A Correction to Dawkin’s Letter

Richard Dawkins recently posted an open letter on his blog in response to a Jew who was upset after seeing the film Expelled.  Most of the letter is very good; Dawkins exposes some of the foolish connections made by the film between Darwinism and Nazism.  It also recognizes the problems created by Expelled when the film tricks people into believing untruths by using inflammatory rhetoric and examples.

There is one point where Dawkins goes wrong, however. When disproving the link between Darwinism and Nazism, Dawkins brings up the connection between Nazism and Christianity. Here he makes the same mistake that “Mr J” made: condemning a belief because radical people or ideas drew upon that belief.  He even makes this mistake using the same radicals as “Mr J,” the Nazis.  Dawkins should know better than to do this.

Specifically he says:

Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church’s support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism.

Here Dawkins is playing with the facts, but not presenting the whole picture.  We can look at any religion or culture in this world—Christianity, Islam or Buddhism; American, Japanese, or German; religious or atheist—and find people who have done horrible things.  That does not mean the core of the system they self-identify with is the cause of their atrocities.

Second, the argument that very few were atheists means nothing for two reasons.  First, it says nothing about the percentage of atheists in the general population.  Second, and related, is the fact that Germany was a historically Christian country.  Therefore many people who self-identified as Christians may not have held firmly to the tradition.

Dawkins then states that “the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened.”  This is very true in one sense.  Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church often stood by and allowed anti-Semitism to continue unchecked.  In so doing they implicated themselves with the regime.  This does not mean, however, that their beliefs caused the regime’s actions.

Finally, Dawkins ignores the strong responses of many Christians during the Nazi era.  One very prominent example is, of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.  When it comes to defining the core of Christianity, examples such as Bonhoeffer must hold as much weight as the fact that Hitler nominally identified himself as Catholic.

Dawkins then continues by expanding to Christianity as a whole:

Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as “Christ-killers”. While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that “All Jews should be driven from Germany.”

Again Dawkins is providing several true facts outside of their proper context.  He ignores the entire socio-cultural context surrounding European anti-Judaism. Note the distinction between anti-Judaism, which was a cultural prejudice prevalent during the ninteenth century and anti-Semitism, a racial prejudice which arose around the time of the Nazis.  Dawkins makes no mention of any such distinction.

On the whole, Dawkins’ open letter is a great response to “Mr J.”  Dawkins should not, however, have taken this chance to put in a jibe at Christianity.  By doing so he both propogated false information and weakened his own argument by falling prey to the same error as “Mr J.”