Holocaustianism= Religion of Satan?

[ASMarques]

Lets be clear.

ASMarques stepped outside the bounds of Holocaust subject matter to denounce all religions as bogus.

Not exactly. Religions that do not make bogus history mandatory (yes, there are a few, but then too few to mention) and have no historical connection with the "Holocaustianism" topic of the thread did not concern me.

Great way to distract people and change the focus of a board. Hmmm.

I see. Dozens of dead men walking around is no distraction at all. Refuting them is. Hmmmmmm.

Why ASMarques is taken serious is beyond me.

Could it be because I don't put my faith in zombies?

The holocaust is an event or alleged event that is recent, and we are still at a point in time where actual forensic evidence can refute the myth. There is no question: Jews were not gassed.

Of course there is a question. The question is "if Jews were gassed, how was that possible, unless miracles happen?"

It's very much the same as in, er, "if Hercules was literally put up there as a constellation, how was that possible, unless miracles happen?"

That sort of thing, if you see what I mean. You don't have to stop at Hercules, and I don't have to tell you what the answer is.

It is quite a leap to then say the first leader of the largest religious body on earth today, who lived 2000 years ago, never lived.

Not really, unless you decide the size of the "religious body" reflects the truth of the creed. By the way, ever tried that idea "Holocaust"-wise? Perhaps the proximity in time would even help your cause. I'm sure you will also subscribe to the idea that the lightning growth of religions and the way they rise to political control of empires in general should also be used to measure the truth about them.

Well, in the USA we have presidential succession, so we know who the presidents were right back to George Washington.

Yes. His Excellency even had a name and it wasn't Mr. Primo Prez Esq....

The same holds true with Popes, right back to Peter.

Of course it doesn't (Pius I, probably one of the earliest guys you can possibly call a bishop of Rome comes around the mid-2nd century). Anyway, as long as short, unjustified, off-the-cuff assertions of a credulous nature will be (understandably) tolerated as not too much off-topic, while longish, rather laboriously justified skeptical replies to them (also understandably) will not, there is not much that I can do to counter your dead men walking, is it?

Yet the second I presented proof of the existence of the person Jesus, to answer the person who initially came on here and began denying his existence, the thread is edited.

I'm not sure I saw it and would like to comment on it. We were talking of old Daniel's prophecies that according to you worked like Swiss clocks. As you must have noticed, my replies are also gone, so here is my suggestion: if you're really interested in the existence of the person Jesus, use the private mail to send your proof to me and I will then reply by the same means.

[astro3]

A new, compulsory religion of the Holohoax is now swiftly seizing a-hold in all corners of the globe, pushing out the tired, old religions of yesteryear. Its central features are:
Golgotha = Auschwitz,
The Saints = Holocaust survivors,
Guilt = what we did to God’s Chosen People,
Sin = Unbelief, ie doubting that 6 million were gassed,
Faith = believing it, without any scrap of physical or documentary evidence,
Redemption = ceaseless flow of ‘compensation’ money from Germany to Israel

Its holy Vision of Ghastly Horror is in tune with today's world, promoting suicide, depair nihilism etc.

I posted the above on a British truth forum 911 forum.co.uk and it got taken down, with a statement that H-D issues were banned.

[PatrickSMcNally]

A problem with just ignoring the Popes and focusing on general teachings is that one can easily derive many favorable messages from almost any religion at that level of generality. My earliest introductions to Holocaustianity were in the context of discussions around civil disobedience and how the purported Holocaust had taught us that people need to avoid placing excessive faith in leaders and be prepared to disobey orders, even at the cost of potentially breaking the law, when their individual conscience starts to tell them that the orders are not morally right. That is the simplest short encapsulation of all the core themes of Holocaustianity. The problem arises when we start to move away from such general formulations and look at real people in positions of power. I heard all of the stuff about how the Holocaust had taught us that we must never place the rule of the state over well-informed individual conscience, and it sounded really good. But something about Elie Wiesel, from the very first moment I heard about the man, long before I was really informed enough to be able to formulate any kind of critique, just struck me as being like rotten fish. I couldn't put my finger on it in the beginning. But it wasn't the general lessons we'd been taught about the Holocaust that put me off. It was this specific sleazebag who I did not care for at all, even when I couldn't explain it. If my exposure to Holocaustianity could have just been restricted to those people who were dedicated to ending the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s and held that they were following the lessons learned from the Holocaust, then I can't see that I would ever have had cause to want to distance myself from such a religion. It was only becoming aware of other people who also identified with Holocaustianity, and who really seemed to have more power in places which count than the average Joes whom I already knew in my own life, that forced me start looking at Holocaustianity again. But what a wonderful world it would be if everyone was as dedicated to concepts of individual conscience as were the Holocaustian believers whom I knew originally. It just seems like it's only the suckers who are locked out of the halls of power that end up taking up such a benevolent interpretation of their religion, probably because that's all they have.

[ASMarques]

ASMarques, just ignore the historical-physical Jesus Christ and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kind of human added stuff, ignore the Popes, the bishops, the priests, ignore the believers...

Focus on "his message" to the people, "his teachings" !

Consider the following piece of advice:

KostasL, just ignore the historical-physical gas chambers and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kinds of human added stuff, ignore the "Holocaust" scholars, the survivors' claims, the witnesses, ignore the believers...

Focus on "the message" to the people, "the teaching" !

The final lesson, I assume, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which we no doubt find ourselves in agreement.

But so what? By ignoring the truth in order to promote a lofty idea, you would have helped the cause of blissful ignorance, granted. But what if you had been interested in furthering the cause of knowledge instead -- including naturally the essential knowledge that the reason why you should not kill Jews wholesale is not to be found in a piece of bogus history, but rather on the moral principle that killing people wholesale is wrong? Would the advice still hold?

[ASMarques]

A new, compulsory religion of the Holohoax is now swiftly seizing a-hold in all corners of the globe, pushing out the tired, old religions of yesteryear. Its central features are:
Golgotha = Auschwitz,

Yes, it's a good parallel, and one that keeps us very much on-topic.

The whole thing takes off with the need to find some sort, any sort, of absolutely unique martyrdom.

Initially it's an almost indefinite need (the new version of a humble, abused Messiah, even so able to provide hope amidst the ruins); then the abstract concept (the Pauline celestial crucifixion by the Archons, much influenced by both Essenism and the Gnosis); then various competing fictions, more down-to-earth, including the final one that stood the best chance of resisting the facts with the help of the church censors and their suppression of educated deniers (such as Celsus and Porphyry, among others), as well as the destruction of rival writings such as the vanished gospels of the Mithraists (not too difficult, by the way, since mystery cults -- even when extraordinarily popular -- were less outwardly expansive on their own than the Christian syncretism).

In "Holocaust" parlance, we are currently beholding the struggle between the resilient Golgotha by Gas (predominant among the less organized communities and the followers of the Auschwitz gospels), the Golgotha by Bullets (Father Desbois and the Einsatzevangelium) and the gnostic-like Golgotha by Dematerialization at the Hands of the German Archons (David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt).

Of course, one problem in the modern, as in the ancient, Golgotha narrative would be the absence of corpus delicti -- or corpora delicti, if you prefer the plurality of crimes to the crime par excellence -- hence the convenience of deleting corpses from the earth by having them rise to heaven, either bodily or by instant body vaporization, as long as you manage to convince ordinary folks that miracles happen (again not too difficult, unless it's the miracles they don't particularly like).

Note that this absence of knowledge wouldn't pose too much of a problem to the relatively far future. After all, we now have no idea of where the remains of many historically popular figures -- or indeed of the victims of many past massacres -- may rest. But an immediate lack of knowledge about such matters does pose a problem to the nearly contemporaries of the alleged events.

And the rest is not history.

[ASMarques]

My earliest introductions to Holocaustianity were in the context of discussions around civil disobedience and how the purported Holocaust had taught us that people need to avoid placing excessive faith in leaders and be prepared to disobey orders, even at the cost of potentially breaking the law, when their individual conscience starts to tell them that the orders are not morally right.

Paying lip service to lofty principles does not mean they are not despised. Look at what is practiced, not at what is proclaimed.

That is the simplest short encapsulation of all the core themes of Holocaustianity.

I don't agree at all. My suggested encapsulation of the core idea would be thusly:

~~~[Hear, hear, non-Jews were bad to Jews, now they must pay!] ...

[PatrickSMcNally]

Paying lip service to lofty principles does not mean they are not despised. Look at what is practiced, not at what is proclaimed.

The average Joe Blow on the ground who joined in campaigning against the US invasion of Indochina because they saw this as "a repeat of what Hitler did" was not paying lip service to anything. They were sincerely motivated by their own honest understanding of things. I'd be willing to bet you that Rachel Corrie was a firm believer in Holocaustianity.

I don't agree at all. My suggested encapsulation of the core idea would be thusly:

Because you're characterizing the views of people with power, whereas I am not. I refer to what the great majority of ordinary people took up as their understanding of the lessons of the Holocaust. Some had heard Elie Wiesel speak in broad generic terms about how the lesson of the Holocaust is that people must be ready to say "No!" Wiesel is a cynic who postures this way but acts shocked when someone invokes such an argument to say that we should all protest the invasion of Iraq because of the lesson of the Holocaust. But the majority of ordinary people who have regularly been influenced by Wiesel's abstract message are generally not cynics and sincerely believe this type of statement of values. What you're simply describing is the ordinary disparity which exists between what the average person raised upon and influenced by a general religion learns to feel versus what people with power behind the scenes feel about it. Whether it's Christianity or Holocaustianity, the powers behind the curtain have always been ruthlessly cynical. But it's also true that the mass of ordinary people influenced by the public teachings of such religions are sincere devoted followers who do not consciously hold any such cynicism. The core ideas of what are publicly proclaimed as religions are not the same thing as the real motives of the High Priests who control the Papacy.

[KostasL]

ASMarques, just ignore the historical-physical Jesus Christ and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kind of human added stuff, ignore the Popes, the bishops, the priests, ignore the believers...

Focus on "his message" to the people, "his teachings" !

Consider the following piece of advice:

KostasL, just ignore the historical-physical gas chambers and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kinds of human added stuff, ignore the "Holocaust" scholars, the survivors' claims, the witnesses, ignore the believers...

Focus on "the message" to the people, "the teaching" !

The final lesson, I assume, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which we no doubt find ourselves in agreement.

But so what? By ignoring the truth in order to promote a lofty idea, you would have helped the cause of blissful ignorance, granted. But what if you had been interested in furthering the cause of knowledge instead -- including naturally the essential knowledge that the reason why you should not kill Jews wholesale is not to be found in a piece of bogus history, but rather on the moral principle that killing people wholesale is wrong? Would the advice still hold?

There is the material world and the spiritual world. Even if you doubt this. And the physical laws do NOT apply to the spiritual world.

Our Orthodox Christian faith is of the spiritual world.

All the religions, claim the same more or less, but not all are the same, i guess.

The Holocaust tends to become a religion but still there is nothing spiritual in this and it is used to harm humanity.
What's more as a historical "fact", it is quite recent. And we all clearly see who made up this hoax, what are their motives and the consequences.
They would love it, to make it spiritual, divine and sacred but it is a dirty and evil hoax.

[ASMarques]

There is the material world and the spiritual world.

Nonsense. There is only the World, its denizens are called "events," and it's not a sort of global dissociative identity disorder. Even rabbi Einstein knew this, even though he resisted the Filioque principle as you easterners do.

You apparently follow the schismatic approach to the World that is the source of the ages-old silliness that cleaves apart bodies and souls, something that owes much to the Christian religion and culminates in folks like Daniel Dennett declaring themselves zombies deprived of consciousness simply because they don't believe in an afterlife or in disembodied souls floating around.

"Material" and "spiritual" should be descriptive gimmicks, not philosophical foundations.

Even if you doubt this. And the physical laws do NOT apply to the spiritual world.

Poppycock. Put a burning match on the palm of your hand and try reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" without mistakes, or, inversely, section your spinal cord at the level of your neck and wish your hand to cross yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

And please don't invoke the holy martyrs singing nice hymns while in the process of being eaten by the lions, or I'll bury you under a deluge of Jewish Hava Naguilas, Marseillaises and Internationales while being zykloned to death (or worse).

Our Orthodox Christian faith is of the spiritual world.

Look here, you silly Greek , you easterners don't even accept the procession of the Holy Paraclete from both the Pater and the Filius, instead of exclusively from the former, something that even the crazy beatus Vincent accepts, and you want to teach us westerners about the "spiritual world"?!

Well, get yourself to a laboratory where they have the power to invoke those elementary contexts we call particles (i.e. very tiny parts of something, the something being the rarefied causality context within the making of the experiment) and, like St Thomas, you'll see with your own eyes not only that "spiritual" and "material" are but different descriptions of the same stuff, midways from the doctrines of St Bertrand of the Neutralmonists and St Alfred of the Panexperientialists, but also that the miraculous spiration of causality proceeds in both senses, i.e. from both cause and effect, and -- most astonishing of all -- that causality itself holds on under all circumstances, even in the face of what the good rabbi called "ghost-like actions at a distance." No wonder he felt like invoking the Holy Ghost!

Now, if that's what happens with this little brother of ours, this tiny, tiny, particle that acquires a quantum subjectivity of its own -- say, in the context of Young's double-slit experiment -- in order to freely choose at the level of the slits each time it is not constrained by external causal processes, can you imagine what it must be like to partake of the ontological nature of the triune stuff that events in the process of happening are made of, only not at the experiential level of what goes on in a human mind, i.e. the subjective mode of a human brain, but at the humanly inconceivable subjective level of the self-contained -- global cause, effect and double arrow in itself -- World stuff, if indeed such a subjectivity exists and makes any sense?

Oops, here we go. Off-topic again. Blame the Greek...

All the religions, claim the same more or less, but not all are the same, i guess.

Yes, but it's very much like fishing for rare gold nuggets in different dirty rivers full of mud, when you have the Mother Lode at home, within easy grasp, indeed through the grace of a continuous universal revelation.

Of course, there are exceptions: in particular, there was once an old religion that managed to make the most beautiful Holy Virgin of all jump out in shining armor from the brow of thundering superstition! No wonder she had her favorite hero-- well, okay, her 2nd favorite hero -- founding cities as far from Mount Sinai as possible, beyond the Pillars of Hercules at the westernmost reaches of the world, where the mouths of the great unknown stood...

I, for one, would have consecrated the golden apple to her rather than any rivals!

The Holocaust tends to become a religion but still there is nothing spiritual in this and it is used to harm humanity.

It's only a religion, not the daily revelation. What did you expect?

What's more as a historical "fact", it is quite recent. And we all clearly see who made up this hoax, what are their motives and the consequences.

Aha, looks like we are using the gift from the Holy Virgin we call hindsight. Yes, the mists of time may contribute to hide the truth...

They would love it, to make it spiritual, divine and sacred but it is a dirty and evil hoax.

Well, you must give them time. They are only at the Roman Empire collapse stage. If triumphant, once they manage this and we all go under before the barbarians at the gates, they will then take refuge in some odd place full of Leprechauns, like Ireland, or perhaps Mars, and will later claim to have saved civilization. Maybe they will then mellow, become -- as you say -- very spiritual, divine and sacred, and a new cycle will begin. *Yawn*

May the Holy Virgin, hallowed be her name, help us!

[KostasL]

There is the material world and the spiritual world.

Nonsense. There is only the World, its denizens are called "events," and it's not a sort of global dissociative identity disorder. Even rabbi Einstein knew this, even though he resisted the Filioque principle as you easterners do.

You apparently follow the schismatic approach to the World that is the source of the ages-old silliness that cleaves apart bodies and souls, something that owes much to the Christian religion and culminates in folks like Daniel Dennett declaring themselves zombies deprived of consciousness simply because they don't believe in an afterlife or in disembodied souls floating around.

"Material" and "spiritual" should be descriptive gimmicks, not philosophical foundations.

Even if you doubt this. And the physical laws do NOT apply to the spiritual world.

Poppycock. Put a burning match on the palm of your hand and try reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" without mistakes, or, inversely, section your spinal cord at the level of your neck and wish your hand to cross yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

And please don't invoke the holy martyrs singing nice hymns while in the process of being eaten by the lions, or I'll bury you under a deluge of Jewish Hava Naguilas, Marseillaises and Internationales while being zykloned to death (or worse).

Our Orthodox Christian faith is of the spiritual world.

Look here, you silly Greek , you easterners don't even accept the procession of the Holy Paraclete from both the Pater and the Filius, instead of exclusively from the former, something that even the crazy beatus Vincent accepts, and you want to teach us westerners about the "spiritual world"?!

Well, get yourself to a laboratory where they have the power to invoke those elementary contexts we call particles (i.e. very tiny parts of something, the something being the rarefied causality context within the making of the experiment) and, like St Thomas, you'll see with your own eyes not only that "spiritual" and "material" are but different descriptions of the same stuff, midways from the doctrines of St Bertrand of the Neutralmonists and St Alfred of the Panexperientialists, but also that the miraculous spiration of causality proceeds in both senses, i.e. from both cause and effect, and -- most astonishing of all -- that causality itself holds on under all circumstances, even in the face of what the good rabbi called "ghost-like actions at a distance." No wonder he felt like invoking the Holy Ghost!

Now, if that's what happens with this little brother of ours, this tiny, tiny, particle that acquires a quantum subjectivity of its own -- say, in the context of Young's double-slit experiment -- in order to freely choose at the level of the slits each time it is not constrained by external causal processes, can you imagine what it must be like to partake of the ontological nature of the triune stuff that events in the process of happening are made of, only not at the experiential level of what goes on in a human mind, i.e. the subjective mode of a human brain, but at the humanly inconceivable subjective level of the self-contained -- global cause, effect and double arrow in itself -- World stuff, if indeed such a subjectivity exists and makes any sense?

Oops, here we go. Off-topic again. Blame the Greek...

All the religions, claim the same more or less, but not all are the same, i guess.

Yes, but it's very much like fishing for rare gold nuggets in different dirty rivers full of mud, when you have the Mother Lode at home, within easy grasp, indeed through the grace of a continuous universal revelation.

Of course, there are exceptions: in particular, there was once an old religion that managed to make the most beautiful Holy Virgin of all jump out in shining armor from the brow of thundering superstition! No wonder she had her favorite hero-- well, okay, her 2nd favorite hero -- founding cities as far from Mount Sinai as possible, beyond the Pillars of Hercules at the westernmost reaches of the world, where the mouths of the great unknown stood...

I, for one, would have consecrated the golden apple to her rather than any rivals!

The Holocaust tends to become a religion but still there is nothing spiritual in this and it is used to harm humanity.

It's only a religion, not the daily revelation. What did you expect?

What's more as a historical "fact", it is quite recent. And we all clearly see who made up this hoax, what are their motives and the consequences.

Aha, looks like we are using the gift from the Holy Virgin we call hindsight. Yes, the mists of time may contribute to hide the truth...

They would love it, to make it spiritual, divine and sacred but it is a dirty and evil hoax.

Well, you must give them time. They are only at the Roman Empire collapse stage. If triumphant, once they manage this and we all go under before the barbarians at the gates, they will then take refuge in some odd place full of Leprechauns, like Ireland, or perhaps Mars, and will later claim to have saved civilization. Maybe they will then mellow, become -- as you say -- very spiritual, divine and sacred, and a new cycle will begin. *Yawn*

May the Holy Virgin, hallowed be her name, help us!

Well said ASMarques ! I like you and your postings, a lot.

Just remember to keep an option open for you may be partly wrong.

[ASMarques]

Well said ASMarques ! I like you and your postings, a lot.

You mean this sort of thing makes sense to you?

You'll have to explain it to me one of these days, after I leave the trance.

Just remember to keep an option open for you may be partly wrong.

Hmmm, beware of Greeks bringing gifts...

[allgood]

ASMarques, just ignore the historical-physical Jesus Christ and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kind of human added stuff, ignore the Popes, the bishops, the priests, ignore the believers...

Focus on "his message" to the people, "his teachings" !

Consider the following piece of advice:

KostasL, just ignore the historical-physical gas chambers and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kinds of human added stuff, ignore the "Holocaust" scholars, the survivors' claims, the witnesses, ignore the believers...

Focus on "the message" to the people, "the teaching" !

The final lesson, I assume, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which we no doubt find ourselves in agreement.

I've been an AS Marques fan ever since I witnessed his valiant, single-handed attempts to bring enlightened rational debate to the Richard Dawkins cheer-squad forum.

However, in attempting to make a valid point about the desirability of retaining one's critical faculties, I think in this case AS Marques glosses over an important distinction.

I have no expertise in the subject of the veracity of a historical Jesus. But I don't need certainty on that to agree with Kontasi. Even if the Jesus story is a myth, it's a remarkable myth - with extraordinary and (in my view) rather wise 'take-home' messages.

A mythic Messiah could plausibly have been constructed around the persona of a great warrior or earthly king. But we find the exact opposite in the case of Jesus.

Mythic or not, Jesus was a humble personage. His teachings of equality, tolerance, respect and kindliness are, in my opinion, a continuing source of inspiration. I view it as unfortunate - and probably the result of falling into a deliberate trap - that Christianity in the contemporary world is so closely identified with issues of sexuality. They do not seem intrinsic to the Gospels. Humility and universalism are. Foregiveness is. True, there are supernatural trappings to the Jesus Myth. But there is considerable consistency in the moral teachings of Jesus, within and between the core texts. These teachings, if followed, would likely make for a happy planet.

Contrast the ‘Holocaust’. For the sake of this argument, we could say it's all true (lampshades, soap - the whole box and dice). It doesn't matter whether it's true or not. One may still, using similar techniques of analysis, consider it as a myth.

Like the Jesus Myth (whether true or not), The 'Holocaust’ Myth has some 'take-home' messages. These are deeply embedded in key ‘Holocaust’ texts and other paraphernalia (movies etc) - and frequently repeated by those who internalize the ‘Holocaust’ Myth.

What are they? AS Marques suggests the "final" message is: "it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale" - and finds it inoffensive.

I agree - if that was the Final Take-Home Message of the ‘Holocaust’ Myth, it would be benign. As someone who's opposed to all mass murder, it would be inconsistent if I objected to prohibitions of the mass murder of Jews.

But is that really the 'take-home' message of the ‘Holocaust’ Myth? I don't think so.

I'm not sure there's one 'final' message; there seem to be a few.

In my own words, this is what i think they are:

1/ The ‘Holocaust' was the worst crime in human history..
2/ The war to defeat Hitler was thus necessary and justified, because...
3/ Only war could stop Hitler from carrying out the ‘Holocaust'
4/ Jews who survived the ‘Holocaust' have been terribly wronged, and
5/ This entitles Jews to a 'Jewish State' and special other considerations, and
6/ It obligates non-Jews to speak well of Jews and support the 'Jewish State'.
6/ Criticism of the historicity of the ‘Holocaust' is intrinsically evil, because
7/ Doubting the ‘Holocaust' risks repetition of this unparalleled crime
8/ We must remember and mourn the ‘Holocaust' for ever

Whereas the take-home message of the The Jesus Myth suggested that forgiveness for sin was a good idea and a wholesome basis for life, there's no real equivalent in the ‘Holocaust’ Myth. In fact, it's the opposite. ‘Holocaust’ Myth High Priests openly reject the idea that the stain of the ‘Holocaust' can ever be truly eradicated (they seem to have borrowed, then distorted, the Catholic concept of 'original sin')

Nothing in what I've written above is in any way original. I must have read dozens of articles and papers that made similar points, often with far greater erudition.

Incidentally, each one of these Holocaust take-home messages is easy to challenge. Each one seems like a con. Each one is a con. To bolster such rotten and improbable cons, the ‘Holocaust’ Myth itself serves a special religious function. As an unchallengeable truth, the High Priests and Priests may use it to silence critics and dissenters. If dissenters cannot be scared off with milder abuse (such as calling them ‘anti-Priest’), they can be excommunicated with the term ‘Holocaust denier’. Once openly branded in this way, their exclusion from mainstream debate is assured. Such is the power of that Holiest of Holies - the Holy 'Holocaust' that WAS, IS and EVER SHALL BE - the 'Holocaust' that may never be questioned, challenged or doubted.

[ASMarques]

ASMarques, just ignore the historical-physical Jesus Christ and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kind of human added stuff, ignore the Popes, the bishops, the priests, ignore the believers...

Focus on "his message" to the people, "his teachings" !

Consider the following piece of advice:

KostasL, just ignore the historical-physical gas chambers and ignore all these rituals and ceremonies added, all kinds of human added stuff, ignore the "Holocaust" scholars, the survivors' claims, the witnesses, ignore the believers...

Focus on "the message" to the people, "the teaching" !

The final lesson, I assume, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which we no doubt find ourselves in agreement.

[...]

However, in attempting to make a valid point about the desirability of retaining one's critical faculties, I think in this case AS Marques glosses over an important distinction.

Like the Jesus Myth (whether true or not), The 'Holocaust’ Myth has some 'take-home' messages. These are deeply embedded in key ‘Holocaust’ texts and other paraphernalia (movies etc) - and frequently repeated by those who internalize the ‘Holocaust’ Myth.


What are they? AS Marques suggests the "final" message is: "it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale" - and finds it inoffensive.

Not at all.

You make several good points of your own, but here is my point that you missed: this was not "ASMarques suggesting the 'final' message was 'it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale' and finding it inoffensive", but, quite on the contrary, ASMarques applying to the historical "Holocaust" myth the moral advice that KostasL had given him on the historical Christian myth, namely that we should focus exclusively on the good part of the outcome of a gigantic historical myth and forget its falsehood and its historically catastrophic results for the sake of this alleged good part.

So my meaning was two-fold:

1) That we would found ourselves in agreement over some minute or extremely obvious lessons that go without saying, like the (indeed ridiculously superfluous) good part of the "Holocaust" teachings that I encapsulated in the purposefully silly formula "it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale."

2) But that only KostasL would -- if he applied to the "Holocaust" historical myth the same standards of moral evaluation he used for the "Jesus Christ" historical myth -- consider this a final result worthy of respectful silence in order to hide the rest.

You should not forget that this was ASMarques using KostasL's advice and words, not his own, in order to make a point, i.e. when ASMarques writes "The final lesson, I assume, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which we no doubt find ourselves in agreement," the intended meaning is "The final lesson according to KostasL, ASMarques assumes, would be that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, something with which KostasL and ASMarques no doubt find themselves in agreement" [i.e. the "something" over which they agree is the very simple fact that it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale, an obvious application of a moral principle, not a moral revolution to be extracted from a piece of bogus history].

This was precisely what came next. Quoting myself: "But so what? By ignoring the truth in order to promote a lofty idea, you would have helped the cause of blissful ignorance [i.e. of ignorance of the many evil aspects of the myth], granted. But what if you had been interested in furthering the cause of knowledge instead -- including naturally the essential knowledge that the reason why you should not kill Jews wholesale is not to be found in a piece of bogus history, but rather on the moral principle that killing people wholesale is wrong? Would the advice still hold?"

I agree - if that was the Final Take-Home Message of the ‘Holocaust’ Myth, it would be benign.

Not at all my opinion. See this other post of mine on this very same thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5664&p=37842#p37842

As someone who's opposed to all mass murder, it would be inconsistent if I objected to prohibitions of the mass murder of Jews.

Obviously so. You don't need the "Holocaust teaching" to learn such an idiotic "moral lesson". If anything, the very same restrictive contents of the "lesson" in connection with the ruthless persecutory Jewish practices might even help turn some less thoughtful people into taking the opposite view!

But is that really the 'take-home' message of the ‘Holocaust’ Myth? I don't think so.

Neither do I, as I expect to have now made clear.

[PatrickSMcNally]

glosses over an important distinction.

You've actually made a false distinction.

Even if the Jesus story is a myth, it's a remarkable myth - with extraordinary and (in my view) rather wise 'take-home' messages.

Ditto for the Holocaust, at least insofar as the above has any merit. Are you acquainted with Hajo Meyer?

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10568.shtml

Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"

Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz...

In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews...

I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one's hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people -- like Israel is doing in Gaza...

Perhaps Hedy Epstein?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e19044.htm

"What is the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust?"

An interview with Hedy Epstein

Hedy Epstein, is a German Jewish Holocaust survivor, born in 1924, whose parents were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, where they perished. In 1948, Hedy Epstein went to live in United States. In 2003, she decided to make a trip to Palestine. Shocked by the oppression that the Israeli government is imposing on the Palestinians, she is, since then, devoting herself to make it known to the world. In the interview she gave to the Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori, Hedy Epstein speaks, with her gentle and mild voice, about her last travel to Palestine after a moving visit to one of several concentration camps to which her parents were deported. And she said: "I would like to dedicate this interview to the children of Gaza, whose parents cannot protect them or send them away to safety as my parents did when they sent me to England in May 1939 on a Kindertransport” (1) ...

Silvia Cattori: In 2004, after the humiliating and dehumanizing abuse you had to undergo at Tel Aviv airport, where you had to get undressed and were internally searched as you explained it to me in our first conversation (2), you were very upset and you declared: "I will never return to Israel". But since then you have been back four more times. Last summer you were there again. How was it possible?

Hedy Epstein: I have never felt such anger after what happened to me and the friend travelling with me at the Ben Gurion airport in January 2004.

While on the plane, still full of rage, I wrote on every page in the magazines provided by the airline "I am a Holocaust survivor and I will 'never again' return to Israel." I sometimes pressed so hard on the paper with my pen, that I tore the page. It was one small way to vent some of my anger...

It's easy to come across the above names when searching for "Rachel Corrie" in conjunction with words like "Auschwitz," "Holocaust" and the like. Corrie herself was another person who was clearly influenced by the legacy of what she'd been taught about the alleged Holocaust, and her views were quite in line with those of such "survivors" as they're called as Meyer and Epstien above. The normal everyday world of the majority who accept the orthodox Holocaust narrative is not predominantly made up in a numerical sense of people like Elie Wiesel or Benjamin Netanyahu. They just happen to be the ones with the real power. But people like Meyer, Epstein, and Corrie come much closer to how the ordinary person conceives of "the message of the Holocaust."

A mythic Messiah could plausibly have been constructed around the persona of a great warrior or earthly king. But we find the exact opposite in the case of Jesus.

The original myth of Jesus grew up after Rome invaded Judea. Whether or not there was a real person Jesus, I don't know. But it's very likely that in the face of a successful Roman invasion of Judea there were people on the ground who began responding by preaching peace and love to Roman soldiers. That's a common response whn one is outgunned, start preaching love for humanity. The Elders of Judea likely carried out some crackdowns on such pacifist sentiment occurring within their midst, and this could plausibly account for the "Jews killed Jesus" version of events. The Jewish Elders eventually adapted themselves to the Roman Empire, as is common when colonial powers conquer a region and begin hiring former elites. But the pacifist propaganda which had been launched under the banner of Christianity struck a chord and began infecting the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire went into decline and the Frankish tribes became stronger and able to defeat the Romans. In the face of this the old Roman elite adapted itself and began forming the Roman Catholic Church. To be effective they not only had to adopt the formally pacifistic messages of Christianity, but they also took over from the Germanic tribesthe holiday dedicated to the winter solstice and redefined it as Christmas which was no said to be the birthday of Jesus. Whether or not a single individual Jesus existed, I don't know, but all of the stories passed on suggest that he was born in spring if he existed at all. The Roman Catholic Church modified this to fit with Germanic celebration of the winter solstice so as to accomodate the Germanic tribes. While it's hard to really be clear on details, something like this sketch fits best what we have passed on to us from old legends and some authentic history of Rome.

I view it as unfortunate - and probably the result of falling into a deliberate trap - that Christianity in the contemporary world is so closely identified with issues of sexuality. They do not seem intrinsic to the Gospels.

But it is pretty intrinsic to why Christianity was kept around for so long instead of being quietly forgotten about. In the ancient world, in every corner of the earth where some semblance of civilization existed, it was commonly taken for granted that the demands imposed by nature upon human labor were such that one could not allow the majority of people who labored too much pleasure. If workers had a fun time then they would become lazy and laziness among the work force would mean the death of civilization. It was only as the industrial revolution advanced that people started developing the opposite concept that a worker who was given the opportunity for personal enjoyment might actually be more productive as a laborer than one who was not. But sexual permissiveness was very often seen as the most dangerous way of promoting indolence in the labor force. So extensive diatribes were carried on to remind people of how evil such permissiveness really was. That's not at all unique to Christianity. Many religions in each part of the world will often have something about the 30 virgins whom you'll meet after a lifetime of tight sexual restraint. To the extent that this involved mistaken notions, they were mistakes made by most of the world in attempting to organize the early labor process. Slavery eventually became out of date because it proved to be inefficient in the long run. But it was a natural product of ancient times which occurred pretty much everywhere.

What are they? AS Marques suggests the "final" message is: "it's wrong to kill Jews wholesale" - and finds it inoffensive.

I'd have to qualify that and add that for many people the final message is actually much more general than simply whether or not one should kill Jews per se. Quite often the Holocaust serves as a metaphor for much wider messages such as when Hedy Epstein states:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e19044.htm

I speak of the lessons learned from the Holocaust. I credit my experiences as a Holocaust survivor as the leading influence behind my efforts to promote human rights and social justice. For me "remembering is not enough", which is the title of my autobiography, published in German, in Germany in 1999, under the title "Erinnern ist nicht genug." (4) Remembering also has to have a present and a future perspective.

What is the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust? I know what it is to be oppressed. Nobody can do everything, but I feel that it is incombent upon me to do as much as I can, to do the right thing, to, in this case, stand with the Palestinians in their struggle against Israeli oppression, under which they exist and suffer every day and night.

Why did I survive? To just sit here and say: yes, the situation is bad, somebody shsould do something about it. I firmly believe that each and every one of us, including me, has to be that someone, who tries to improve the situation.

And this is not to say that the sufferings of the Palestinians are more or less important than the sufferings of the people in some other places. But I have only so much energy and so much time each day. Rather than dispersing my energy here and there, I decided just to concentrate it on the Israeli and Palestinian issue.

Epstien's message is clearly much wider than merely a debate over killing Jews, and this is frequently how ordinary believers like Rache Corrie absorb the message.

I'm not sure there's one 'final' message; there seem to be a few.

In my own words, this is what i think they are:

In the days when the Catholic Church once held the real power in Europe you could have given a very long laundry list of messages which one was supposed to follow, and most of them had little to do with promoting humane behavior. Fortunately, the Catholic Church has largely lost the power it once had. Whatever new mischief modern elites may create, there's no cause for regret over that.

Whereas the take-home message of the The Jesus Myth suggested that forgiveness for sin was a good idea and a wholesome basis for life,

That didn't keep them from threatening Galileo with torture when they found him a nuisance.

there's no real equivalent in the ‘Holocaust’ Myth.

Actually there is, and I've only referenced a few case examples to make a point which one could devote volumes too. Large numbers of people have at different times been moved to humane acts because they saw this as the most important lesson of the Holocaust. The fact that people in positions of real power don't act that way is a different issue, and it's nothing new under the sun either. It's always been the case that the people who draw the good lessons from a religion are those who exist outside of the halls of power. Those who act as real string-pullers behind the scenes always have something else up their sleeve when posing as your savior.

[allgood]

AS Marques' clarification was useful. I don't think there's much real difference between our positions on the 'Holocaust'-related aspects of this discussion.

With Patrick it's a rather different matter.

Of course it's true that Christianity has a checkered history. All sorts of things have been done in the name of Jesus over the last two millennia. Some of them were very nasty.

Equally well, many fine people may well have been inspired to do good - real indubitable good - through reading or witnessing 'Holocaust' material.

I still believe that in terms of structural analysis, the two stories are almost mirror images.

The Jesus Myth/Narrative is about an essentially divine (perfect) human being, living as a humble person making inspiring yet practical suggestions about how ALL humans can live better, then dying as a martyr on behalf of all humanity.

The 'Holocaust' Myth/Narrative is about a special category of human being treated by other categories of human beings (led by an incarnation of The Devil) in an exceptionally cruel way , being murdered en masse as martyrs and leaving other sections of humanity with permanent guilt that can be compensated, but never eradicated, by payment of material tribute etc.

The first story is universalistic and inclusive in essence. The latter is intrinsically partisan and exclusive. The first story is about the potential to transcend sectarian allegiances. The latter is about the immortality of a key allegiance (Jew v non-Jew). The first story is about forgiveness and redemption; the latter is about holding a grudge in perpetuity.

One might say the first story is a song about divine life. The latter is a dirge about human death.

The first story postulates that the focus of human attention should be Divine Good.

The latter postulates that the focus of human attention should be Human Evil.

Gore Vidal once wrote a novel about the fictional ascendancy of a Death Cult in modern America. The 'Holocaust' seems to be the novelist's nightmare made flesh.