American Thinker: The Nazis and Christianity

Christianity had declined severely in Germany at the time the Nazis came to power, which is why the Nazis were able to come to power. 

Many atheists presume that the Nazis were a weird variation of Christianity. I use come from very old books, rather than Wikipedia.  I own these books and the books were written during the very years in which Nazism came to power.  The authors of these books came from a wide variety of perspectives -- Christian, Jewish, atheist, Marxist and the like.  All of the material in this article is replicated in which also has much more specifically researched and footnoted sources for each position.

Christianity had declined severely in Germany at the time the Nazis came to power, which is why the Nazis were able to come to power.  In his book, The Dictators, Richard Overy states that in the decades preceding the First World War Germany was becoming increasingly secular, and that after that war, from 1918 to 1931, 2.4 million Evangelical Christians formally renounced their faith as well as almost half a million Catholics.  In Prussia, only 21% of the population took communion and in Hamburg only five percent of the population took communion.  Before Hitler, German religious leaders were publicly condemning the rise of moral relativism and decline of traditional religious values.

“深入浅出”是一个常用的成语，譬如“张老师讲课总是能够深入浅出，”“这篇文章写的深入浅出，”表示一个复杂的概念或者事物被易于理解的方式解释或者描述。单就字面而言，“深入浅出”意味着“先难后易”的顺序。我们写文章，希望达到“深入浅出”的效果，但自小我的老师就开始教育我“浅入深出”的写作，即“循序渐进，逐步展开”，所谓“山重水复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村”。

想把文章写得“深入浅出”，到底是要遵循“深入浅出”的顺序，还是“浅入深出”的顺序？“深入浅出”意味着开章就要明义，把文章的对象挑明。如果文章的对象不言自明，譬如“吃苹果好处多”，人人知道什么是“吃”，什么是“苹果”，什么是“好处”，以及什么是“多”，这样的写法自然既清楚又简洁。如果文章的对象是“因果性与自我选择效应”，放在第一段，通常人能正确理解的只有一个“与”字。如此一来，这个“义”，“指”是“指”矣，“明”则未必，堪称“深入”。随即“浅出”，逐步解释什么是“因果性”，什么是“自我选择效应”。术语时常是通过术语来解释。为了“自我选择”，又需要使用“差异性与相对优势”，几个回合下来，就成新版圆环套圆环（娱乐城）了。“浅入深出”的顺序恰好反过来。要讲“因果性与自我选择效应”，先从“差异性与相对优势”开始，然后是“自我选择”，继而讲“因果性”，最后点名主旨：“因果性与自我选择效应”。遵循“深入浅出”的顺序，读者从头读到尾，一路不明白，直到最后才谜底揭开，真相大白。没有耐心的读者，这种文章尚未到达真相大白的最后关头，只怕已先往垃圾桶报到了。遵循“浅入深出”的顺序，从头到尾读者倒是都明白，只是不到最后，不知道你到底想干什么，尽说些别人早就晓得的事。碰到没耐心的读者，文章主题还没说出来，估计就先被扔到了垃圾桶。

看来看去，似乎并无两全之策，只能“两害相权取其轻”。“深入浅出”，读者至少模模糊糊知道你要干什么，如果有兴趣，自然会慢慢阅读，没有兴趣，已开始就把文章扔了，节约了时间，对这个社会也是好的。反观“浅入深出”，一些本来对文章所言问题感兴趣的人，因为耐心不够，没能阅读；一些耐心好的，读到最后，发现所讲的问题跟他无关，浪费了时间。如此权衡，要想做到“深入浅出”，还就得按照“深入浅出”的顺序写。

到了美国，参加一个英文写作的培训，总是被教育要使用“深入浅出”的顺序，因为美国人的思维都是所谓线性思维（一根筋？）。 我们古人似乎也是线性思维，后来进化了，才开始七拐八弯，喜耶？悲耶？

Because I am allergic to crabs and shrimps, I rarely try seafood. Last week Chef Wang happened to treat me with her homemade oyster soup. It broke my long-hold illusion on seafood, and stimulated me to have a try by myself. Today I finally made the first bowl of oyster soup, yet its success reminds me how essentially the incredible communication technology has changed our life style.

Actually, I even could not prepared the materials well without the wireless telephone. I could not find the oyster after being back and forth in H-mart's seafood area for a long time. If Chef Wang had not timely instructed me through cell phone to the right place, another frozen food area far away from the seafood area, I would have simply abandoned my ambition. However, it turned out that I bought the wrong type of fishcake, on which I did not ask Chef Wang for advice.

I could not start cooking without the Internet, either. Chef Wang showed me the whole process making the soup, but I only remember the taste when it's my turn to cook. In addition, Chief Wang did not pick up her phone. This time I first reached her husband via MSN, through whom I had the way to contact Chef Wang.

These things, actually, are happening everywhere and every time. People take it for granted instead of feeling amazing when they are talking to each other by Skype in wireless networks. "It is the way it is," we may say. Yet when I call my parents in the rural China, I aware that this world is not as it appear in our eyes.

When I was a child, the only way to get local information was to talk with neighbors face to face. At that time, people frequently visited each other; otherwise you would be block out of the community. This remained the dominant way of communication in my hometown when I left for college to Peking in 1996.

Things started changing since then, and I am lucky to be a witness. The first year in college was full of surprises for a village boy suddenly arrived in a metropolitan of 15 million populations. Even students were using pages and telephones that I thought were only for businessmen; however, cell phones were still far away for college students then. I also bought my only page as a senior searching for a job in 1999 fall, but it was stolen few months latter. I bought my first cell phone in the second month after graduation. At that time, cell phones' prices took a half of my monthly wage and the state-owned duopoly service providers charged heavily, so I compared all types of models and plans before I made the purchase. I was among the first group of my classmates having cell phones, but that privilege lasted only a very short time, just one year later, all my classmates had cell phones. After another one more year, when I returned to campus as a graduate student, most students had equipped with cell phones, while text messages became a most popular way of communication.