Re: creedal minimalism vs. Skeptic magazine

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Tue, 24 Dec 1996 14:17:43 -0500


Lyle Burkhead wrote:
>
> My post last night may have come as a shock to some people. In this
> post and the following one, I want to indicate very briefly what I mean
> when I say there are logical gaps in Michael Shermer's argument.
>
snipp....
> Michael keeps talking about "convergence of evidence." The problem
> here is that the evidence does not converge. The mosaic-like pieces
> don't give us a complete picture of the crime. We have a series of
> pictures which approach the gas chambers from both directions, before
> and after. They approach but they do not meet in the middle. We have
> pictures of prisoners arriving at the camp, and pictures of bodies being
> cremated, but nothing in between. There are no photographs of the
> gassing operation itself. That part (the essential part!) of the mosaic
> is missing, so the series does not converge.

Such photos are in existence, and can be accessed in the US Army
archives, probably at your local National Archives.

>
> If there were photographs or movies of the gassing operation, then
> there would be no such thing as revisionism. Likewise, if there were
> rooms in the ruins of Auschwitz that looked like the gas chambers in
> American prisons, revisionism would be impossible. If there were
> records of the construction of gas chambers (as there are for the
> construction of crematoria), revisionism would be impossible. If there
> were any documentation at all, any references by Himmler, Hitler, or
> anyone else to gas chambers, then revisionism would be impossible.
>
> Revisionism is possible only because there is a total lack of physical,
> photographic, or documentary evidence for gas chambers.

This is a total lie Lyle. The camps are still inexistence, though they
are beginning to fall apart from age. Just because you personally have
never been there is no reason to doubt their existence, and anyone who
has told you they do not exist is either misled or a liar. I would
suggest that anyone who doubts to go, as your own eyes will not lie.
>
> If someone hadn't already heard about the gas chambers, he wouldn't
> learn about them from the speeches of Hitler, Himmler, and the other
> Nazis, nor from the photographs of the camps, nor from the documents
> describing the camps, nor from examining the remains of the camps.
> A naive person investigating this subject would have no indication
> whatever that there were gas chambers, if all he had to go on was
> non-witness evidence. One hears about gas chambers *only* from the
> statements of Broad, Hoess, Nyiszli, and other such witnesses.
>
> That's why I refer you to the Nyiszli book, which is by far the most
> accessible of the witness statements. Judge for yourself.
>

Lyle, I am really shocked that you would make such assertions. In our
social studies class in junior high our teacher showed us films produced
by the US Army at the end of the war of the camps. THey definitely
showed gas chambers, and showed the gas apparatus. They also interviewed
people who were prisoners at the camps who had been put on details to
clean out the gas chambers after use.

I am aware that some western US schools are infiltrated by neonazi
sentiment and teach revisionist history, I have encountered the products
of such school systems in my travels. I was not aware that there would
be anyone on this list who still carried the poison of such
disinformation.

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!

Michael Lorrey --------------------------------------------------------- President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ --------------------------------------------------------- Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Certified Genius.