential or off topic parts of a BB. My favorite board for discussing current events or politics was the board for my favorite sports teams. It's all about the community of participants, and I checked that out here for over a year before joining.

I think you have a rather low opinion of your fellow Christian CF participants vis-a-vis science.

Sometimes it feels like you put yourself in that place all by yourself. Try giving yourself a break from worrying about what others don't believe, and I'll leave you to your demons and go back to worrying about the perils of psuedoscience just like Carl warn me when I read his book a few years ago. (Softcover of course, hardcover is a waste of money.)

Maybe you're right. All of this public forum interaction has become an increasingly futile affair over the past few years. It's not what it used to be...

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Two things seems salient about Bonhoeffer:

1) Bonhoeffer was Prussian, and Prussians traditionally were known for individualism and education more than other Germans.

2) Bonhoeffer's family wasn't especially religious. His religious vocation was singular, and he always stood out. He used to lay in bed at night as a child, and think about deep things, like eternity. As an adult, he had eclectic interests at a time when conservatives in Germany were detesting all things un-German, and he had plans to travel to India and study under Gandhi. So he was a much more open-minded person not willing to go along with a herd.

Schindler is harder to explain. He came from the Sudetenland, from the modern Czech republic. He also was a spy for the Germans, and was somewhat nationalistic. The spying perhaps suggest a degree of moral agency, not somebody given to automatic loyalty to a cause. Like the character Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov, he was a sensualist, but perhaps that is why he retained his humanity.

What do you think explains Dean Heinrich Gruber?

 

[FireDragon76]

What do you think explains Dean Heinrich Gruber?

He had a similar background to Bonhoeffer, also Prussian. Both also seemed to be serious churchmen.

Bonhoeffer as a young man went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and stood in St. Peter's square and watched the priests and nuns going about for hours, taken in with the grandeur of men and women going about their religious vocations, and it was almost a spiritual experience for him. I think that contributed to a sense of the Church having a culturally transcendent identity (something the Nazis rejected, they believe the Church should be thoroughly German). He even wrote a book about ecclessiology as his doctoral dissertation, called Sanctorum Communio (Communion of Saints... again, this is an area where Bonhoeffer wouldn't be analogous at all to American Evangelicalism, with it's relatively non-existant, individualistic ecclessiology).

During this time in Germany, most of the German Christian were the heirs to the aftermath of liberal theology and the disgrace of the first world war, and had decided that blood and soil could be acceptable, even salvific, theological categories, that the Church was just a civil service of the State: a notion that still circulates among many in Europe, that religion is just part of ones cultural identity and just kept in one of those little glass boxes in a wall, to be opened at the arrival of a new baby, weddings, or in emergencies or tragedies. And that shaped everything about their religious sensibilities. To stand in opposition to that as a Christian meant you had to be strongly convinced there was something about Christianity that transcended cultural particularity.

 

[FireDragon76]

BTW, here's a series on Bonhoeffer's "Religionless Christianity". I am looking over it right now. So far it looks good, though the pastor I think has a few blind spots (I'm fairly sure that Bonhoeffer would not have such a negative view of the human potential movement in California, he probably would think it was a natural part of "man come of age". Bonhoeffer was so wide-ranging and open in his thought, after all, he was going to go to India to learn from Gandhi, a Vaishnava Hindu).

It's good to see an actual Lutheran pastor discussing his ideas. Sadly, in some American Lutheran churches, his prophetic voice has been minimized, and the old religion of paralytic guilt-consciousness coupled with cheap grace, Erastianism and lazy cultural conformity continues:

But I think this is still the best in-depth look at Bonhoeffer's final thoughts on Christianity and its future. I don't think its coincidental that the author of the blog is a Disciples of Christ pastor, and can look at Bonhoeffer in terms of the big picture, because that's precisely where Bonhoeffer was coming from, as well. You need to have a deep and broad experience of Christian theology, practice, and an open appreciation of the secular world, to understand Bonhoeffer truly:

Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity

Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In s...

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