What Does Faith Mean? Same as in St. Thomas' Day!

Tyrone

status

why do you apply logic and evidence to literally everything in life—health, money, decisions—but abandon it when it comes to the bible?

you don’t run your life on faith when it comes to doctors, mechanics, or finances. you demand evidence. so why lower the standard here?

what’s the justification for using a completely different set of rules for one belief?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

When I stopped drinking a pint of beer every evening on the day of St. Lucy, I was exercising FAITH on three items:

• that I did not have a fractured bone in the left toe
• that I did have very probably gout
• and that alcohol is one factor that makes gout occur.

Now, it's only one, and some have been pushing other risk factors, but these three things were NOT things I could have checked for myself, I had to have FAITH in what the doctors said, because of their expertise.

Faith isn't absence of logic, it's confidence in someone who knows better trumping what the own logic would have one believe (I had gone to the hospital believing I had a fracture).

Tyrone

Hans-Georg Lundahl You dont know what the word 'faith' means. You're trying to redefine it to make your religious beliefs sound as reasonable as trusting a doctor, and it's a pathetic and dishonest comparison.

You didn't have 'faith' in your doctor. You had trust based on EVIDENCE. You trusted them because doctors have years of medical training, they use diagnostic tools like x-rays, they understand biochemistry, and there is a massive, publicly verifiable track record of them successfully diagnosing and treating things like gout. Their expertise is built on a mountain of EVIDENCE. If your doctor told you to treat your gout by sacrificing a goat, you'd get a new doctor.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Yes, I do know.

"You're trying to redefine it to make your religious beliefs sound as reasonable as trusting a doctor"

Well, that's the meaning.

I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.

Summa Theologiae, I Pars, Q 1, A 2, Corpus of the article.

Tyrone

Hans-Georg Lundahl You think quoting a 13th-century monk proves what 'faith' means today? You're just hiding behind Thomas Aquinas because you got caught dishonestly comparing religious faith to trusting a doctor.

You can call your 'sacred doctrine' a 'science' all you want, but it's not. Real science is based on testable evidence. Yours is based on 'principles revealed by God', which is just a fancy way of saying you have to believe it with no evidence.

Your analogy of a musician and a mathematician is stupid. A musician can test the principles of harmony for themselves. You cannot test your 'revealed' principles. You just have to believe.

You didnt answer the point. You just tried to hide behind a quote from a guy who lived before the scientific method was even invented. You're trying to redefine faith to make it sound reasonable, and when you got called out, you ran away to a medieval philosopher.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"what 'faith' means today?"

Faith is about the Catholic religion, which is the exact same one today and in his day.

"A musician can test the principles of harmony for themselves."

Yes, but a beginner can't.

"before the scientific method was even invented"

What the H...l do you mean by "the scientific method"? Denial of God as explanation?

Because, if it means anything else, St. Thomas as well as his more natural sciences oriented mentor St. Albert were great exponents of "scientific method" if it means doing science with a rational method.

And by the way, as there are different sciences and different questions in each science, there is no "one" scientific method.

Challenge not met

HGL's F.B. writings: Challenge not met · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Spinoff Debate with Justin Roe

Creation vs Evolution Debate Group

Hans-Georg Lundahl

status / question challenge

23.III.2026, 18:07

If man evolved from apes ("from non-human apes" according to a certain modern terminology), what intermediate is there between:

a) ape:
1 sound = 1 message

b) human:
1 or usually more sounds = 1 meaning unit,
1 or usually more meaning units = 1 message.

All Human Languages are Human, None are "Primitive"
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2026/03/all-human-languages-are-human-none-are.html

A

Joe Dennehy

Here you go, you could place them in chronological order

[Image of "human ancestors"]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sorry, I wasn't speaking of skeleta.

I was speaking of two clearly different ways of communicating. Check my question once again.

Bill Vanyo

Hans-Georg Lundahl Your question isn't clear.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I think it is very clear, since after ape, I gave a characterisation of what exactly in the ape I was talking of: what intermediate is there between:

a) ape:
1 sound = 1 message

And again, after human (note, adjective, not noun), I have a characterisation of what in human communication I was talking of:

b) human:
1 or usually more sounds = 1 meaning unit,
1 or usually more meaning units = 1 message.

I also gave a link dealing with the human side of the pretended equation.

If you replace "sound" with "phoneme" and "meaning unit" with, not word but "morpheme" and then "message" with "phrase, you get the exact terminology used by linguists. I was trying to be popular and roughly comprehensible even to non-linguists.

Joe Dennehy

Hans-Georg Lundahl you failed

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Not as far as I can see.

Joe Dennehy You DO admit as a fact that human language involves double patterning?

Take your words "you failed", they involve three morphemes. "You" = telling the one you're talking to you're talking about him.
"Fail ..." = stating what you state if a failure
"... ed" = stating what you state is sth that already happened.

"You" involves two phonemes "y" and "oo". Neither of which states anything by itself.
"Fail..." involves three phonemes, "f" and "ey" and "l" none of which states anything by itself.
"... ed" involves one or two morphemes, here only one, "d" which doesn't state anything by itself except when used in this ending.

B

Dudley Chapman

Here are all the intermediates you asked for:

Natural History Museum: The origin of our species
By Jenny Wong and Lisa Hendry
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-origin-of-our-species.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Dudley Chapman I think I already gave Joe Dennehy the response that I wasn't asking about anatomy, but stages of transition between two very different systems of communication.

Dudley Chapman

Hans-Georg Lundahl what do you know about languages used by the species that are ancestors to humans?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If you think Ramapithecus was ancestral, one can reasonably presume that "ancestor" communicated like apes do.

The point is a VERY basic distinction between ape communication and human communication.

So basic you should be able to do a kind of theoretic modelling of how the transition happened ... if it was even possible for it to happen.

My point is, it wasn't possible, and therefore didn't happen.

C

Corey Taylor

Wild Apes make tons of sounds and body language cues with hundreds of messages .. where do you get this 1 sound from ?

α

Dudley Chapman

Corey Taylor he is making stuff up as he goes along. It bothers me how little effort some people put into their Christian testimony. As if it is more faithful to remain totally ignorant of a subject so you can say ridiculous things.

St. Augustine warned us about this in his treatise on reading Genesis literally.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Dudley Chapman Can you stop being a damned calumniator?

For your soul's sake, if you don't care about mine!

"in his treatise on reading Genesis literally."

In his treatise on the Literal Reading of Genesis. And you are quotemining a certain passage which is a very short passage of book I, in a total of XII books.

Dudley Chapman

Hans-Georg Lundahl yes, thanks,

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” (1 Tim. 1:7)

-St. Augustine of Hippo (The Literal Meaning of Genesis Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Thank you!

You found the quote mined quote!

If this is one of at least 39 paragraphs of one of at least 19 chapters of in fact one out of twelve books, do you think this is all St. Augustine had to say?

It. Quite. Frankly. Isn't.

And thanks for giving the title correct this time. On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, not On Reading Genesis Literally, meaning, he is, book after book, chapter after chapter, paragraph after paragraph discussing what Genesis actually says. This passage is in the contect of his defending fix stars being in a sphere rather than on a flat disc. Some people actually did read exactly one passage to that latter effect, and that's what he polemising against.

Not against Geocentrism (he was Geocentric, which you would know if you had read book 1), not against Young Earth Creationism (which you would know if you had read City of God), and especially not against Adam being created directly from soil, rather than through living intermediaries.

β

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Corey Taylor READ AGAIN.

I did not say apes makes just one sound. I DID say with apes making one specific sound equals making one whole message.

They lack what in human language is called "double articulation" or "dual patterning" which is a very basic concept in linguistics.

I don't know if apes have 50 or 500 different sounds, but it should be in that area. That's a total of 50 to 500 different messages they can convey. Because, with apes, each sound has a meaning. That meaning is a message.

Corey Taylor

Hans-Georg Lundahl again… you’re only looking at half the picture because primates utilize body language just as much if not more than actual vocalizations to convey messages. Same with the most mammals.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Body langugage ALSO has one gesture = one complete message.

Body language also HASN'T double articulation or dual patterning.

D

Ire NE

Humans are humans and Animals are animals. That's it!

E

Justin Roe

This is basic sets and subsets. Literal 6-month-old babies get this.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

But 6 month old apes don't.

So, how do you explain the transition?

Justin Roe

Hans-Georg Lundahl uh, 6 month old humans ARE 6 month old apes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Look, I didn't ask whether men were apes, I'm aware of the terminology you are using.

That's the exact reason why I added a parenthesis:

If man evolved from apes ("from non-human apes" according to a certain modern terminology), ...

How about getting to the question which is why man communicates so differently from apes, or on your terminology "non-human apes" ... do you have a clue are are you trying to avoid the question by heckling my terminology?

Justin Roe

Hans-Georg Lundahl there are a variety of hypotheses for the evolution of human language. It's a frontier of study at the moment, are you proposing that such a thing "can't evolve"? We know some of the genes responsible for our speech capacity.

Additionally, molecular analysis conclusively demonstrates that if "apes" is a real clade, we nest within it, as panins (chimps and bonobos) are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas, all African great apes (including us) are more closely related to one another than any is to the orangutans, and all hominids (great apes) are more closely related to each other than any is to the hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs, or "lesser apes").

If placing the origin of language as a supernatural intervention by whatever deity or deities you believe in helps you sleep better at night, go ahead until further discoveries are made.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"there are a variety of hypotheses for the evolution of human language."

Yeah ... care to take up and defend one? Not least on how it deals with the proposed problem?

"It's a frontier of study at the moment"

Been so for decades, like Abiogenesis. Since early optimism got some sane input from people knowing what language is, I suppose.

"are you proposing that such a thing "can't evolve"?"

Yes.

"We know some of the genes responsible for our speech capacity."

Feral children have them too. Human language can only be learned by people with a certain FOXP2 Gene, with Broca's and Wernicke's areas in the brain (plus adequate apparatus for sound production and hearing), but it has to be actually learned, you aren't born with actual knowledge of human language.

I can in principle explain the transition from Latin to French, in a very big resolution of detail. But Latin, like French, already has the human three tier system. Ape communication hasn't.

"molecular analysis"

I'm not betting on apes being one real clade. But molecules are not responsible for the input in language learning, only for the receptivity.

F

Barry Peterson

You can see many of the homonid fossils with your own eyes at the Smithsonian…..

[image]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Barry Peterson You are the third person so far who just skims through my question and presumes I was asking for the intermediates between apes and men. I asked for the possible intermediates between ape communication and human communication.

Barry Peterson

Hans-Georg Lundahl I suggest you research the homonids ath the Smithsonian. Some of them utilized advanced communication….Beyond Homo sapiens, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) are the strongest candidates for having spoken, as evidence suggests they possessed the hyoid bone, ear structure, and FOXP2 gene necessary for complex speech. *Homo erectus* and other archaic humans also likely had some form of vocal communication.

Australian Museum: How do we know if they could speak?
Author(s), Fran Dorey | Updated, 21/10/20
https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/how-do-we-know-if-they-could-speak/

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You are still misconstruing my question.

It wasn't "which extinct presumed species were also human and could speak" but given some ancestry on your view actually COULDN'T speak, how do you explain the transition, in principle?

Some FB Admins Hate Chesterton

I regularly share Chesterton quotes on FB.

Both my accounts have now been de facto blocked from access.

At least the Georges Pompidou library right now.

The one which has a composition of mine as profile picture was blocked in another library too and has been that for some days.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
https://www.facebook.com/hansgeorglundahl/

But the same is also the case with the other account:

Hans-Georg Lundahl
https://www.facebook.com/hglundahl/

From Rivarol I know that Islamist leaning Muslims are doing the Admins on FB France. I also know an Englishman or US American FB Friend, who is not among my most intimate, got a birthday present, a link to a post of mine, which he may not have appreciated. But even if he "sounded the alarm bell" he could not do anothing himself, it would have to go through Admins of FB or of the internet connections (and that's less economic, it would be two libraries and one cyber)./HGL

PS, I find a QR code as a means of connecting myself:

Scannez le code QR et confirmez que les codes correspondent pour vous connecter.
KAG-ICR-HUFI

I do not have a cell phone, so I can't. I always use computers only for connection./HGL

PPS, fixed for one of them, right now [hglundahl]/HGL

PPPS, in case you wonder, less than two hours after I published this./HGL

PPPPS, still not fixed for the other [hansgeorglundahl]/HGL

Shared

One of the biggest changes for me post retirement (which I hope doesnt mean I am turning into an alkie)🤣 is the desire and ability to enjoy a Guinness on any day. At work in the University I didn't drink during the day - contact with students and complex meetings precluded that). Now I do it when I choose, if I have walked the calories off beforehand and eat with it.

Responding to Culture Wars on Tolkien

Tolkien got the main symbols in The Hobbit from Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle,*

Like?

Obviously, omitting things that Wagner had in common with Norse sources that Tolkien could read directly without Wagner (and the actual Wagner fan CSL in addition to Wagner).

Dragon, hoard, dwarf, talking bird, do not count. These are all in the Norse sources as well.

---

* From "The West Has Failed: Tolkien, Traditionalism and Islamophobia" January 06, 2026/ E. Michael Jones, in Culture Wars

Geocentric Assault on Atheism

HGL's F.B. writings: Geocentric Assault on Atheism · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Refutation of Le Maître's main point · Parallax and Tycho

DB

status

god only appears in your mind and in books, but not in real life.

prove me wrong .

HGL

Take a look up the sky. Note where the sun is. Look back same spot same direction an hour later or two.

Wait until night. Note where the Moon is. Look back same direction an hour later or two.

Also at night, look for a constellation you can recognise. Look back same direction an hour later or two.

If all these things turn around us, at around the same rate, who is moving them?

I

KR

Hans-Georg Lundahl gravity and the continuous expansion of the universe. That question was answered by science in the 1500’s when gravity was first conceived of.

HGL

I'm sorry, but those factors do not answer the exact question I put:

If all these things turn around us, at around the same rate, who is moving them?

Instead, it requires to assume that they are NOT turning around us each day, and that it's Earth that's turning.

Those are extra assumptions, clearly not necessary if God is moving the universe.

II

GH

A

Why say who? Why not say what is moving them? You question is silly 😜

GH

B

Heavenly Body... okay😜 Indoctrination is a powerful thing...

HGL

GH The movement of the universe around us every day involves a displacement of planetary movements so intricate (heliocentric orbits around a Sun with a double geocentric one, daily and yearly) that they would be swept away by the daily motion if there was no delicacy to the sheer force of turning the universe around us.

Besides, each heavenly body that's luminous to us, whether a reflector or a self-luminous one, seems to have an independent movement, so they are not just all one single inside of a ball that the luminaries are glued to. So, the taking of all these bodies together around us requires some intelligence.

Your answers that involve a "what" also typically involve reinterpreting the observed geocentric movement each day into a spin of the earth itself.

GH

= A

HGL

I think I already answered your "new one" and you switched the prior one to another topic. Heavenly body is a term. In France "corps céleste" and in Germany "Himmelskörper" are even mainstream terms.

Has nothing to do with "indoctrination" ...

As I blocked GH for his duplicitous dealing, I got no answer from him. But, also, not from DB or KR.

PS, If anyone would like to argue, "no, the actual argument is, kalaam, and 20th C. science has proven the universe is not eternal" ... while it has, fine, but St. Paul in Romans 1 wasn't referring to the act of creation 5000 + years earlier, nor to 20th C. science, he was referring to sth which has been visible since the beginning (but not as since that or any beginning) so in a sense it would work as well if the universe were in fact eternal. It isn't, as we know from faith, but even if it were, the daily motion of it around earth involves too intricate and compared to the whole delicate motions to come from a blind force of nature./HGL

Fascism (Why Nordic Social Democracy is Worse)

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sharing on Eugenics · On Vikings and Sapmi · LARP-ing Isn't Evil Nor (to Catholic Sensibilities) Awkward · HGL's F.B. writings: Fascism (Why Nordic Social Democracy is Worse) · New blog on the kid: Swedish Social Democrats Were Criminal in a Way that Franco Wasn't

Kenneth Johansson

4.X.2025

A brilliant essay about Fascism, by Wayne Allensworth:

What is “Fascism”? (Fascism, Real and Imagined)
By Wayne Allensworth | October 1, 2025
https://www.american-remnant.com/what-is-fascism-fascism-real-and-imagined/

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Not brilliant:

"Fascism, especially its Nazi form, rejected Christian morality as weakening the folk, preventing the fascists from purifying the nation."

Change this to "Nazism rejected ..." and put it out of an essay on Fascism and into an essay on Nazism, where it belongs.

Not accurate:

"Fascism is not a reactionary, much less a conservative, ideology. The fascists of the 1920s and 30s saw themselves as revolutionaries displacing a stagnant bourgeois order."

No Fascism saw itself as simply Conservative (neither did Chesterton, and I mean the Catholic, not the Mosleyist), but some (and so did Chesterton) saw themselves as Reactionary. Bourgeoisie is a product of English Reformation over Whig Revolters to Glorious Revolution, and in France of the French Revolution as much as of the Bourbons.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera polemised against Rousseau, and against the Revolutions. René de La Tour du Pin and Charles Maurras, granddad and dad of French Fascism, were Monarchists and against the French Revolution.

Kenneth Johansson

Hans-Georg Lundahl; I agree that the first quotation should be about Nazism, as Mussolini was skeptical of Hitler's ideas about race. (But I still think that, on the whole, the essay is brilliant.)

When it comes to Fascism being reactionary or conservative, I agree with Allensworth.

Fascism wasn't a significant movement outside of Italy (counting Nazism as a separate entity here). It was almost all about Italy and Mussolini, and he wasn't much of a reactionary. You could probably find many followers who were; but Mussolini ruled, and Fascism basically began and ended with him.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Fascism wasn't a significant movement outside of Italy"

Spain, like Falange and first years after 1939?

Brazil, like Integralismo (the youth affiliation of Dom Helder)

Portugal is a bit more complicated, since Estado Novo by Salazar was modelled on Estado Novo by a Brazilian guy who wasn't best friends with Integralists.

France, like Action Française and Pétain (obviously, my support for him wavers with 1942 and the Laval government).

Kenneth Johansson

Hans-Georg Lundahl; the Falange had very limited support, and Franco was very much in charge after the Spanish Civil War.

Was Salazar a Fascist? I see him more as a traditional authoritarian leader, like Franco.

What made Mussolini unusual was his enthusiasm for war. He attacked Ethiopia in 1935, Albania in 1939, declared war on France and the United Kingdom -- and invaded Greece -- in 1940, and joined Germany in invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Most right-wing leaders were more careful.

There were large movements in Brazil and France, which were somewhat significant in those countries, but they didn't matter much on the global stage. France was broken after the defeat, and Pétain didn't have much to say. Hitler rarely respected his allies, and kept them in a short leash. I suspect that he had respect for Mannerheim, but he had real power, and was never a puppet.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Was Salazar a Fascist? I see him more as a traditional authoritarian leader, like Franco."

Insofar as they had some degree of Corporativism, they have been counted as Fascists.

1939 to 1975 Franco was in charge, but the first years were more Fascist, the time from 1960 is called "tecncracía" ... more focussed on getting riches for Spain than on equal distribution. That said, Franco's Spain was a wellfare state, he did invest in making cheap flats available.

"What made Mussolini unusual was his enthusiasm for war."

Thanks for unusual. Dollfuss and Schuschnigg didn't share it (also Schuschnigg commented later that "Austro-Fascist" was more of a nickname than a good description, but it did involve a Unitary Worker's Syndicate, so Corporatism).

Mannerheim was unfortunately into Eugenics, like Wendell Holmes, like Lenin, like Hitler, like the Social Democrats of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Pétain had more to say 1940 to 42 than afterwards, like Mussolini between 1922 and 1943 (42?). I'm not judging them on Laval II or Salò Republic.

Kenneth Johansson

Hans-Georg Lundahl; yes, it's always difficult to draw the lines regarding Fascism, as it has become a slur for the Left. The Communists used to call Social Democrats "social fascists"! 🙂

I like to treat Nazism and Fascism as two different movements -- even if the connections can't be ignored. Furthermore, I see a clear difference between Mussolini and the other leaders you mentioned. So I prefer to keep "Fascism" as a designation for the Italian movement. I see on Wikipedia that the Catholic Church favored bottom-up corporatism, while Mussolini preferred a top-down model; do you agree with this?

Eugenics was, unfortunately, popular all over Northern Europe and the United States. Protestant churches were, usually, much weaker than the Catholics regarding this, and didn't offer much resistance. But I don't know anything about Mannerheim's views -- your information is new to me.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"The Communists used to call Social Democrats "social fascists"!"

In Sweden, not totally untrue. "Saltsjöbadsandan" was introduced by one member of both Social Democrats and Nysvenskarne, as Per Engdahl, the founder of Nysvenskarne, i e Swedish Fascism, says in Fribytare i Folkhemmet.

His models were Carta del Lavoro and Perón's politics.

"I see on Wikipedia that the Catholic Church favored bottom-up corporatism, while Mussolini preferred a top-down model; do you agree with this?"

The real difference is, while Catholicism favours both bottom-up and top-down corporativism, Catholicism doesn't think membership in a Corporation should be mandatary as prerequisite of doing your work (either as employee or employer). Mussolini made it mandatory, Pius XI didn't totally condemn him, but remarked "there are more than one way to Corporatism" (meaning Mussolini's wasn't totally to his taste).

"Eugenics was, unfortunately, popular all over Northern Europe and the United States."

Not all the states, but too many. UK was also exempt from actually practising it, probably due to a bigger minority of Catholics at the time.

When Albanus Schachleiter OSB, who was a personal friend of Hitler and got in trouble with the bishop of Munich for it, remarked that National Socialism risked getting too Protestant, I think this (as well as compulsory camps for loafers) was what he was talking about.

I'm not sure how much it has to do with Mannerheim's personal views, it so happens it started in Finland while he was President. He didn't stop it. However, I think the victims were fewer in Finland.

Kenneth Johansson

Hans-Georg Lundahl; I think the idea about Social Democracy being a variant of fascism came from Moscow in the 1920s. Stalin said this, in 1924: "Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism."*

On the other hand, I believe that the Social Democratic Party of Germany viewed Stalinists as fascists! 🙂

* Source: J. V. Stalin
Concerning the International Situation
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/09/20.htm

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, in 1924, SD and Fascists were both pretty pro-property and pro-syndicates.

Mussolini and (while he lived) Matteotti clashed over electoral technicalities, not over economics.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Eugenics was, unfortunately, popular all over Northern Europe and the United States."

I forgot to mention, Catholic Fascisms (except possibly Pétain) were an honourable exception.

Even Mussolini wasn't for Eugenics back when Chesterton asked!

_________________

In the following, I have shortened the name of HGr, since I don't know him or how willing he is to appear in person on my blog, and in the interest of symmetry, Kenneth Johansson to KJ, myself to HGL.

HGr

I think this was a rather lazy take on the subject, blaming "ungodliness" as the main issue.

KJ

HGr; I agree that the loss of religion was a complicated matter, leading to all sorts of knock-on effects -- and I would also argue that culture is strongly connected to biology.

Nordic history is another complicated issue. Absence of war was important, IMO, but also absence of colonies (with a few exceptions). France and the United Kingdom struggled to cope with losing their empires, while we focused on improving our economies without such baggage.

Japan became peaceful after WWII, but they didn't have much choice after getting thoroughly destroyed. It was the same thing in Germany. People didn't have much faith in the old religions, but were sick of the new ones as well, so they put their energy into producing cars, et cetera.

Regarding Hitler: I don't see how things could have ended much differently. His ambitions were so extreme, and he was so delusional, that I think America and the Russians would have defeated him sooner or later. Had he been more successful with Operation Barbarossa, the Russians could have retreated further east, behind the Ural Mountains.

HGL

HGr "Ungodly western societies like here in the Nordics remained civilized on pretty much all points long after God left the picture."

Eugenics?

HGr

HGL Are you inferring that we in the Nordics practiced eugenics? We didn't. For a few decades in the mid 20th century Sweden had a set of very basic laws on parents that had kids and were deemed anti-social, meaning they were not capable of caring for their kids and they were sterilized after the second child. Doesn't strike me as a crime against humanity or even any kind of Nazism. Minorites and Swedes faced the same consideration.

HGL

"and they were sterilized"

Exactly. Eugenics.

And that is exactly what Nazis did from basically "day one" or more precisely February 1934.

It's also what Pope Pius XI condemned in Casti Connubii, in 1931. As this was before 1933, he wasn't looking primarily at Nazis, but at for instance Nordics or some US and Canadian states.

As to "deemed anti-social" the definitions weren't directly race based (neither was the one used in 1934 by NS Germany), but criteria for anti-social targetted Gipsies, Tatters and Lapps disproportionately often (or Greenlanders in Denmark).

"Doesn't strike me as a crime against humanity"

It certainly doesn't strike me as civilised to give doctors or social workers arbitrary and very oppressive powers over citizens. With abortion, Nordics have at least by now passed the line to crime against humanity. But already back then, when aborting trisomic babies was recommended.