Christianity

[Age]

at least, in this conversation (a series of conversations really) it seems possible to define the common ground.

160 pages in: where's the common ground?

The 'common ground' is that 'you' are ALL LOOKING FOR and SEEKING some 'thing'.

160 page from now: there still won't be any...or, at least, not enough to sustain

How do 'you' KNOW this "henry quirk"?

[Age]

Classic Liberalism is predicated on non-commensurate groups choosing to live together and avoiding open struggle. Under the Liberal umbrella. Not possible?

I've yet to see anything work

I have no illusions about it: even the natural rights anarchism/libertarianism/minarchism I promote offers no peace

OF COURSE NOT. Especially when you are THREATENING to SHOOT "others" DEAD.

[Age]

Christians, Muslims and Jews all believe in the God of Moses and Abraham.

And, what EXACTLY is the God of "moses" and "abraham"?

So, for Christians, how important is it to establish whether Jesus Christ Himself is in fact an integral component of God's Scripture? Whether he was God on Earth or not would seem to pale next to how one construes Him to either be or not to be their own personal savior on Judgment Day.

When EXACTLY is 'judgement day', and, what EXACTLY happens on 'judgement day'?

Ask a Christian, ask a Jew, ask a Muslim. What of Judgment Day for each of them?

But, 'you' wrote it here, as though it was some 'thing' REAL. So, I am asking 'you'.

Or, for the God of Moses and Abraham, does it really come down merely to what your "interpretation" is on Judgment Day. You may be utterly wrong about the existence of Jesus Christ or Muhammad. But God is still willing to grant you immortality and salvation if you can, what, convince Him that you still deserve it?

God gave 'you' immortality since your conception into this One and ONLY Existence. And, God would NEVER say one 'deserves' more or something else, from "another". This is because God KNOWS, EXACTLY, WHY 'you' are EXACTLY how 'you' ARE.

Of course, there are those who don't put much stock in Judgment Day at all. Their own "private and personal" God is considerably more tolerant when it comes to connecting the dots between morality "down here" and immortality and salvation "up there".

God doesn't think at all like hundreds of millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews around the globe think He does. No, instead, God thinks like they do.

But God does NOT 'think'. God KNOWS.

[Age]

The most pathetic gods ever invented are of the OT and the NT. To believe as literal anything so diminutive as this idiotic father & son story requires a brain scan to discover what went wrong!

I'm still thinking you need a brain scan since you posted this, and failed to answer:-

Jesus was nothing more than a cultist preacher not unlike John the Baptist who never once proved themselves useful. Nietzsche is immeasurably more valuable than some ancient back alley preacher who got himself crucified for the most stupid of reasons.

Nietzsche?

What did Nietzsche do in the name of giving hope and promoting love to people?

I was just about to respond to your original post when I encountered this one. Not very patient are you. Since you think I need a brain scan the following won't change your mind.

Anyways, this is what I wrote - which is somewhat lengthy - and the final one in response to your question.

Love & hope are qualities spread among humans unconditionally that being its main signature unlike the NT requirement that one must love and believe in Jesus to be saved and receive the tributes of salvation.

When you comprehend and understand that the word "jesus" refers to 'children' here, then this ALL makes PERFECT SENSE here.

There is no demand that I must believe someone or something to be deemed worthy of what is freely given by those with some degree of empathy which I believe not uncommon in most of us when called for.

What one BELIEVES (in) or DISBELIEVES (in) has a TREMENDOUS EFFECT on how they behave and thus WHO EXACTLY they BECOME ALSO.

Re Nietzsche, as among most philosophers but primarily those who examine and view the world existentially, their function is to analyze the current human condition and how it has changed from what it was for almost two millennia; how certainties have become uncertainties in spite of everything known that for most of history remained unknown.

The usual anodynes of religion are past their shelf life and cease to be effective which is also everywhere apparent in art and literature. There has been a vast truncation of the spiritual; the simple motto of Jesus Saves is more indicative of a desperate hope than a healing one. This flattening of the spiritual from the vertical to the horizontal is exactly what is examined by the likes of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard without any gratuitous promises of hope and love; instead an investigation of what may yield it under a new transforming paradigm...if still possible.

Did they or has ANY one ACTUALLY 'investigated' what the words 'jesus saves' ACTUALLY means or refers to EXACTLY?

'jesus saves' 'what', EXACTLY?

Times are not at all as they have been for such a long period; neither is philosophy which must accommodate these millennial upheavals to remain viable by examining new priorities inflicted by new conditions.

Here are a few quotes - referring to love mostly - by him who IC denigrates as a syphilitic madman>>

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

In other words, just seek to CHANGE one's 'self', for the better, and then that one can FIND thy True Self, otherwise they WILL die.

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

LOL What then is 'that way' in which EVERY one AGREES WITH, if it is NOT the right NOR correct way?

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”

LOL But God does NOT want to be praised all the time. In fact God NEVER wants to be praised.

But, who EXACTLY is MORE DESERVING of praise. God, Itself, or 'you', adult human beings?

Has God EVER done Wrong? If yes, then WHEN?

Has an adult human being NEVER done Wrong? If yes, then WHO?

“What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?”

'love' is ALSO Loyalty (Honesty) and Openness, with Voluntary Enthusiasm. While,

'True Love' IS Trust, Respect, Understanding, Empathy, Loyalty (Honesty), and Openness with Voluntary Enthusiasm for, and with, absolutely EVERY one.

“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”

But how does one KNOW what is done out of 'love' when one is UNABLE to explain what 'love' is EXACTLY and IRREFUTABLY?

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

ONLY 'some' times?

"The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions."

The 'demand' to be loved is NATURAL because without this 'demand', then NONE of 'you' would be here discussing this NOW.

"There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings."

But love AND goodness is INFINITE. That is when one KNOWS what 'love' AND 'goodness' REALLY ARE.

Make of it what you want!

We WILL.

[iambiguous]

Christians, Muslims and Jews all believe in the God of Moses and Abraham.

And, what EXACTLY is the God of "moses" and "abraham"?

It is the God that Christians, Muslims and Jews worship and adore. Each given their own Scripture.

So, for Christians, how important is it to establish whether Jesus Christ Himself is in fact an integral component of God's Scripture? Whether he was God on Earth or not would seem to pale next to how one construes Him to either be or not to be their own personal savior on Judgment Day.

When EXACTLY is 'judgement day', and, what EXACTLY happens on 'judgement day'?

Exactly? Here, of course, it comes down to faith. Since no one [to the best of my knowledge] has ever actually demonstrated the existence of Judgment Day, individual Christians, Muslims and Jews take their own existential leap of faith to whatever they think it is. And that's the beauty of faith. Nothing really has to be demonstrated. It's all "in your head".

Ask a Christian, ask a Jew, ask a Muslim. What of Judgment Day for each of them?

But, 'you' wrote it here, as though it was some 'thing' REAL. So, I am asking 'you'.

That's not my point. My point is to note that Christians, Muslims and Jews all seem to believe in the same God. Just different "versions" of him. So, what happens when the Christian dies and, given Judgment Day, the God of Moses rejects the Jesus Christ rendition.

Or, for the God of Moses and Abraham, does it really come down merely to what your "interpretation" is on Judgment Day. You may be utterly wrong about the existence of Jesus Christ or Muhammad. But God is still willing to grant you immortality and salvation if you can, what, convince Him that you still deserve it?

God gave 'you' immortality since your conception into this One and ONLY Existence. And, God would NEVER say one 'deserves' more or something else, from "another". This is because God KNOWS, EXACTLY, WHY 'you' are EXACTLY how 'you' ARE.

And one would go about demonstrating this...how?

Of course, there are those who don't put much stock in Judgment Day at all. Their own "private and personal" God is considerably more tolerant when it comes to connecting the dots between morality "down here" and immortality and salvation "up there".

God doesn't think at all like hundreds of millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews around the globe think He does. No, instead, God thinks like they do.

But God does NOT 'think'. God KNOWS.

Okay, but in the absence of actual demonstrable proof that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist, doesn't that then come down to what each individual Christian, Muslim and Jew merely believes to be true in their head?

[Alexis Jacobi]

He died young....probably of siphilis, definitely insane. That much, his biographers can tell us. But he did leave a great road map for people like Hitler, who was quite fond of Nietzsche. So he certainly had his own legacy.

I think that Hitler, as the source of evil, or as the sole emblem of it, needs to be taken off his pedestal. Really, there is far too much focus on the evil him and he functions like humanity's scapegoat. Every argument, every conversation, resolves eventually into some statement or mention of Hitler!

What I mean is that all states and nations, and definitely the nations that opposed Hitler and the German enterprise, all employ exactly the same tactics as did the Germans. It is not even a question of 'degree' really, though the German effort to expel the entire Jewish population of the region is unprecedented.

Who *did* this though? Let's be really really truthful: Europe did this. All the people of Europe did it. It was something like a general social will. Some part of the impetus for oppression of Jews in Europe, under those conditions, derives directly from the Christian Gospels. And if anything is *true* God Himself is a terrifying anti-Semite. (See here).

Will-to-Power

The meaning of the entire question -- these sets of assertions -- about Will to Power applies to modernity across the board. How it came about that action and movement, assertion, dominance and winning ground (the powerful will that stands behind these impulses) have come to be central as a fundamental ethic in our present, is not a doctrine invented by Nietzsche that Hitler, or anyone, could admire and emulate. The doctrine of Will to Power is really a doctrine about action in this world. That Nietzsche invented this is an absurd misunderstanding. In a certain sense what Nietzsche *saw* pulled his psyche apart. It exploded him. Nietzsche, like a biblical seer in a strange way, saw right into the depth of the issue and the problem. He saw, he prophesied, a veritable sea-change that had come to the *world*.

It is also a fact that what he saw coming is still on its way.

The Nazi Project

The Nazi project (according to Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews) began as a banishment, not genocide. It is a false assertion that industrial gas chambers were designed and built for mass-elimination of Jews in a pre-planned project. This seems to have been Soviet propaganda. That millions of Jews were assassinated, mostly in the East, as the war deepened, this is true and even revisionists like David Irving admit this. But he also asserts (I do not know if it is true or not) that it was Nazi underlings that did most of the open, intentional killing (ie. bullet in the head). The deaths in the camps were often from starvation and disease, a *natural* result of war-conditions. Some millions died under those conditions (if my understanding is correct).

And the desire, if I can call it that, to be rid of Jews in Europe, throughout Europe, is quite literally as European as Apple Pie is to the Americans. Jewish fate is tied up in Jewish identity. Jewish identity leads, like the roads of Rome, to Jewish tragedy. Jews are in a terrible fix: God tells them of the evil that He will bring on them if the disobey and are contaminated by 'false religion' ("a snare for you") but Christianity is that snare. That is, in the minds of traditional, strict Jews (and this is as true today as in the past). Jewish fate is *in the hands of God* until Jews decide to act against that imposed Fate. Then they become Israelis . . .

There is no 'happy end' in Jewish history. And Jews seem to know this (thus *Jewish depression*). How Jews wound up in Europe, why they wound up in Europe, and not in their own lands -- now that is a complex question. If you are theist: God did this to His people. The Exile fits into the horrifying predictions in Deuteronomy. We need to speak truthfully here: there is no one that wanted the Jews and in some senses today there is still no one that wants them. But here is a really curious thing: To dislike Jews has been turned into the worst possible moral sin any human being can commit. Just think it through. But we all know that dislike of Jews has appeared historically without cease, everywhere. But what happens today is that because this dislike is not tolerated and is vilified, it can do nothing but *go underground*. It is turned into a false-love, a false-respect, a false-toleration. But the underpinning dislike (or contempt, or hatred) builds up in an invisible dam. Then, the dam bursts.

No one wants the Jews

I mean this in the sense of having such a powerful minority, with such developed historical will, gain as much power as Jews have traditionally, and historically, shown themselves interested in gaining. There was a certain equilibrium attained in the Sephardic world though. But the Emancipation of Jews in Europe opened up the whole problem. The "Jewish Problem" arose then. Within Judaism this phenomenon (sets of phenomena) is knows as diaspora pathology. Meaning that the Exile that forced Jews to take up residence in Europe, and to build their networks, derived from a pathology-producing event. The question is What is the cure for this pathology? Assimilation?

This all points back, once again and in a way that will not end, to core problems within Judaism itself. Or to put it another way it is Jewish identity, in combination with historical and cultural and social factors, that lead time and again to the same recurrent problem. If you think that Jewish history is over you are likely wrong. That tragedy arrives is part-and-parcel of the system. In any case that is how it has seemed to me.

God only knows what the solution is (and that was a very bad, or a very good, joke!)

The interesting question that I often asked myself was Could a mass expulsion of a given ethnic group within a generally homogenous culture ever be *justified*? Haven't issues of this sort been the basis of civil wars and inter-national conflicts? My question of course abstract or it takes place in a domain outside of the *real*. Can you imagine a 'movement' within America (for example) to expel, say, the more or less 20 million Mesoamericans that entered the US illegally, as part of a project to *protect* American culture? What if France expelled its Muslim population? What if things get to that point? (And these tensions are developing).

Does it matter if Nietzsche simply broke down, or had syphilis, of cancer of the brain? Do we retrospect a man's work and achievement by considering how he died and through that to invalidate his work? I do not see how Nietzsche can be got around. To dismiss him as someone not serious, and even as someone who misunderstood Christianity (or his own Christian self) seems a substantial error. It seems to me that one either confronts Nietzsche and chooses to resolve him, in one way or another, or one can do nothing else but put him aside without consideration.

These are just some thoughts that I have had as I have (tried to) examine these issues, but also tried to see things truthfully, not through contrived lenses.

[Lacewing]

I am beginning to suppose that I am talking about a *world* about which you know very little.

You want specifics that match-up with your mental box -- and you cannot seem to fathom that anyone could move beyond that and/or operate outside of that, so you imagine that they've not seen or understood it at all.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Simply building more fantasy on top of historical structures is NOT 'different thinking', rather it's the continually creative ego still trying to control and reign with its stories. But you do seem to enjoy and find meaning in doing such a thing, so... carry on.

Beyond that... there is more.

[henry quirk]

Beyond that... there is more.

you say such things often, but you never get around to describin' what that more actually is that lies beyond

it's all very abstract and nebulous and, mebbe, safe

[Alexis Jacobi]

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

That is a statement attributed to him but, in fact, he did not say that. (If my sources are correct):

It appears that — as has happened with many of Einstein’s quotes — this one has taken on a life of its own, spawning a variety of variants that are misattributed to Einstein: "The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation." "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

In The New Quotable Einstein (2005), editor Alice Calaprice suggests that two quotes attributed to Einstein which she could not find sources for, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them" and "The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them," may both be paraphrases of the 1946 quote above. A similar unsourced variant is "The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking."

You want specifics that match-up with your mental box -- and you cannot seem to fathom that anyone could move beyond that and/or operate outside of that, so you imagine that they've not seen or understood it at all.

Simply building more fantasy on top of historical structures is NOT 'different thinking', rather it's the continually creative ego still trying to control and reign with its stories. But you do seem to enjoy and find meaning in doing such a thing, so... carry on.

You will have to be more specific when you speak about moving beyond and operating outside. If you can't they are just empty phrases.

My impression? You have developed a discursive shtick that you use all the time. You can say it to anyone, in any context, and in relation to any subject. Basket weaving, radish farming, voice training, philosophy, imitating bird-calls.

Pretty clever!

Can Lacewing transcend Lacewing? now that is the question!

[Immanuel Can]

He died young....probably of siphilis, definitely insane. That much, his biographers can tell us. But he did leave a great road map for people like Hitler, who was quite fond of Nietzsche. So he certainly had his own legacy.

I think that Hitler, as the source of evil, or as the sole emblem of it, needs to be taken off his pedestal.

No doubt.

Stalin and Mao were worse, of course...but they killed their own people, so they're less known. In any case, Hitler has long served the modern, Western imagination as the embodiment of evil...and he kind of earned that.

Who *did* this though? Let's be really really truthful: Europe did this.

Europe started it. But nobody else really helped.

America and Canada, to their everlasting shame, were guilty of similar anti-semitic values. The St. Louis incident certainly illustrated that.

God Himself is a terrifying anti-Semite.

No, not at all.

But the nation that takes on the duty of representing the Divine Law takes on itself a heavier condemnation. After all, while maybe the Gentiles could plead ignorance, and maybe sometimes behave better than one might expect raw pagans to behave (See Romans 2), a Jewish person had no excuse for not knowing God's law.

If anything, being the Chosen People should make a nation humble. That's one heck of a burden of duty to bear.

Everybody wants to live on Mt. Gerisim...Nobody wants to have to go to Mt. Ebal.


Will-to-Power

The meaning of the entire question -- these sets of assertions -- about Will to Power applies to modernity across the board.

Definitely. But Modernity is made this way by two very specific forces: technological advancement plus secuarlism. Technological advancement, the fruit of the Scientific Revolution (itself the fruit of Francis Bacon's Theism) means a rapid increase in human power; but secularism means the divesting of the public sphere of all elements of morality, and the a-moralizing of technology.

But that's Modernity. It is not a good description of the whole human condition, nor of all of history, by any means. Nietzsche was a historicist: the thought he could "read" the patterns of the past, and from that reading, project the certainties of the future prophetically -- always a perilous project, one always likely to be marred by serious oversights , wrong guesses and causal misattributions.

What he was very good at doing was sensing what implications would flow from Modernity itself. He got that pretty much right.

The doctrine of Will to Power is really a doctrine about action in this world.

Right, both times.

It's a doctrine of "action," but only of "action in" a Materialist, Modern, secular type of "world." If Neitzsche's fundamental postulate was wrong...namely, that there is no God and never was, so belief in God is rightly "dead" in our age -- then Nietzsche's prophecies are predicated on a limited postulate. In other words, to the extent that people believe in Nietzsche's account of the world and live like it's true, things will likely go as Nietzsche predicted.

But if they do not...

The Nazi Project

It is a false assertion that industrial gas chambers were designed and built for mass-elimination of Jews in a pre-planned project. This seems to have been Soviet propaganda.

Well, I spent time working with a researcher on soldiers' first hand accounts of WW2 imprisonment. I reviewed the testimony and viewed the pictures myself -- most of it from non-Jewish sources. And I can tell you this: the gassing and burning was deliberate and calculated, meticulously managed to dispatch and dispose of large number of human beings, after the bullets became too valuable and the ditches became too many to deal with more bodies. And Jews were top of the menu.

There's no doubt about that.

Christianity is that snare.

Christianity isn't. Catholicism...given the history, I'm not so sure.

There is no 'happy end' in Jewish history.

Actually, there will be.

Romans 11:26, quoting Tanakh, Jeremiah 31 -- “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”

And Jews seem to know this (thus *Jewish depression*). How Jews wound up in Europe, why they wound up in Europe, and not in their own lands -- now that is a complex question. If you are theist: God did this to His people.

The Torah tells you why this happened, too. It's all laid out in Leviticus 26: being "scattered among the nations" where they will "perish among their enemies" is a judgment for having abandoned HaShem. But the chapter ends with a promise of swift and full restoration for the repentant, too.

The Exile fits into the horrifying predictions in Deuteronomy.

Yes, there too.

No one wants the Jews

Also predicted.

You would think that, given the number of such prophecies that have been proved exactly right, people would take the Biblical record more seriously. The history of Judaism is one powerful argument they should.

The question is What is the cure for this pathology? Assimilation?

No. Repentance and salvation.

If you think that Jewish history is over

I do not.

God only knows what the solution is (and that was a very bad, or a very good, joke!)

But truer words were never spoken.

However, long ago He told Israel how it would all go. They just didn't listen. But God is just as forgiving as He ever was. The problem for Judaism today seems to be that they just prefer not to repent of their abandonment of HaShem. But the day will come.

Here are the closing words of the Old Testament: “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with complete destruction.” (Mal. 4:5-6)

And in the New Testament: "For I do not want you, brothers and sisters, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written:
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”
“This is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.” (Rom. 11:25-27)

What if things get to that point? (And these tensions are developing).

Yes, they are. But this was also predicted...the Book of Daniel covers what would happen when the nations attempt to meld. They would go together like "iron and clay." Good luck with the multicultural project, folks.

Does it matter if Nietzsche simply broke down, or had syphilis, of cancer of the brain? Do we retrospect a man's work and achievement by considering how he died and through that to invalidate his work?

In Nietzsche's case, yes. Normally, we would say it's ad hominem: but not in Neitzsche's specific case.

And why? Because Nietzsche himself offered his own "wisdom" as evidence for his claims. He wrote his autobiography, "Why I Am So Wise," didn't he? Thus, Nietzsche himself invites us to consider the measure of his wisdom as evidence for his special knowlege and reliability. So that's a can of worms he opened himself. We can now examine the evidence for his "wisdom."

So how would you rate him, given his life?

I do not see how Nietzsche can be got around.

For a Modern secularist? I agree.

To dismiss him as someone not serious, and even as someone who misunderstood Christianity

He did misunderstand it. That's very easy to see. And he also misunderstood Judaism and morality, of course. And he was wrong about God.

I also think he guessed wildly wrong about the Nazis...they were going to turn out to have much more "will to power" than Nietzsche ever imagined they would have, and be much more his inheritors than he ever thought they could be.

The facts rebuke him on all those cases, I would say.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, I spent time working with a researcher on soldiers' first hand accounts of WW2 imprisonment. I reviewed the testimony and viewed the pictures myself -- most of it from non-Jewish sources. And I can tell you this: the gassing and burning was deliberate and calculated, meticulously managed to dispatch and dispose of large number of human beings, after the bullets became too valuable and the ditches became too many to deal with more bodies. And Jews were top of the menu.

To clarify: I determined that I could have no way to know definitively if indeed there were technologically-sophisticated, industrial-designed, gassing chambers and the necessary corpse-disposal systems (industrial furnaces capable of disposing of flesh-bodies 60% composed of water). I have seen evidence of more or less typical corpse-incinerating equipment, used on a smaller scale, but I have not seen sufficient evidence of the really massive systems that would have to be built to gas large numbers of people and then burn their bodies.

And this distinction must be made clear. To say that a bullet is more costly than what it would cost to build and maintain the industrial gas chamber/incineration system does not seem possible. A bullet is far cheaper.

Why, you might ask, do I focus on this? Simply because the truth must be seen, if it can be seen. I assert that it cannot, generally, and this is part of a larger problem. And what interests me, in the larger part, is when ideological or propaganda assertions -- the fabrication of elaborate lies -- make it impossible to get to the truth, to see it accurately.

The destruction of the European Jews is a real thing. It happened. That is not debated (by me in any case). But to embellish the fact with lies and distortions seems to me to dovetail with another function. And you notice that the word function comes up often in what I write. In many instances when an exaggeration or embellishment (not to speak of deliberate lies concocted to manipulate) are set in motion, it is because the one doing that has ulterior reasons. And those reasons are often nefarious. And these distortions, embellishments and lies are a significant factor, an issue, within our societies. My view is thus that because of exaggerations, embellishments and lies mediate our perceptions, and there are systems that do this, we cannot really and accurately see our situation, our present. It gets to a point that you (one) cannot rely on any statement made.

What I find strangely interesting is that this leads one -- people generally -- into a 'cloud of unknowing'. Since they sense, and with some justification, that they cannot trust the system that mediates perception, they are forced to *imagine* and *speculate* about what really is going on. And that brings me to The Culture of Conspiracy (Michael Barkun). It is a tremendous danger, no matter how it is looked at, that millions and millions of people turn to 'conspiracy-visioning' to make sense of their world.

So the reason why I focus on what is a terribly contentious topic is not because I am involved or interested in historical revisionism (as in lying and fabricating) but in gaining an accurate and correct view of history.

Another aspect of *what I am up to* is in getting all relevant parts of the things we discuss out in the open. So my summation is: I believe that many millions of Jews were killed in Europe. That 'the destruction of the European Jews' is a real thing. I do believe that crematoriums existed but were built for use on a small scale, for typical purposes (disposing of a certain number of dead). I do not believe the gas-chamber assertion. It seems to have been a part of Soviet propaganda that caught on. (But I admit to being, myself, as we all are to degrees, in a 'cloud of unknowing').

[Alexis Jacobi]

The Torah tells you why this happened, too. It's all laid out in Leviticus 26: being "scattered among the nations" where they will "perish among their enemies" is a judgment for having abandoned HaShem. But the chapter ends with a promise of swift and full restoration for the repentant, too.

But no Jew, no practicing Jew, believes that they had ever abandoned God. There is a strange and terrible irony here, really a very cruel one: the more that a Jew determines that he will be and remain a Jew, the more this commitments becomes problematic. A Jew who abandons God, is one who drops out of Jewish destiny! That is called assimilation. It ends Judaism, it ends the Jewish historical commitment. [Though it is true that the Nazis, in their project of expulsion and exile, sought out those who had percentages of Jewish blood, nevertheless to cease being a Jew generally ends the Jewish Problem. And for a believing Jew that is when God is abandoned].

____________________________

(I assume that you know that the term HaShem [the word] is a replacement so that G-- is not vainly referred to?

But Christians do not have quite this prohibition.

[Immanuel Can]

To clarify: I determined that I could have no way to know definitively if indeed there were technologically-sophisticated, industrial-designed, gassing chambers and the necessary corpse-disposal systems

Yep, there is. Sorry.

To say that a bullet is more costly than what it would cost to build and maintain the industrial gas chamber/incineration system does not seem possible. A bullet is far cheaper.

Gas is far cheaper and easier than bullets, especially when you're fighting a war and need all the ammunition you can get. And bodies take up a ton of space, and when they decay, they spread disease...so cremation beats burial. The story adds up.

What was always silly was Hitler's focus on destroying the Jews. Why would he invest so much time and energy on a project that could only detract from the resources he needed for the war? The answer, I think, is both psychological and spiritual. Hitler was a madman; that's a platitude, but it's also true. Much of what he did departed the realm of the entirely rational. And he did do certain other counterproductive things, like not allowing strategic retreat at Stalingrad. So no doubt he was an ideologically possessed loon.

Anti-semitic hatred doubtless had good propaganda value. It certainly allowed scapegoating and the focusing of German dissatisfactions on an object other than the government. That strategy of rabble-rousing no doubt accounts for some of it. Still the losses exceeded by far the gains on that. So again, we must wonder at his decision.

So there's more to the story than that. Ask yourself: why would this megalomaniac with global ambitions stop his own progress to deal with a very minor ethnic group that had no strategic significance for him? And the answer is in WHO they were, not merely WHAT they were. They were the nation tasked with maintaining the name of HaShem on the Earth...custodians of the Mosaic Law and the Torah, representatives of Divine activity and the nation of Messiah. Eliminate them, and the promises of HaShem to restore His people come to nothing. God's word fails. The plans of God, as revealed in Scripture, are thwarted. Then, the supposition might be, the World will belong solely to man. I do not think that was an idle consideration in his reckoning.

In any event, there was something certainly more than natural, far other than militarily strategic, in Hitler's preoccupation with the Jews.

What you don't know about...but I do...is the people who ended up in those camps "accidentally." There were plenty of Gentiles whom the Nazis sent to the camps, then realized they were in the wrong place and moved them. One good example was Allied airmen. If they were shot down and tried to escape by ditching their uniforms, they were taken for spies. But prison camps and death camps were two different things; and when the Nazis realized they had an airman on their hands, they'd take him from the death camp (for spies) and put him in the prison camp (for enemy soldiers).

However, there's no "unseeing" the things an Allied soldier had seen in the death camps. And they gave many first hand reports of life in those camps. These men were not Jews, nor part of some "Jewish conspiracy" theory. But what they reported...well, if you heard, you wouldn't forget.

Thus, Holocaust denial has no traction with me. I've seen too much independent evidence to be unsure. I believe the Jewish accounts, as well...for most simply confirm the independent accounts. Now, in any field of reportage, there will be a few errors and exaggerations, of course; that's human nature. But I think the overwhelming thing is the amount of good, solid data.

I do not believe the gas-chamber assertion.

I do. I believe in the trucks that proved insufficient, and in the later "showers" as well. I believe in Zyklon B. And I believe all were used extensively.

[Lacewing]

Beyond that... there is more.

you say such things often, but you never get around to describin' what that more actually is that lies beyond

it's all very abstract and nebulous and, mebbe, safe

I've described all kinds of ways that there is more (and different) than what you (or someone else) may be claiming. I'm trying to show that beliefs are limited and contrived by man, which creates the prison/box he lives in and builds onto and defines himself with. Neither does such reflect any kind of greater/broader potential he can access or tune into. He is simply king of his castle -- and how true can that be?

It's not difficult to notice the diversity of views/claims/beliefs which work in so many ways. Perhaps what’s challenging is to consider the implications of that: there is clearly vast potential for our lives and our thinking, individually and collectively. So why do so many people rigidly lock-in to such obviously limited viewpoints/beliefs? Because it is serving them, yes? If we're not choosing to be served in such a way, might we be more conscious and self-directive in exploring beyond that? What might that reveal? Does it matter? Or might it obviously be worth exploring beyond where we are?

[Immanuel Can]

But no Jew, no practicing Jew, believes that they had ever abandoned God.

To obey HaShem is a matter decided by HaShem. One's belief about the adequacy of one's own religiosity could not be more irrelevant than it is.

A man may be sincere...and sincerely wrong.

...to cease being a Jew generally ends the Jewish Problem...

Actually, the opposite was true.

You could ask any number of Holocaust survivors, and they will tell you the same: the most remarkable feature of the Nazis was their complete implacabillity. There was literally nothing a Jewish person could do, no gesture of solidarity with the Germans, no betrayal of his own people, no denial of his own faith, that would induce the Nazis to be propitious or to care for a Jewish life. You couldn't make yourself useful to them...never useful enough not to be shot, beaten or gassed.

____________________________

(I assume that you know that the term HaShem [the word] is a replacement so that G-- is not vainly referred to?

Not quite.

It's a Jewish term, translating as "the Name" (ie. the name of God, the reputation of the One True God). And yes, it's partly a coinage they prefer in order to avoid saying "God" or even "YHWH," (sometimes pronounced, "Yahweh," which has been unfortunately anglicized as "Jehovah"). Jewish people have a curious fear of the Name itself...as if it is too holy for them to pronounce...which would suggest an uneasy relationship with the Divine, would it not?

As a Christian, I simply speak of "God," of "the Lord," of "my Father," or of "Jesus Christ the Messiah," or "my Lord." But I share the Jewish concern that His Name and reputation should be honoured in this world. So I embrace Hebraisms like YHWH, and the honourific HaShem as well. It is the same God of Whom we speak...even when they do not know it. But I feel a love and have a familiarity with the Lord that seems to frighten them...

Not me. He is my Father. He loves me. And a child is not terrified of a good father, and does not fear to speak his name.