 By 1940, Hitler had abandoned even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity.According to Thomas Childers, after 1938 Hitler began to publicly support a Nazified version of science, particularly social Darwinism, at the core of Nazi ideology in place of a religious one; a development that is reflected in his increasingly hostile remarks towards religion in the "Table Talk".Historian Richard Weikart characterized Hitler's belief in "evolutionary ethics as the expression of the will of God" who routinely "equated the laws of nature and the will of Providence".