Richard Carrier: a credible historian regarding rejecting Hitler's anti-Christian views being...

[Wade_A.Tisthammer]

@razncain

After taking the time to read through some of the threads and to review some of the links that others provided you; did you not find Jim Walker’s arguments good enough either? If you agreed with it along with the wiki article I’m not sure why you think another thread was necessary.

I didn’t agree with Jim Walker’s article, and that article was discussed in the previous thread (starting at post #13). Here’s how it stands: we have an eminent historian saying that Hitler’s Table Talk is authentic, and we have no reputable historians saying otherwise. Carrier is an historian but a suspect one for a variety of reasons, among them the fact he promotes crackpot historical theories when grinding his anti-Christian axe. The fact that so far the only known historian to deny the legitimacy of Hitler’s anti-Christian statements evidenced in Hitler’s Table Talk is an historian who promotes crackpot historical claims against Christianity and who has an anti-Christian axe to grind does, I think, give me some reason to be skeptical.

@razncain

And even as Walker explains, if he is correct about this, assuming you wanted to use the controversial version of table talk which includes the anti-Christian quotes, there is still no talk of Hitler speaking “against Jesus or his own brand of Christianity.

Also dealt with in the previous thread. From a post in that thread:

@Wade_A.Tisthammer

This website of course has its own biases, and I found its arguments suspect and unconvincing. Consider for example the objection, “Nowhere does Hitler denounce Jesus or his own brand of Christianity.” Would Hitler ever denounce “his own brand of Christianity” if he was not a Christian? Furthermore, what about Hitler’s claim that the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity? The author never mentions that tidbit. H.R. Trevor-Roper is a distinguished historian, and I trust his judgment on the authenticity of the records (see e.g. page xiv of the book) more than an atheist on the Internet who wants to believe Hitler was a Christian.

Certainly there are some atheists on the Internet who question book’s authenticity. There are also atheists on the Internet who argue that Jesus of Nazareth never existed (mainstream scholarship be damned).

@razncain

Carrier’s piece that goes into more detail of the quotes he questions was in freethought today and was written over eight years ago. That’s ample time for any scholarship to have looked at it and come forward with any findings of their own if they felt like Carrier needed correcting, I would think.

Not every bad historical theory gets mentioned by professional historians. The problem is that we don’t have solid corroboration either way. It would be nice if, for example, Trevor-Roper had in a future edition written, “I investigated the matter carefully myself and Carrier was right about previous editions having inaccurate translations; this edition of the book contains the correct translations” but we don’t have any such thing.