Aslaug's Axe Shed

I’ve written about historical revisionism before, but it -has- been a while by now. Tonight, however, I came across a link to a Danish homepage, listing famous holocaust deniers and debunking their claims systematically. The site, Holocaust.dk, was well worth the visit, even though it’s mainly targeted at school-children.

I read through their list of Danish deniers first, then their list of international deniers, and then finally a rather well constructed explanation of why holocaust deniers’ statements are patently false, and how easy it is to disprove their METHOD of argumentation. Now this was a new angle, and one I hadn’t seen before. Instead of trying to disprove their argument … something which is largely impossible with hardheads like that, because regardless of your evidence, they’ll simply go on denying everything, flying hard in the face of facts … you disprove their method of argumentation. That was a brilliant angle, and one that actually got me thinking.

You know … I love to exercise my critical thinking muscle.

Some people call it a brain, whaddya know?

Anyway, here’s what I ended up with:

Take one holocaust denier, and add one holocaust believer. Stir slightly, but not too violently or you’ll end up with bloodshed. Add a setting conducive to debate and allow to simmer.

Ahem, okay, cooking references aside, what I thought of was this:

The majority of holocaust deniers out there WILL, specifically, deny everything and anything. They’ll claim all documents pertaining to the mass slaughter of millions of people are forgeries. They’ll claim that no document has ever been found with an order from Hitler to kill Europe’s jews, and consequently, it can’t have happened. They’ll ignore the tens of thousands of pieces of hard, admissable evidence as fraudulent and fake, and no amount of reasoning or good sense will EVER get through to them. An example from Denmark comes from two years back, when a young Danish Neo-nazi had been interviewed for a newspaper, about his life and his choices and his beliefs. The guy was so bonkers that the newspaper volunteered to pay for a return ticket for him to go to Auschwitz with a then-84-year-old survivor from the camp. The nazi’s reaction to everything the old man told him was flat-out, in-your-face denial and rejection.

According to the young nazi, since the man hadn’t seen the actual gassing, it hadn’t happened. Since he hadn’t worked in the crematoria, they hadn’t existed. And so on. Classic denier strategy.

By the end of the visit, which was followed by a camera-crew, the old man shook his head as the young nazi pranced off, seemingly content in his rejections of facts. When the camera-crew asked him how he felt … the old man that is … his reaction was simple.

“I feel sorry for him,” he said. “Maybe with age, he will actually become intelligent.”

The thing is, he almost certainly won’t. But that same young man, who openly disputes that Hitler ever wanted to kill off all the Jews of Europe, is on record on the teeny tiny, minute, itsy-bitsy and easily-overlooked Danish Nazi Party’s homepage, for saying: “I have accomplished much. My first jew-kill is something I still have coming, however.”

Way to go, boy. Undermine your own ludicrous arguments a BIT more effectively, will ya?

However, that got me thinking …

And I think I’ve figured this out.

Holocaust deniers do not dispute that the Holocaust took place. They know it did. Their only objection is that it didn’t succeed fully, and that there were any survivors at all … be they Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Jehova’s Witnesses, mentally disabled, or one of the other numerous groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi state.

In reality, they would have loved to be there, and they would have loved to take part.

Most of them are only denying that it happened out of a perverse desire to provoke those people they consider the enemy. Which is why no amount of argumentation will ever work against them. Which is why trying to rationally argue with them is a lost cause. What needs doing is to laugh them down. Laugh down their idiotic, unscientific attempts at argumentation, so easily accomplished by the Logos-Ethos-Pathos-method that a third-grader could probably figure it out.

They want to see people’s reaction to their denials.

So here’s a thought. Meet their denial with something other than rage. Meet it with amusement. Like “Oh my, I had no idea you were a practical joker,” or “Dear me, I thought we were having a serious conversation here, but if you want to tell silly anecdotes, then please, I can always use a good laugh.”

Make THEM angry. That’s what they want to do with those of us who stand for reason, logic and who believe in the vast, overwhelming burden of evidence in this case.

Why give them the satisfaction of what they want? I myself have met holocaust deniers, and I’ve fallen into the same trap most other people do. I was offended and angered, and I was goaded into an argument that I now know I couldn’t win, because the objective for my opponent was never to have an argument, but simply to MAKE me angry.

I’ll be able to inform such people, in the future, of how vile and loathesome I think they are without giving them that satisfaction. The entirety of their argumentation is so flawed that all one really has to do is look at them and go “Do you know what the words Logos, Ethos and Pathos mean? And no, they’re not three musketeers.”

I think the next time it happens … if it ever does … I will reply to it with something along the lines of “look, we both know it happened. I don’t believe for one second that you doubt it took place. This is simple psychology. You’re trying to get your rocks off by pissing me off. So why don’t we cut the abject bullshit here, and agree that you’d have loved nothing better than to get your hands covered in blood, yourself. Go on … admit it. I won’t respect you for it, and I will never, ever agree with you, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve been honest and not a lying swine just this once in your miserable, useless life!”

*tip of imaginary hat*

*exit, stage left*

Okay, let me rephrase that.

Prop 8 takes the equivalent of a full broadside from the entire WWII US Navy Battleship squadron!

You should all be aware of my stance on equal rights for homosexuals by now. For the occasional newcomer, I can only refer to my older posts, but I’m not going to reiterate the whole thing here. What I AM going to reiterate is my revulsion at Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 was, as most of you probably know, a piece of Californian legislation passed on the same night as Obama was elected president. It was passed by popular referendum, and it specifically revoked the right of homosexuals to get married.

I want to underline this in extremis. It wasn’t a piece of legislation banning homosexuals from getting married … although in my opinion, that would have been bad enough. It was a piece of legislation REVOKING it.

It TOOK AWAY a civil right from a minority. Because of bias, homophobia, intolerance, bigotry or just plain, old-fashioned stupidity, 52 percent of the electorate decided to pass a law that REMOVED civil rights from a part of the population.

Since then, proponents of this piece of legislative filth has crowed loudly about their victory, claiming that “Americans chose traditional values” and other statements of the same ilk.

The most atrocious accusations have been made. Like accusations that homosexuals are allegedly unfit to be parents, and that kids growing up with same-sex couples as parents end up being socially unfit, poorly raised, stupid or other similar nonsense. It has COMPREHENSIVELY been proved wrong. So much so that by now, that particular argument is only used by the most rabid, foaming-about-the-mouth extremists.

Other arguments includes statements like “marriage isn’t a civil right”. Well, that is certainly an opinion, but under the letter of the law, married couples are guaranteed a greater degree of legal protection than couples who are NOT married. This goes for homosexual citizens too, and consequently, they are not offered the same legal protection as heterosexual citizens. This is so blatantly against the United States constitution I don’t even know where to begin outlining it, except to the actual wording.

The fourteenth amendment, passed on the ninth of July 1868, as a part of the ante-bellum reconstruction process after the Civil War, was meant to overturn Dred Scott Vs. Sandford, which is one of the most infamous and utterly inhumane legal cases in American history, where it was decided that African Americans could not be citizens. This court case from 1857 was, of course, from BEFORE the civil war, and it was a result of a deeply racist system, meant to keep black men and women in an unfathomable and deeply immoral state of involuntary bondage; slavery!

So the 14th amendment was passed, after almost two years of deliberation and proceedings.

The United States Constitution, Article 14, section 1 states, verbatim:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

There is absolutely no argument against this. There is absolutely no legitimate reasoning for denying any American citizen equal rights under the law, based on this simply but elegantly phrased section.

And don’t even start! I have heard the usual blah-blah-blah reasons before. “Then we should also allow people to have multiple spouses” or “What about people who want to marry animals?” or “If we allow this, we have to allow people to marry underage children as well!”

NO!

And here is the simple reason why those arguments do not even hold a single, solitary drop of water:

Equal protection under the law also means you must UPHOLD the law. Pedophilia is illegal in the United States. Bestiality is illegal in MOST of the United States (and don’t ask me why it isn’t covered by animal protection legislation in those parts where it’s not, because I won’t be able to answer you … it -should- be illegal everywhere) and of course polygami is also illegal throughout the entirety of the United States.

However, being gay IS NOT illegal. And unless we are talking about the grotesque idea of once again making homosexuality a punishable offense under the law … which is not the issue on debate here … then homosexuals MUST be offered equal protection under the law, as per the fourteenth amendment to Constitution of the United States of America.

I’ve heard all the bullshit arguments to the contrary. Or at least I’ve heard so many I feel entitled to say I’ve heard them all. And they are all based on one simple premise.

Bigotry.

Hiding behind the bible or any other holy scripture doesn’t work. Why? Because the very same United States Constitution CLEARLY and UNEQUIVOCALLY deals with that issue:

The United States Constitution, The Bill of Rights, Article 3, states, verbatim:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This has been interpreted repeatedly by the highest legislative authority in the United States, the Supreme Court, as meaning specifically that Church and State must remain separate, for the good of both.

Consequently, I do not accept even for a second, that religious reasons may form the basis for denying American citizens a civil right, because that is in clear and open contradiction to the bill of rights.

I say it again: the ONLY reason for passing Proposition 8 was bigotry. No other reason whatsoever. If people want to be bigots, it is their human right, but by the letter of the law, it is not their right to cause their bigotry to harm other people.

A couple of days ago, all of this came to a head. On August 4th, District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker (presiding in the northern district of California) overturned Proposition 8, BLASTING it as unconstitutional “under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses”.

He didn’t just blast it. He came out with a verdict of well over a hundred pages and what I’ve read of it or heard quoted from it so far is nothing short of earth-shattering.

But before I go any further with this, I should make one thing absolutely damned clear. Judge Walker has come under attack by certain Pro-Prop 8 activists as being “openly gay” and being “an activist judge” and being, quite frankly, a raving communist in disguise. Before any of you actually choose to believe that crap, let me tell you that a few simple information searches on Judge Walker will tell you that he was first nominated for the bench by none other than Mr. Conservative Icon, Ronald Reagan himself. This happened in 1987, but that nomination didn’t pass.

Why?

Because Judge Walker was seen as too conservative and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, he was seen as insensitive to homosexuals and poor people, because he would not allow the use of the name “Gay Olympics” and had represented the US Olympic Comittee in a lawsuit to stop that phrase from being used. So here is a man with a proven history of not being pro-gay in his rulings, and who was -too- conservative to be approved on his first nomination … and who was then nominated again by George H. W. Bush (Dubja’s dad) two years later, and then approved unanimously by the US Senate.

Unanimously. Every single senator voted in favor, Republican OR Democrat.

So there you have it. A conservative judge with known conservative rulings behind him and at least one anti-gay case from his days as a lawyer. Yes … he is gay himself. But his case-history is not exactly in favor of homosexuals, and being gay does not exclude him from having an opinion on this law. If we accept that gay people cannot be judges in cases where gay rights are involved, we cannot allow heterosexual judges to precide in cases involving straight couples.

Suddenly, I foresee certain problems finding enough judges for divorce-cases, but hey … who’s counting?

But there you have it. Judge Walker overturned Proposition 8. In fact, he did it so comprehensively that experts say that while this will undoubtedly go to all the way to Supreme Court, it will be -exceptionally- hard for the Supreme Court to overturn his decision. This is further helped by the ludicrously amateurish case the defense brought to the trial. Very few witnesses, all from known anti-gay organizations, each referring to each other as their source for “scientific” information (oh, and one of these witnesses even said he had part of his information from the Internet), while the prosecution absolutely devastated any and all attempts at bigotry and homophobia as unscientific hatemongering.

In fact, allow me to quote from an article from the internationally acclaimed and highly respected British periodical “The Economist”:

“Surgically and methodically, Judge Walker (who is himself gay) has now ruled that not a single one has any merit: the plaintiffs (ie, the gay and the lesbian couple) did not seek a “new” right, but merely the same right that heterosexuals have, and a right which in America is first and foremost a civil and not a religious matter. “Procreative capacity” has never been the basis of marriage, hence it is irrelevant, the judge found (infertile heterosexuals are allowed to marry, after all). Calling same-sex unions “domestic partnerships” unfairly disadvantages the couples. Allowing same-sex marriage “has at least a neutral, if not a positive, effect on the institution of marriage” and is good for any children involved. And so on, point by point until none was left.

The verdict will by no means silence those who recoil instinctively at the thought of two men or two women marrying. What is new is that, for the first time, any appellate court accepting the challenge must refer to the body of evidence, in the form of extensive expert testimony, that this trial has established. To overturn Judge Walker’s ruling, a court would have to find a flaw in his logic. This now seems a high hurdle.”

I have hope now … that Proposition 8 will die.

And I will finish this with an example FROM the trial. One of the witnesses brought by the defense claimed that no nation in the world has ever survived long after allowing homosexuals to marry.

It wasn’t stated why, but in all likelihood this was a reference to the oft-repeated, unsubstantiated and utterly unscientific lie that society will crumble and collapse if the traditional ideal of marriage is destroyed by allowing people of the same gender to marry.

As Rachel Maddow so eloquently put her response to that: “Isn’t it just awful what happened to Scandinavia?”

And I’ll add to that … isn’t it awful what’s happened to Spain? Or England? Or any number of other countries (I believe Argentina was the latest in the ever-growing line of enlightened, 21st century nations to allow gay marriage).

Please note the irony in both Ms. Maddows and my own questions? Denmark allowed civil unions of homosexuals as the first country in the world back in 1989 allowed homosexuals to enter civil unions.

The EXACT same reasons were then brought to bear by the very tiny minority of rabid religious fundamentalists of all faiths in this country. It would spell the absolute destruction of the state in short order.

It’s been 21 years now. We’re still here.

Civil unions, however, are not “marriage”. There are certain differences, particularly in relation to adoption although recent legislation has removed some of those hindrances. However, in the rest of Europe, most notably England and Spain, actual full fledged marriage is allowed for homosexuals. In Norway, they did it in the most elegant way I’ve seen yet … by introducing a “gender-neutral marriage act”. It isn’t a matter of saying “Gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry as well” but rather saying “people have a right to marry the person they love. Full stop.”

There’s no need to make special provisions for gays and lesbians. Just make the rules gender neutral and the problem is solved. Kudos to Norway for an outstanding piece of legislation.

But in the United States, there are still people who will deny their fellow citizens the rights they are guaranteed by the constitution.

And I challenge each of those specific people … each and EVERY ONE OF THEM OUT THERE … to openly stand up and say “Fine! Gay and lesbian people can’t marry. And because we can deny them their right, we will also reverse the ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education and reintroduce racial segregation. And then as our next step, we shall return to the days of Dred Scott vs. Sandford, disallowing United States citizenship for non-whites!”

And then, Jim Crow shall applaud them from the beyond. And the rest of the world shall know them for what they are.

Bigots.

Hatemongers.

And petty!

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Someone popped up, claiming I have no right to criticize religion, since I am a religious person myself. The person in question is a hardcore atheist, who believes, by his own statements, that since everything can be explained by science (or if not everything YET, then eventually) there is no need for any kind of religious belief.

He has utterly, completely missed the point!

Admittedly, he says it is ME who missed the point to begin with, by being critical of religion in one form, while adhering to another.

So let me give you the rundown of this, from the start:

Some of you may recall last year, I wrote a blog-entry about Intelligent Design … a concept I find to be either laughable or downright insulting. Maybe even both. I wrote it after an afternoon where I had shared a beer or two with a couple of friends, one of whom is extremely vocal in her criticism of abrahamic beliefs, and one of whom is a diehard atheist and evolutionist. It was then that I, in a beverage-induced moment of mirth, coined my absolutely unscientific and ANYTHING but serious theory of the universe as a divine experiment along the lines of growing cress on cotton on the windowsill.

It had only one single purpose … to take a stab at people who, in my opinion, give religion a very bad name.

And therein lies the entire point, but more on that later.

Recently, I got involved in a debate-group on facebook of all pages, about evolution. Now, bear in mind that while I’m a religious person, I am also an evolutionist. I believe we … as every other thing in the universe … are the result of untold millions of years of evolution. If we go back far enough, we all originate from the same single celled organisms. This is my absolute belief. I have no problem being both a believer in my gods and a believer in science. The two are not mutually exclusive. Again, this is an important point I would like to stress in the strongest possible way. And again, I’ll get back to this.

Anyway, on this discussion board, I pointed out as politely as I could, that I was saddened to see so many hardcore atheists attacking anyone of any kind of faith as puerile, deliberately stupid and unwilling to face facts. As if only people who proclaim themselves atheists were truly intelligent, worthwhile people. It is saddening to see that kind of behavior, just as it is saddening to see religious people attacking those who have no faith in the opposite manner. In a free world, where free thought must thrive, we must allow each other to believe or not believe. Forbidding faith or outlawing non-faith EXPRESSEDLY goes against the most basic principles of freedom which we, in the Western world, proclaim to support and promote.

I got enormous feedback. I was actually quite astounded by the amount of responses, and what really surprised me was that it was universally positive. There wasn’t a single negative comment. Everyone said that I had a good point, and somewhere along the debate, I offered to link to the blog-post about the cress-theory. People said I should … so I did.

One person liked it so much he linked directly to it on his own homepage, AND sent me a friend request. I was quite flattered by this, and naturally, I accepted his request. He’s German, living in Sweden and from what little I’ve conversed with him on Facebook so far, he’s a very pleasant young man.

However, as people reacted to his link, one contrary person popped up. Claiming that the “reasoning” in my post was unconvincing, he kept insisting on this point, despite my attempts to explain to him that it had originally been nothing but a joke. In the end, he claimed I was being rude, but at no point did he actually offer an explanation to what “reasoning” he was referring to.

Until today. The person who posted the link finally had enough and started editing in the comments, removing the whole argument … which I think was the right thing to do. But before doing so, the one who was critical of my “reasoning” had posted one last barrage.

I will post the last piece of that final post of his … the piece of the post that deals with his criticism of my “reasoning” … right here for you to see:
———————————————————————————–
“I find it unreasonable if somebody who is an adherer of x-religion (x stays for any kind of religion or ideology that relates to alleged super natural forces, whether in a form of a personal god or impersonal forces) criticises another matter of pure belief, like “Intelligent Design” (aka a pseudo-intellectual form of creationism), without showing a sign of questioning the inherent problem of believing oneself in matters for which there is no evidence at all, like gods/goddesses, whether it be the christian or islamic god, the norse, greek or whatsoever groups of gods, the buddhistic concepts, or the flying spaghetti monster, to name a few of thousands of religions (all claiming that just they are the right ones).

Nowadays we have the first viable scientific ideas about the origin of life from animate matter. No deity needed.
We understand evolution. No deity needed.
We come closer and closer to an understanding of the origins of the universe. No deity needed.

That we do not understand some of the matters around, must not mean they might not be understood at some point in the future, or that there is another being, a deity, that brought them into existence: Such an unknwon, alleged being would also need to be explained, and of course – at first – evidence would have to be presented that it exists).

There is no god/goddess necessary to explain any of the questions around.
The problem of Intelligent Design is the belief in a designing force at all. Joan has missed that point entirely.”
———————————————————————————–

I will say it bluntly. In my opinion, this person is profoundly undemocratic! This person does not accept that there are differences of opinion, and he blithely attempts to place EVERYONE of religious belief in the same category. I find that grotesquely insulting, and I find it downright stupid.

It is entirely possible to believe in a concept such as the soul, which is not and CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be scientifically proven to exist or not to exist, and in the existence of divine entities that deal with spiritual matters, while at the same time holding firm to natural science in the realm of the physical world.

By saying that he finds it “unreasonable” that someone adhering to one form of faith is critical of another form of faith, he not only utters his wish to deny us the right to a free, open and cordial debate, but more importantly, he labels someone like me in the same category as … oh … say the Taleban and their religious mania. Or the Christian militias in central Africa, forcing children down to the age of 8 to become either child prostitutes or soldiers. Or the Shintoist extremists who supported the rise of Japanese militarism before the second world war. Or the Christian Coalition and their hatemongering in the United States. Or any number of other extremist organizations. He does, in fact, specifically refuse to make ANY attempt at differentiating between extremists who want everyone who doesn’t think like them to die, usually in spectacular and gruesome ways, and people like me who would be amongst the first to be strung up from a lamppost if such idiots ever had their way.

I find that very line of reasoning to be so utterly, utterly damning, morally speaking, that I can’t simply be quiet about it.

Remember how I started out by saying that this was about me speaking out against people I felt gave religion a bad name? That is what this is all about. If I am not allowed to disagree with the beliefs of others purely because they are also “not provable by scientific means” then I ask you all to follow that line of thought to its natural conclusion.

Can you all name one other highly divisive issue which cannot be proved right or wrong by means of science?

You see, I can!

It’s called politics.

As with religion, politics is about siding with the belief you FEEL is best for you. It cannot be proven that conservatism or socialism is best. They have something different to offer to different people. Much like religion or lack thereof does. So you can’t scientifically say “Conservatism is always best!”

Or “Socialism has been scientifically proved to be correct at all times!”

Or any other political belief, for that matter (I only brought up those two to have diametric opposites).

So if I am not allowed to disagree with people of religious beliefs that I find reprehensible, simply because I happen to -have- religious beliefs myself, then by extension of the same logic, I am not allowed to disagree with politicians of different opinions than me either.

And therein lies the undemocratic element in this persons criticism! In his self-righteousness, he failed to understand that something as simple as the right to disagree with someone is a basic human right, which he does not have the mandate to take away from people. I could care less if people believe in Islam, Christianity, the Norse gods like myself or ANY other religion out there so long as it is peaceful. So long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. And so long as it doesn’t get in the way of us, as a species, learning more about the universe we inhabit.

Science and religion are not diametric opposites. Religion does not by nature equal anti-knowledge. Science is not designed to prove or disprove the existence or non-existence of something which by nature is immeasurable. Science and religion belong in two distinctly different spheres.

One belongs with that which is measurable. The physical world that surrounds us at all times. It involves periodic tables, strangely shaped glass cylinders and weird bubbling fluids. It deals with everything that can in any way be measured … from the tiniest atoms to the entirety of the universe as a whole.

ALL … THINGS … PHYSICAL.

The other deals with things that are by definition immeasurable. With belief. With hope. With dreams. With the possible existence of a soul. With the feeling some people get when they pray. With the feeling others get when they look at a beautiful mountain, bathed in morning glory …

It deals with feelings. The immaterial and the feelings that come with it and the belief that goes with it.

WITH … THINGS … THAT … CAN’T … BE … MEASURED!

Let them stay separate. Science trying to measure the immeasurable isn’t science anymore. It’s pseudo-science. It’s hoaky. It’s useless. Religion trying to explain why one water molecule is composed of two hydrogon atoms and one oxygen atom is useless, pointless and invading into territory where it has no business and no right to be!

But I’ll be damned before I let some snotty kid from Germany tell me I haven’t got the right to critizise those very religions who try to do that, simply because I myself have religious faith.

That person needs to get off his fucking high horse and learn what the word “scale” means. And then the word “differentiating” … not to mention the word “hubris”.

And once he’s learned what they mean, he could do us all a favor by studying the meaning of the words “freedom of thought and speech”!

I wanted to write a blog entry this weekend, but sadly, I was hit by heatstroke, and I am still recovering. I should be fine soon but it kinda threw me off for a while. So while the blog has been quiet for a while, at least now you have a reason …