Is there a correlation between religious fundamentalism and holocaust denying?

Sorry bout that, Taz. I didn't see your prior mention. Well. I dunno. 16 miles of files!Toward the end of the war, documentation (for all practical intents and purposes) ceased and the Nazis destroyed what they could ... but I think their nauseatingly efficient paper trail is still largely intact.Of course, we won't know until the PhD boys tear into the archive and start writing. Sure.But. There were over 20,000 ghettos and camps. I doubt the extermination squads matched the ghettos/camps in numbers. Even if you add everybody else together, the Jewish folks wiped out in the camps still got them beat ... to say nothing of the Jewish folks killed by the extermination squads, the ghettos, etc.

On an individual basis, yes, some were harder to prove than others. The German people have always been a meticulous bunch. I don't know if that's just social perception, but it certainly seems that way. Some people's families were fortunate enough to have uncovered documentation supporting the notion that their loved one was indeed killed at [pick one] concentration camp. Others, I'm sure, were not nearly as fortunate. All they know is that their family had been taken away, but never came back. Yes, it was a problem in the case of Idi Amin, and as you said elsewhere, with Slobodan Milosevic-- as far as it relates to individuals. You mean like a rigged court? While the trial was going on, I remember wondering what would have happened had the Iraqi people pulled an O.J. on Saddam. I wonder if the US would have ensured, by hook or by crook, that he went down for his war crimes. I agree. There are enough unknowns that you and I may seem as self-evident, that the conspiracy theorists use as license to prop up theories on. Agreed.An interesting trait among conspiracy theorists is that, usually, they believe in all of them or most. For instance, if someone believes that Tupac and Biggie Smalls are living on some island laughing their way to the bank, you can pretty much be certain that they also believe Roswell, 9/11, JFK, Moon landing, etc, etc too.Why is that? Does it add intrigue to their life that they feel they are missing? What about the uncertainty that is so alluring to these kind of people? Why are they apt to believe it just because its controversial? Do they just want to be called esoteric-- the guy who has the inside scoop where the rest of us are unaware?

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Really? I find it the exact opposite. It's fairly difficult to find someone who rejects all woo and conspiracy theories - a skeptic, in other words. It's much more common to find persons who hold one or two unsupportable beliefs, like a belief in aliens, or Bigfoot, or Jesus; but when they're exposed to the proponents of another scam, who are using precisely the same arguments in favor of their position as the first group, they can't seem to get along.It's weirdly inconsistent, like they're picking dogma from a Chinese menu. "Sure, Jesus, Bigfoot, and moon hoaxes I can believe in; what? Aliens, homeopathy, and Holocaust denial? What are you, some kind of crank?" You tell me, NJ. You fell for the creationist scam and Christianity. What was missing in your life that you felt you needed a magic Sky Fairy to fulfill?

Well, you got me there.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

I wouldn't necessarily call conspiracy theorists, "skeptics." Obviously, for face value, they are skeptical of a paradigm. Noted. However, the people that refer to themselves as skeptics (such as Michael Shermer), are not swayed by anecdotal evidence-- or so they say.It reminds me of an episode of Penn and Teller where they set out to debunk the 9/11 conspiracy theories. In the show, it features a man on a stage saying, rather vehemently, that nothing can make him believe that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. At that, Penn blasts him saying, (paraphrasing) "NOTHING will make you believe otherwise? Then you aren't a true skeptic, because a skeptic demands to be proven otherwise."In that sense, I agree with Penn that such people are not true skeptics, even though they might be skeptical of a certain paradigm. I don't see it that way, generally speaking. If one believes 9/11 was a conspiracy, chances are, he thinks JFK and Roswell was too. These are the kind of people that play Tivo reruns of the X-Files in their dark and dank basement. I'm sure you know the type.

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Does it add intrigue to their life that they feel they are missing?

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There's a flipside to that coin my friend, which should make it easy to see a clear motive behind it all. The mere fact that people devote countless hours trying to prove the non-existence of "Sky Fairies" is extremely telling of their disposition. It would be one thing simply to not believe. Its a whole other thing to try and find satisfying reasons why a God wouldn't exist.There must be something disturbingly gratifying for an atheist to try and bash someone's time honored beliefs for no apparent reason. Perhaps they are trying to persuade themselves more than the other person.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Er, I'm not. Quite the opposite. How did you manage to misunderstand me so completely? Why? Why aren't those the exact same thing? To reject a proposition without any sort of reason for doing so isn't good skepticism, either. Obviously, as atheists we come up with rationale for holding atheist positions. Why wouldn't we? It's not for "no apparent reason", and it's not "bashing." It's addressing the claims of religion to defend ourselves against the persecution of religionists.What, Christians are the only people who can talk about what they believe? I might just as easily ask you why you feel the need to bash gays all the time. Very suspicious!

crashfrog responds to me:

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Cheesecake is pie. Don't you watch "Good Eats"?

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Yes, I do. In fact, the fried turkey episode just finished.Cheesecake is custard. From the episode:

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

That's a good one. The pretzels episode has permanent residence on my MythTV box. Custard pie, according to Alien Elvis. Not to make an argument from authority, but if Alien Elvis says it, it must be true. (I guess that is an argument from authority.)

molbiogirl writes:

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Even if you add everybody else together, the Jewish folks wiped out in the camps still got them beat

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My understanding is that about 11 million people died in the Holocaust, of which about 6 million were Jews.Nearly 11 million Soviet Soldiers died in the war along with nearly another 12 million civilians and another 1 million Jews from the death camps, for just under one-third of all deaths in the war. About 13% of the entire population of the Soviet Union died from WWII. The only countries with higher proportional death rates were Poland and Lithuania.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Nemesis Juggernaut writes:

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The mere fact that people devote countless hours trying to prove the non-existence of "Sky Fairies" is extremely telling of their disposition.

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Oh, that's just precious.You shove your religion in another person's face and somehow it's their neurosis for responding to it.Imagine how much time they would spend "trying to prove the non-existence of 'Sky Fairies'" if you would simply stop trying to force their attentions onto them.

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There must be something disturbingly gratifying for an atheist to try and bash someone's time honored beliefs for no apparent reason.

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Boy...talk about projection.Do you really think atheists sit around all day and obsess about the non-existence of god?Tell ya what, NJ: Spend a year simply not talking about god and see how many atheists bring it up to you. It doesn't count if somebody else brings up the subject and they respond. It must be a completely original statement from them.

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Perhaps they are trying to persuade themselves more than the other person.

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Yeah, now I know you're projecting.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Apology accepted.

First off your comparison to those great events is unfair. Second, it is not weird, it is relative. It is history, and not the kind of history I ever paid attention to, or was interested in. I do regret that a bit now, as I am interested in it now, but do not have the time to start getting into it.I am more of a technical person, knowing my history of trains, planes, cars, boats and the such. I could ask you some obvious questions about those, and you may have never heard of it, even though it was highly publicized. I could tell you the first plane used in WW2, and the last, without looking it up. Ask me about some political group, or some dumbass people who deny the holocaust, I could give two craps about. Once again you display your ignorance, and you only see things to the relative world around you. To say I am weird is very wrong of you, and insulting.

Well, so am I, really.Do you agree or not agree that a person should go through life and heard the term "holocaust denier" at least once in his life? Not knowing any specific holocaust denier is forgivable just like not knowing the kind of planes that were used in WW2 is forgivable. But to not know of the existence of holocaust deniers or to not know the existence of planes in WW2 is not forgivable. Again, if you claim to not know any specific holocaust denier I'm fine with it as long as you know holocaust deiners exist. But to go through life not knowing they ever existed is willful ignorance at the very worst level, let alone the ultimate insult to the millions of victims of the holocaust.Regarding WW2, I can tell you a few things about Operation Overlord, Operation Barbarosa, etc. However, I don't expect everyone to even know anything about them. It's fine. But if you go through life not ever knowing that D-Day ever happened or there was such a thing as the Berlin Wall, why on Earth are you here talking to us?

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

That's not what riVeRraT is doing. He was ignorant of Holocaust deniers but now he isn't.Instead of railing against willful ignorance where there is none, why don't you do something about your own chosen field of ignorance and acquaint yourself with spell-checking software?(Double "s" in "Barbarossa". )

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
-- Joseph Goebbels
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Of course. We have several fundamental atheists on this board that are just as much, if not more, annoying and dogmatic than the religious fundies.

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In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
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En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
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A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium
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[Philosophy] stands behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had. - Archer Opterix [msg=-11,-316,210]