1
   

ARE THERE DOUBTS ABOUT THE "HOLOCAUST"...

 
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:23 am
fresco wrote:
... We need only to look at Christian fundamentalism to see how rationality with respect to the Earth's origins can completely break down. Rational debate is foreign territory to those who hold doctrine to be paramount. The problem is that the futility of their simplistic arguments leads to frustration and hostility.


Confirming fresco's cogent observation, in the post immediately following, creating an irony all but too rich to be imagined, gunga, almost as if on cue, spews precisely the pavlovian manner of thought and inflamatory style of discourse lammented by fresco. It is apparent also that gunga either has not read or has miss-read Jaynes.

mindy and gunga offer the same counterfeit, the one presenting one face of the vile coin, his counterpart the other. In a way, the juxtaposition of such echoed ignorance and bigotry might almost be thought of as providing a service, displaying in convenient proximity to each other the pathetic congruence of the medeival mindsets responsible for the hateful idiocy presented through the disgusting contributions both bring to the discussion.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:25 am
Re: so
najmelliw wrote:

What do you think, mindonfire? That Hitler didn't KNOW about it? He rules the country for more then ten years, he hates jews (as becomes apparent in Mein Kampf) but he never ordered the construction
of the workcamps and the transports of the jews by railway? Some enterprising Nazi politician decided to get creative and do this all on his own?.
All the elements are there. A passionate racist as a leader, the Nazi ideology, which Hitler helped propagate, in which 'lesser races', including the jews, should be controlled and forced to labor for the third reich,
the construction of work camps which incidentally not only held jews and gipsys, but also political insurgents against the Nazi regime and one of the largest administrative projects up till that time in Europe (to locate all unwanted individuals and arrange for transport to the workcamps).
But still people say. "That is not relevant, we need a document in which this and this is ordered by that and that, and until such time, this is debatable."

And suppose we come up with those documents, what's next? Do you think all those people who deny the existence of a Holocaust are suddenly swayed? They'll just claim it's a forgery. Even if we could provide pictures of Hitler in the camps, they'd still deny it. Their stance is not based on a rational point of view, but rather on an interpretation of history they need to be true in order to feel comfortable in their own belief structure.


If you want to hold Hitler responsible for something that he did not give explicit documentation for, then others should also be held to account when they do the same thing. Maybe one day you all will wake up from your terrorist induced stupors.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:30 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:30 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:34 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:34 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:34 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:34 am
najmelliw wrote:
Because if you deny enough of the more brutal aspects of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany, what is left behind is a picture of a system that can be enticing to many, since it seems to work and leaves no room for those of different race or culture some people feel threatened by.


Too late for that. Where have you been sleeping at? It has already happened.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:45 am
Brilliant self-inflicted irony, mindy - absolutely brilliant. Great job.
0 Replies
 
xingu
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 08:47 am
Was there a written order by Hitler to kill the Jews? There may have been but it no longer exists.

Quote:
Before getting to these recent discoveries and what they mean, it is in order to briefly recapitulate the current state of thinking on the matter. It is generally accepted that the decision was made to physically exterminate the Jews in early to mid 1941. [2] Hitler's secretary remembers a private meeting between Himmler and Hitler in the early spring of 1941, after which Himmler sat at her desk with a very troubled look on his face, put his head in his hands and said: "My God, my God, what I am expected to do". [3] She is convinced that that was the day Hitler ordered him to murder the Jews. Other accounts suppose that the decision was made roughly around the time between March 1941 and the invasion of the Soviet Union. (Research in this area is hampered by the fact that no written Hitler-Order launching the Final Solution has ever been found, and that if there ever was one, it most likely was destroyed.) Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz [4] and Adolf Eichmann, head of Amt IVB4 (Jewish Affairs) [5] both speak of having been told of a Hitler-Order in early summer of 1941.


According to Goebbles the order to exterminate the Jews came from Hitler.

Quote:
The two recent discoveries are:

The first is a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels of December 12, 1941. It runs as follows:
Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.

With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would live to see their annihilation in it. That wasn't just a catch-word. The world war is here, and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence. [7]

The second is a note in his own handwriting by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in his soon to be published diary of a meeting he had with Hitler at the latter's Headquarters (Wolfsschanze) on December 18, 1941. The notes are simply: [8]

Judenfrage / als Partisanen auszurotten

Jewish Question / to be exterminated like the partisans


SOURCE
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 09:48 am
Mindonfire,

I'm not sure whether you have the capacity to understand this but I'll try anyway.

The deflation and or denial of the holocaust is a current strategy used by Islamicists who wish to eradicate Israel.
They argue variously:

1. That Hitler had "just cause" because "Jews were dangerous conspirators". Hence Israel which was founded on the aftermath of sympathy shown by the world was based on a false premise.

2. That even if the Holocaust happened its scale has been manipulated by these "same Jewish Conspirators".

3. That even if the Holocaust happened as the incontravertable evidence suggests, then the Palestinians were innocent scapegoats for "Israeli revenge".

Item 1 is based on acceptance of the forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Irrespective of this, the ruthless efficiency of the genocide machine operated by the Nazi's, which included making lampshades and/or other momentos from the skins of victims puts it into a somewhat different category to "dealing with terrorists".

Item 2: 6 million Jews is only part of the conservative estimate of 9 to11 million across all groups killed in the camps. Other estimates have been as high as 23 million.

Item 3: The Palestinan leader conspired with Hitler to have the resident Zionists in Palestine eliminated by a proposed German landing. He also offered his services to recruit Moslem battalions for the Waffen SS.
Despite this, Israelis seemed to have operated for the most part with relative restraint in the War of Independence (aka War of Annihilation from the Arab point of view). Their subsequent stance of "fierce retribution" has turned out perhaps not to be the most rational one to take against a fanatic enemy who holds "this life" so cheaply.

In short, the bureaucratic details of the Holocaust such as its Nazi documentation, are totally irrelevant except to those who would wish to wipe Israel off the map. It happened...it was applauded by leading Palestinans....and only a fool would ascribe its horrific detail to the subsequent actions of Israelis.
0 Replies
 
Mindonfire
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 10:29 am
timberlandko wrote:
fresco wrote:
... We need only to look at Christian fundamentalism to see how rationality with respect to the Earth's origins can completely break down. Rational debate is foreign territory to those who hold doctrine to be paramount. The problem is that the futility of their simplistic arguments leads to frustration and hostility.


Confirming fresco's cogent observation, in the post immediately following, creating an irony all but too rich to be imagined, gunga, almost as if on cue, spews precisely the pavlovian manner of thought and inflamatory style of discourse lammented by fresco. It is apparent also that gunga either has not read or has miss-read Jaynes.

mindy and gunga offer the same counterfeit, the one presenting one face of the vile coin, his counterpart the other. In a way, the juxtaposition of such echoed ignorance and bigotry might almost be thought of as providing a service, displaying in convenient proximity to each other the pathetic congruence of the medeival mindsets responsible for the hateful idiocy presented through the disgusting contributions both bring to the discussion.



You have confirmed nothing because the ignorance is on your part. What you all do not seem to understand is that death is death. Whether by gas chamber, by oven, or by bombs dropped by an airplane, the same result is death. The problem that you all are having is that for some reason you all can't comprehend one simple fact: You cannot continue to place the death of one group of people above another. Those who call themselves Jews are not the only ones who have experienced death. No one is as passionate when One mentions the genocidal deaths of Native Americans in America. How about Croatia 1941-45? How about the Congo? How about the Armenian Genocide? How about the killings of Africans during slavery? How about the Philippines during the during the Philippine-American War? How about Rwanda and Sudan? How about the countless others which are not mentioned here?

We can go on and on. No one is as passionate when One mentions these other deaths. No one becomes angry if someone says that any one of these may have been myths. But the moment someone says something about the Holocaust, immediately you all become impassioned and angry. You all are biased and unfair. Are the deaths of those by the hand of Hitler more important than the deaths of those other groups which were committed by other hands. Were those killed by Hitler human or were they gods? Tell us the difference, we would like to know?

You see the problem is, that for years you all have been selectively applying justice and the right to die. It is alright for others to die but for those who call themselves Jews, it is not alright. Their deaths have been put on a pedestal while the deaths of other groups have been ignored. The Arabs can die, the Africans can die, the Bosnians can die, the Native American Indians can die, etc… But when it comes to those who call themselves Jews, all of a sudden death becomes taboo. When will you all become passionate about these other deaths? When will you Start to see that the death of One group is as important as the death of the Jews? When are you all going to start being unbiased? When are you all going to Start administering righteous judgement? Until you all are able to be fair and equal, you all will continue to have the problems that plague your world. Just because you may not think that the lives of those other groups are important , does not mean that they do not think so. Just because you may think that it is alright for them to die needlessly does not mean that they agree. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And until you all understand that, and until you all understand that all have to be respected and treated equally in life and in death, you all will continue in your current situation.

So unlike you we don't hold the deaths of those who claim to be Jews on a pedestal. You cannot control us by mentioning the holocaust as you control others. We are objective observers. We do not excuse people to inflict injustice on another group because of the past. Your titles and self-designations mean nothing to us. The death of all is the same. And when you all begin to understand this then you all will have peace. But if you can't then you all can have your perpetual wars until the universe has rid it self or your corruption and injustices

And now if you will excuse us
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 11:09 am
Mindonfire wrote:
You have confirmed nothing because the ignorance is on your part. What you all do not seem to understand is that death is death. Whether by gas chamber, by oven, or by bombs dropped by an airplane, the same result is death. The problem that you all are having is that for some reason you all can't comprehend one simple fact: You cannot continue to place the death of one group of people above another. Those who call themselves Jews are not the only ones who have experienced death. No one is as passionate when One mentions the genocidal deaths of Native Americans in America. How about Croatia 1941-45? How about the Congo? How about the Armenian Genocide? How about the killings of Africans during slavery? How about the Philippines during the during the Philippine-American War? How about Rwanda and Sudan? How about the countless others which are not mentioned here?
We can go on and on. No one is as passionate when One mentions these other deaths. No one becomes angry if someone says that any one of these may have been myths. But the moment someone says something about the Holocaust, immediately you all become impassioned and angry. You all are biased and unfair. Are the deaths of those by the hand of Hitler more important than the deaths of those other groups which were committed by other hands. Were those killed by Hitler human or were they gods? Tell us the difference, we would like to know?

You see the problem is, that for years you all have been selectively applying justice and the right to die. It is alright for others to die but for those who call themselves Jews, it is not alright. Their deaths have been put on a pedestal while the deaths of other groups have been ignored. The Arabs can die, the Africans can die, the Bosnians can die, the Native American Indians can die, etc… But when it comes to those who call themselves Jews, all of a sudden death becomes taboo. When will you all become passionate about these other deaths? When will you Start to see that the death of One group is as important as the death of the Jews? When are you all going to start being unbiased? When are you all going to Start administering righteous judgement? Until you all are able to be fair and equal, you all will continue to have the problems that plague your world. Just because you may not think that the lives of those other groups are important , does not mean that they do not think so. Just because you may think that it is alright for them to die needlessly does not mean that they agree. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And until you all understand that, and until you all understand that all have to be respected and treated equally in life and in death, you all will continue in your current situation.

So unlike you we don't hold the deaths of those who claim to be Jews on a pedestal. You cannot control us by mentioning the holocaust as you control others. We are objective observers. We do not excuse people to inflict injustice on another group because of the past. Your titles and self-designations mean nothing to us. The death of all is the same. And when you all begin to understand this then you all will have peace. But if you can't then you all can have your perpetual wars until the universe has rid it self or your corruption and injustices

Your persistence in afactual, straw man press of agenda serves but to yet further exemplify the absurdity of your proposition,thereby confirming and validated the criticism directed against it. There obtains no such circumstance as that alleged in your ranting screed; your observation is diametrically counter to the observable evidence.

Quote:
And now if you will excuse us

Excuse you? Hardly ... there is no excuse possible for such ignorance, dishonesty, hate, prejudice, and bigotry as that peddled through your posts to this discussion. Excuse you? Entirely inappropriate and unnescessary; the unconscionable outrage you forward is best not merely invited, but most strongly encouraged to seek venue elsewhere.
0 Replies
 
najmelliw
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 04:27 pm
Re: so
Mindonfire wrote:
najmelliw wrote:

What do you think, mindonfire? That Hitler didn't KNOW about it? He rules the country for more then ten years, he hates jews (as becomes apparent in Mein Kampf) but he never ordered the construction
of the workcamps and the transports of the jews by railway? Some enterprising Nazi politician decided to get creative and do this all on his own?.
All the elements are there. A passionate racist as a leader, the Nazi ideology, which Hitler helped propagate, in which 'lesser races', including the jews, should be controlled and forced to labor for the third reich,
the construction of work camps which incidentally not only held jews and gipsys, but also political insurgents against the Nazi regime and one of the largest administrative projects up till that time in Europe (to locate all unwanted individuals and arrange for transport to the workcamps).
But still people say. "That is not relevant, we need a document in which this and this is ordered by that and that, and until such time, this is debatable."

And suppose we come up with those documents, what's next? Do you think all those people who deny the existence of a Holocaust are suddenly swayed? They'll just claim it's a forgery. Even if we could provide pictures of Hitler in the camps, they'd still deny it. Their stance is not based on a rational point of view, but rather on an interpretation of history they need to be true in order to feel comfortable in their own belief structure.


If you want to hold Hitler responsible for something that he did not give explicit documentation for, then others should also be held to account when they do the same thing. Maybe one day you all will wake up from your terrorist induced stupors.


Ah. In another thread someone argued that there are no documents in which terrorists are ordered to commit their attacks. So? What does that mean? That it did not happen? Nevertheless, I for one doubt that only one man, itler, is responsible for the Holocaust. That is a burden most of the high command of Nazi Germany had to bear.

But even if Mr. Schicklgruber the great had absolutely nothing to do with it whatshowever, that doesn't change one iota or tittel about the Holocaust actually happening. And that is what is at stake here. And not whether or not Hitler decided to write documents ordering the extermination of Jews in order to provide 'undeniable proof' to generations later who dare to doubt.

Mindonfire wrote:

We can go on and on. No one is as passionate when One mentions these other deaths.


An empty statement. This is just your opinion, there is no proof. Please, show me the piece of paper with my signature on it where I explicitly state that I do not show any passion about any other genocide than the Holocaust.

Mindonfire wrote:

...You all are biased and unfair...

Ah. the voice of sanity speaking. I'm good and fair, and anyone disagreeing with me therefor isn't.

Mindonfire wrote:

Are the deaths of those by the hand of Hitler more important than the deaths of those other groups which were committed by other hands. Were those killed by Hitler human or were they gods? Tell us the difference, we would like to know?


Whoa! Wait. Let me reread this. Yes, it seems to say : Are the deaths of those by the hand of Hitler Isn't this a bit at odds when you want us to provide undeniable proof in the shape of Hitler signed documents as a sign that the holocaust actually happened?
0 Replies
 
neologist
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 05:09 pm
Mindonfire wrote:
. . . If you want to hold Hitler responsible for something that he did not give explicit documentation for, then others should also be held to account when they do the same thing. Maybe one day you all will wake up from your terrorist induced stupors.
There is plenty of evidence for his implicit conspiracy as well as that of the of the Catholic and Lutheran clergy. The hatred runs deep in German history. Consider the words of our old friend Martin Luther regarding the Jews:

"And let those whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them; if one could hurl hell-fire at them, so much the better....And this must be done for the honor of Our Lord and of Christianity, so that God may see that we are indeed Christians. Let their houses also be shattered and destroyed...Let their prayer books and Talmuds be taken from them, and their whole Bible too; let their rabbis be forbidden, on pain of death, to teach henceforth any more. Let the streets and highways be closed against them. Let them be forbidden to practice usury, and let all their money, and all their treasures of silver and gold be taken from them and put away in safety. And if all this not be enough, let them be driven like mad dogs out of the land."

No one is denying the complicity of so-called christian religions in the uncountable massacres and atrocities from the Crusades to the Rwandan bloodshed. No one is denying the rape of Palestine by so called christian and Jewish leaders. Well, I'm not, anyway.

But the Holocaust perpetrated in Christendom is just as real as the maniacal 'holy war' perpetrated by Islamic zealots of today.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 09:30 pm
neologist wrote:

The hatred runs deep in German history. Consider the words of our old friend Martin Luther regarding the Jews:

"And let those whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them; if one could hurl hell-fire at them, so much the better....


Not that deep. As I've noted elsewhere, if the average person gave a rat's ass about theology, the LSD church would not exist and, likewise, I can't believe the average German ever gave a rat's ass about history going back more than 100 years.

What I think Germans and other Europeans DID give a rat's ass about in 1930 was the Ukraine, and the horrific holocaust against Christian Russia by the commie state, and I suspect most Europeans at least knew somebody or knew somebody who knew somebody in the Ukraine or had relatives living there, and many blamed commie excesses on Jews in general. The hell of it of course is that the typical little Jew like you see in Fiddler on the Roof never knew anything about or gave a rat's ass about communism, and if Hitler ever managed to gas and cremate any of the Rothschilds or anybody with enough moxie to be involved in any sort of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, I've never read about it.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 09:52 pm
timberlandko wrote:
It is apparent also that gunga either has not read or has miss-read Jaynes....


A school capable of actually turning out students as bright as some of you guys think you are would put Harvard and Yale out of business in two years.

Jaynes provides more than sufficient reason to believe that prophecy passed out of existence long before the time of Christ and the first paragraph of the book of Hebrews states that explicitly:

Quote:

BOOK OF HEBREWS

CHAPTER 1
1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;


Likewise the Greek oracles which were the basis of every political decision ever made in Greece for centuries and which even Plato and Socrates consulted and held in uptmost respect had ceased to work by Christian times.

If the oracles were still working 2000 years ago, Christianity would never have gotten off the ground.

Likewise anybody claiming to be a prophet in 632 AD was a phony-ass con-man and a huckster.

Muhammed was mothing more than a bandit chieftain intent on devising the world's ultimate religion for ruling over confederations of bandit tribes. That's all I-slam is.
0 Replies
 
timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 Aug, 2006 11:24 pm
gunga, what Jaynes argues, and ably, even compellingly (though not byond dispute), is that religion is bunk, that "spirituality" is in effect an artifact of the evolutionary development of the human brain, predating the appearance of "modern" cognitive process, which Jaynes has occurring somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 years ago. In no wise does Jaynes assert or even imply there ever was anything more to "prophecy", nor to any mystical, deistic, theophilosophical concept or construct, than mere natural, neurophysiological process ... quite the contrary, in fact; he goes to great length and effort to demonstrate that be so. He explicitly describes - and proposes a mechanism in support of the description - pre-modern "mystical experiences" "communications from/with 'the gods', so to speak, as a form of dementia, auditory and occasionally visual hallucinations, delusions occasioned by the then-contemporary structure and function of the human brain. Jaynes does not support religion, he shreds it.

His postulate is interesting, and quite well developed, as far as it goes, however its focus is all but exclusively confined to Western thought, mythology, and prototheology, leaving unexamined, unconsidered, uncompared, parallel developments in the Eastern world. For many, myself included, this ommission by Jaynes at the very least calls to question both numerous aspects of his hypothesis, and, consequently, many of his conclusions. That aside, there is no arguing thatBreakdown was a seminal work, even if not groundbreaking (see E.R. Dodds, for example, and Nicholas Humphrey), and remains even today heavilly influential, reflected in contemporary neuroscience writers such as Antanio Damasio and Christopher Wills. Of tangential interest is Daniel Dennet's take on Jaynes - a dispute here and there over particulars - qualia, for instance - but essential agreement in concept. Another explorer of the cognitive sciences, Steve Pinker, strongly endorses and further develops the ideas laid out by Jaynes. Somehow, I find it unlikely either Dennet or Pinker stand high on your list of kindred spirits. In the same light, I find it difficult to believe you actually have read - and understood - Jaynes.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sun 27 Aug, 2006 03:46 am
timberlandko wrote:
Somehow, I find it unlikely either Dennet or Pinker stand high on your list of kindred spirits. In the same light, I find it difficult to believe you actually have read - and understood - Jaynes.


Ditto.....


Jaynes adopts an evolutionary model since that's basically the zeitgeist of the time and all he really has for a working paradigm and the only approach he can take which won't get him heaved summarily out of American academia.

He therefore always pulls up just an inch short of drawing obvious conclusions, thus [speaking of the oracle]:

Quote:

The replies to questions were given at once, without any reflection, and uninterruptedly. The exact manner of her announcements is still debated, whether she was seated on a tripod, regarded as Apollo's ritual seat, or simply stood at an entrance to a cave. But the archaic references to her, from the fifth century on, all agree with the statement of Heraclitus that she spoke "from her frenzied mouth and with various contortions of her body." She was entheos, plena deo. Speaking through his priestess, but always in the first person, answering king or freeman, 'Apollo' commanded sites for new colonies (as he did for presentday Istanbul), decreed which nations were fiiends, which rulers best, which laws to enact, the causes of plagues or famines, the best trade routes, which of the proliferation of new cults, or music, or art should be recognized as agreeable to Apollo - all decided by these girls with their frenzied mouths.

Truly, this is astonishing! We have known of the Delphic Oracle so long from school texts that we coat it over with a shrugging usualness when we should not. How is it conceivable that simple rural girls could be trained to put themselves into a psychological state such that they could make decisions at once that ruled the world?

The obdurate rationalist simply scoffs plena deo indeed! Just as the mediums of our own times have always been exposed as frauds, so these so-called oracles were really performances manipulated by others in front of an illiterate peasantry for political or monetary ends.

But such a realpolitik attitude is doctrinaire at best. Possibly there was some chicanery in the oracle's last days, perhaps some bribery of the prophetes, those subsidiary priests or priestesses who interpreted what the oracle meant. But earlier, to sustain so massive a fraud for an entire millennium through the most brilliant intellectual civilization the world had yet known is impossible, just impossible. Nor can it gibe with the complete absence of criticism of the oracle until the Roman period. Nor with the politically wise and often cynical Plato reverently calling Delphi "the interpreter of religion to all mankind.


Now, a person without the evolutionist blinders on can easily enough take that last inch-long step, and ask himself

Quote:

How could anybody sustain so massive an institution for an entire millennium through the most brilliant intellectual civilization the world had yet known, OTHER THAN WITH REAL INFORMATION?


In other words, what if this thing really worked?
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sun 27 Aug, 2006 03:59 am
The basic reality is that the Greek oracles and the Jewish prophets were basically the same thing, i.e. systems for using the sort of bicameral capacity which Jaynes describes to communicate with the spirit world.

And, if there is any one thing in Jaynes' work which is NOT believable, it is precisely his ascribing the demise of bicameral societies to some sort of a nebulous societal change. Far more likely the thing broke down due to some change in the Earth itself affecting some phomenon or phenomena which had served to enable it, hence this whole thing which had been working splendidly five or six centuries before Christ, by the time of Christ was altogether gone.

That could not possibly be the case if the change were in humans themselves. Then you'd be getting back to the Haldane dilemma and the question of how long such a change would take to spread through human populations all over the world, with the answer being about 300 human generations if it were possible at all, and you'd only have about 25 or 30, tops. Most humans would still be bicameral.
0 Replies
 
 

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