david f......Is that all! Jesus did bring the Messianic Age because he lived it by his example, his teaching, his dying and rising(and it's much bigger than Isaiah's vision.......in fact, scholars are not convinced that Isiah was speaking of the Messianic Age and invites his disciples to live it. The fact that it doesn't equate with your limited view is irrelevant.

Now you admit that Hitler did hate Catholcism yet you previously stated that he died in the bosom of the Church. I'm confused: how can he have hated the Church and died in its bosom at the same time! Did he attend Mass? Did he receive Holy Communion before he died? Was he married in the presence of a Catholic priest? I think you're thrashing around for excuses.

Re the Pope of the time and his silence re Naziism......read some history. Particularly, Jewish writers who praise the Pope for what he DID.....not for what he didn't say. Did not the Polish Jews beg tha Pope to be silent lest he make their plight worse? Did not the Belgium bishops learn from the Dutch bishops who openly criticised the Nazi treatment of Jews and made matters worse for Jews. Did not the Nazis admit at the Nuremberg trials that they had a policy of retaliation? I wonder how brave you would have been in a similar situation?

I repeat, Naziism fed off Darwinism and it had nothing to do with religion!

You seem to think that only Jews have suffered. One of the things that annoys me is the ethnic harping about injustice that ignores the exact injustice imposed upon other ethnic groups. I don;t give a stuff what a person is......we all have the same rights.

Does Theosophy count as religion? It certainly doesn't count as 'Darwinism'.

<<I repeat, Naziism fed off Darwinism and it had nothing to do with religion!>>

Repetition doesn't make it true. It demonstrates either that you're ignoring the evidence and/or you have a desperate need to believe it.

Racial supremacy was popular long before evolutionary theory was developed. Check out Exodus 34 and Leviticus 26. The Biblical god was totally into genocide and choosing particular races for their purity.

You're using the silly argument that selective breeding - exploited by humans since animals were domesticated 15000 years ago - is a sort of applied Darwinism.

The bible mentions lots of shepherds. How do you think they bred them for the best meat and wool? Did god send a copy of "The Origin of Species" back through time to give them a hand, or were they smart enough to know that if you breed similar animals together you get future generations with the same qualities? Do you think the Nazis needed evolutionary theory to know that breeding blue-eyed blondes together produces more blue-eyed blondes?

In fact, Hitler was a vocal critic of the idea of evolution. He found the ape/man link disgusting (see quotes below).

I'm sure you're already aware of his many appeals to Christianity. He hardly acted in the Christian spirit, but the simple fact of history is that he won support for his atrocities by painting them as Christian.

And now, a Hitler highlight reel:

"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." - Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. x

"From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today." - Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)

"Whoever would dare to raise a profane hand against that highest image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and would collaborate in the expulsion from Paradise." - Mein Kampf, vol ii, ch. i

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them." - speech, April 12 1922, published in My New Order

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people." - Speech, April 26, 1933

"The most marvelous proof of the superiority of Man, which puts man ahead of the animals, is the fact that he understands that there must be a Creator." - Hitler's Tabletalk (Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier)

Quotes courtesy of http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Hitler_and_evolution

Oh, and the page also addresses Hitler's use of the word "evolution" in Mein Kampf. He uses it the way Christians do: to describe what he would like it to mean, not what it really does.

Frances wrote:

I repeat, Naziism fed off Darwinism and it had nothing to do with religion!

Dear Frances,

No matter how many times you repeat nonsense it remains nonsense.

From http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm

“Hitler's anti-Semitism grew out of his Christian education. Christian Austria and Germany in his time took for granted the belief that Jews held an inferior status to Aryan Christians. Jewish hatred did not spring from Hitler, it came from the preaching of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers throughout Germany for hundreds of years. The Protestant leader, Martin Luther, himself, held a livid hatred for Jews and their Jewish religion. In his book, "On the Jews and their Lies," Luther set the standard for Jewish hatred in Protestant Germany up until World War II. Hitler expressed a great admiration for Martin Luther.

Hitler did not have to parade his belief in God, as so many American Christians do now. Nor did he have to justify his Godly belief against an Atheist movement. He took his beliefs for granted just as most Germans did at that time. His thrust aimed at politics, not religion. But through his political and religious reasoning he established in 1933, a German Reich Christian Church, uniting the Protestant churches to instill faith in a national German Christianity.”

If you want to deny reality I certainly can’t stop you.

Interesting approach, Trav. I was wondering where your starting point would be.

>>John Dominic Crossan... is quoted as saying that the crucifixion of Jesus is as historical as a fact can ever be.<<

Are you telling me that you believe everything this “biblical scholar” writes?

Or are you saying that you have carefully selected from his writings one opinion that you agree with?

>>[the crucifixion is] recorded in all four gospels, plus numerous other sources- eg: Jewish Historian Josephus, roman historian Tacitus and others<<

None of the gospel writers was there at the time. There were no recorded contemporary witnesses. This is clear from the fact that the four “accounts” differ: in the date, how he got to Golgotha, who carried the cross, what the two criminals said to Jesus and what he himself says, at what time he died and what were his last words, and so on. All this is evidence of an oral “tradition”, where a moral tale is passed along. And of course, as soon as you move outside the Gospels, you find that he was hanged from a tree! Acts 5:30, Acts 13: 29 etc. Which version, incidentally, is supported by the Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a).

There is no indication where Tacitus, writing c109 CE obtained his information on “Christus'” death. Given the complete absence of supporting evidence from Roman historical sources, the most likely explanation is that he got it from Christian stories.

As for Josephus, I'm surprised you even mention him – the famous “reference” was added centuries later. Even Bishop Warburton described it as “a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too”

My question would be, why would anyone attempt such a blatant addition? Could it be that there was no real evidence, and it was important to manufacture some?

>>We have records of over 40 different sources referring to Jesus within 150 years<<

Original sources, Trav?

Or sources that used each other as “sources”.

Your serve.