Re: creedal minimalism vs Skeptic magazine

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Fri, 27 Dec 1996 12:45:30 -0800 (PST)


> > I am personally disgusted with people who keep claiming
> > that the Holocaust never happened.
>
> I agree that lies are nauseating. The question of *who* is lying
> remains to be determined.
> There are two explanations for the disappearance of European Jewry...

Up until this point, I was with you, but you have departed from the
rational. The proper response to Mr. Lorrey's remark above is "Please
confine yourself to the question at hand; no one is denying the
Holocaust, I am arguing against one small point, and nothing else."

But instead, you offer an irrational and inflammatory response that
does not support your reasoning. And then to claim that it's
possible that the number of missing is overestimated by millions
flies squarely in the face of clear evidence.

I offer you the same advice I offer Mr. Lorrey: confine your
arguments to the question given. Were Jews killed in gas chambers
or by some other means? As you demonstrate, the evidence for such
chambers is unsatisfying, but to extrapolate from that to cast
doubt upon the number of deaths itself is every bit as irrational
as Mr. Lorrey's emotional outbursts.

Also, let me offer another possible form of evidence more solid
than mere eyewitness testimony: corroboration. Are there accounts
from witnesses, who have never met, taken separately, that agree on
details significant enough to make chance coincidence unlikely? Is
there corroborative testimony from parties on both sides (i.e. from
Germans who may have built or operated the chambers)? While that
still isn't blueprints or photographs, it might make Shermer's weak
arguments quite a bit stronger.