Thank you for wanting to debate with me in an honest and open-minded way. However, I already made my point, and it is this: there is room for debate on Holocaust and we should not criminalize Holocaust denial. - - - Updated - - - You are free to think what you want. I don't really care.
There is not "room" to debate until some one provides evidence of something being substantially wrong. To debate you must have a position, evidence, and a theory. None has been provided on the holocaust. As for criminalizing idiocy no a person should not be thrown in jail due to their ignorance.
Just because you dislike what someone has to day it does not mean he has no position, evidence, or theory. It just sounds like a very convenient way to shut down debates. Just yell, "no you didn't provide any evidence/theory/whatever" and then consider oneself the victor. If this is your idea of a debate then count me out. I admire this. - - - Updated - - - You are free to think that.
There have been quite a few types of Holocausts that have occurred during the 20th Century that people have denied. Where do you start? Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the details and interpretation of the event, often to the point of depicting wildly different versions of the facts. The atrocities committed by dictators have always been easier to track down than the crimes against humanity committed by Communist leaders, so the figures for Communist leaders like Stalin and Mao are mere estimates. We also don't know how many dissidents have been killed by order of Kim Il Sung in North Korea, although Westerners suspect many thousands. The reason that we refer to the Nazi exterminations as the Holocaust is based upon facts. Those facts are concrete because the Nazi's meticulously recorded the deaths of their victims from the beginning of their regime to the end. However, there have definitely been worse genocides committed since. Ze-Dong Mao (China, 1948-69) -- 45 to 78 million Chinese and Tibetans Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) -- 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians deliberately killed in WWII plus 3 million Russian POWs left to die) Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-190 -- 8,000,000 Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) -- 7,000,000 (the gulags plus the purges plus Ukraine's famine) Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) -- 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII) Ismail Enver (Ottoman Turkey, 1915-20) -- 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20) Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) -- 1,700,000 Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) -- 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps) Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-7 -- 1,500,000 Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) -- 1,000,000 Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) -- 900,000 Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) -- 800,000 Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-8 -- 600,000 Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) -- 300,000
I never saw Julius Caesar myself, so he never lived. I also never saw atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it never happened. I never saw F.D.R, so he never existed. I never saw the plague killing millions in late medieval Europe, so it never happened. I never saw the battle of Stalingrad myself, so it never happened. I never saw the Magna Carta, so it doesn't exist. I never saw the Titanic, so she's just a myth. I never saw the Holocaust, so it never happened. Are there people on planet earth that are really that dumb?
Your thread is definitely based on holocaust denial. That is what you are implying and denying. Now, with all the records, photos, testimony from survivers some still alive, do you think denial is valid or do you think this was a conspiracy on a scale never witnessed in history?
I never said that Holocaust did not happen. I am just saying that there is room for debate and that we should not criminalize Holocaust denial. How do you feel about these kinds of laws?
How is this different than, say, a Christian who firmly believes that a magic invisible zombie from Nazareth walked on water and will magically come back to earth to let them magically survive their own death - and yet they certainly never saw one ounce of it "with their own eyes".
I believe the Holocaust happened, but we need to allow deniers the ability to shoot themselves in the foot (so to speak) by looking like fools with all the evidence that they are dead wrong. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We can't stifle their free speech.
So can you agree with me (you didn't see it) that Moses was a big fat liar when we said that "god" (no less) gave him the 10 Commandments?
The difference is religion is based on faith and cannot be proven. Denying proven fact is a far differant scenario.
I don't respect H deniers, but I respect their right to speak. The former leader of Iran was a big H denier.
Then they shouldn't believe it, now should they. Just because they are so scared of their eventual natural death that they believe unscientific nonsense ("a magic invisible guy who died on a cross will let me survive my own death!") doesn't make it ONE BIT more true. The REASON they need faith in the first place is because it's simply not factual. A sane "god", who cared about humans, would provide a court-room level of evidence (yes, evidence) for his specific existence - so as to keep most people out of "hell". Only a perverted "god" would not do that. - - - Updated - - - Religion is causing American to be in the longest war in US history, with no end in sight (this Jihad religious war), so you might want to start to have an opinion, as it's effecting you - hell, your retirement savings went down 20% in one DAY on 9/11, thanks to Mohammad's teaching of 72 virgins for killing non-believers.
Most Holocaust deniers are Muslims who don't want to create sympathy for the hated Jew (the Islamic religious texts teach Jew hatred, that can not be disputed at all), so of course religion should be a part of a thread that talks about Holocaust denial, my friend. Have a great night.
