Because an Online Atheist Claimed That Martin Bormann Was A Christian

Having found, over and over again that the atheist conception of history and historical figures encountered online is anything from fanciful to false, ludicrously fictitious to full and damnable lies, I've, from time to time, tried to present a corrected record.  Well, last night, after claiming that Galileo was executed for believing in a heliocentric universe, one of them told a really damnable lie, that the infamously anti-religious Martin Bormann was a Catholic.   And for that I will point out, before presenting him, in his own words, what I said last night, that his anti-religious rants would fit right in on many atheist dominated comment threads today.

Here, as quoted in The Third Reich Source Book by Anson Rainbach, Sander L. Gilman  University of California Press 2013 pg. 440-441, (any typos are mine).

Confidential memorandum circulated on 6 June 1941.  First published in The Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1954 - 1 October 1946, document 075-D, XXXV (Nuremberg, 1947-49), 7-13.

National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable.  The Christian churches build upon man's ignorance and endeavor to keep the greatest possible number of people in a state of ignorance.  For it is only in this fashion that the churches can maintain their power.  National Socialism, on the other hand, rests on scientific foundations.  Christianity has certain unalterable principles, established nearly two thousand years ago, which have petrified into a system of dogma that is even further removed from reality.  National Socialism, on the other hand, if it is to fulfill its purpose, must forever be brought in harmony with the latest results of scientific inquiry.

The Christian churches have always recognized the dangers that threaten their existence from the exact discoveries of science.   They have therefore tried to suppress or falsify scientific research using fraudulent science, i.e., theology, and dogma.  Our National Socialist concept of the world is on a far higher plane than than are the ideas of Christianity, whose essential points have been taken over from the Jews.   For that reason, too, we have no need for Christianity.  [...]

When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not mean the same thing as naive Christians and their clerical exploiters have in mind -- some anthropoid creature sitting around somewhere in the spheres.  Instead, our intent is to open people's eyes to the fact that, aside from this small planet earth, which is relatively insignificant with relation to the vast universe, there is an unimaginably great number of other celestial bodies in the universe, an infinite number of bodies surrounded as is the sun by planets and, like these planets, in turn, similarly surrounded by smaller bodies, moons.  The power of nature's law that propels these infinite bodies through the universe is what we call the omnipotent force, or God.  The claim that this universal force could somehow care for the fate of each individual, of each bacillus here on earth, that it might be influenced by so-called prayers or other astounding things, rests to a great degree on the naivete or on profit-minded impertinence. 

We National Socialists, on the other hand, demand of ourselves that we live as naturally as possible -- that is to say, in accord with the natural laws of life.  The more precisely we understand and observe the laws of nature and of life and the more closely we adhere to them, the more we correspond to the will of that omnipotent force.  The more we understand that will, the greater our successes shall be. 

The logical conclusion that flows from this basic incompatibility between National Socialist and Christian views is that we must reject any increase in existing support for and any sponsorship of emerging Christian denominations.  For this reason, we have definitively abandoned the idea of establishing an Evangelical Lutheran Reich Church formed from a conglomeration of the various denominations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church because the Protestant Church is as hostile to us as the Catholic Church.  offering any form of support to the Protestant Church would ultimately work against us. [...]

For the first time in German history, the leadership of the nation rests consciously and completely in the hands of the Fuhrer himself.  In creating the party, its organizations, and subsidiaries, the Fuhrer has devised an instrument for himself and thus for the whole of the German national leadership that renders him independent of the church.  All influences that might impair or even harm the leadership exercised by the Fuhrer and the aid of the National Socialist Party must be eliminated.  More and more, the people must be wrested from the clutches of the churches and their ministries.  It is obvious from their point of view that the churches shall and must resist this loss of power.  But never again are the churches to receive any measure of influence over the leadership of the nation.  That influence must be broken, completely and forever.  

Only the nation's government -- and by its order, the party, its organizations and subsidiaries -- exercises the right of governance over the people and the nation.  Just as the harmful influences of astrologers, fortune-tellers, and other swindlers are being systematically eliminated and suppressed by the state, so too must the possibility of ecclesiastical influence be removed.  Only when that has occurred will the nation's leadership be able to exert complete control over the individual citizen.  Only then will Volk and Reich be secure in their existence for all future times. 

Update:  Here's the original, in German, beginning on page 9.

I am tempted to find statements by atheist heroes today for comparison, though I would imagine most people who had read a lot of them and, even more, their anonymous fans online, would find what Hitler's second in command said sounds very familiar.