Great video. A must see. à voir et revoir et à méditer. thanks for everything onegoodmove. Babeth

4 million did not die at Auschwitz.

It was in hudreds of thousands.

This misinformation cheapens the impact.

Powerful, touching stuff Norm.

Now back to closeted republican bashing :)

Thank you for posting this. I remembered the gist of the quote, but not the exact wording or who said it, so I have never been able to track it down on Google. In fact, I think I was wishing yesterday that I could remember who said it and what exactly the words were. And here I have the info. One Good Move is better than Google. Apparently all you have to do is wish you knew the answer, and, poof, it appears. The Ascent of Man left a great deal of wisdom in my psyche when I was a kid. I guess I was about 9 when I watched some of them. I especially remember this and the part where he is in a cave with prehistoric paintings and explaining that art in its origins was didactic. Anyway, I recommend this series to everyone. Thanks.

The Leuchter Report in 1988 was followed by a "re-evaluation" of the total deaths at Auschwitz (down to 1.1 million). And here is a final note...160,000, 1.5 million or 6??? WTF??? What size number is important enough to say "enough"??? It is not numbers bucko... it is the context...an example... What would you rather lose in accumulation... an eye, hand, and leg...or how about just the ability to be cognitively capable... better yet, maybe just a leg, lower left arm and hand, and the ability to shat when you want to... less is less... or shall we bargain??? Just a question.... and by the way, what was your point?

"Just a question.... and by the way, what was your point?"

They were commenting that stating that 4 million Jews were killed there is not correct. What happened there was terrible beyond comprehension, but they are saying that the video has a factual error.

Lighten up. They only pointed it out because they said it cheapened the impact of the video. Hint: then it did have an impact on them.

Irrespective of the overall message of what we learn from the Holocaust or any other historical catastrophy, an honest look at history is always important and should never be brushed off as unimportant.

By the way, if it's gigantic numbers you want, then take a look at the slaughter of the Native peoples in America when European expansion took place (more than 4 or 6 million). Here's an interesting article to read on that.

I remember this remarkable series on PBS from the mid-70's. It so impressed me I even got the book. This series examined thoughtfully human history with all its foibles and amazing accomplishments. It deserves to be re-produced and brought current by someone of Brownowski's intellectual stature.

Brownowski, even though he was a very diminuative man was nonethless a towering intellect. He knew biology, mathematics and physics. Perhpas not surprisingly, he was also an expert on the poems of William Blake.

Where did the "click to play this video" text go? I can't figure out how to watch the video without downloading it :-( Is anyone else having this problem? I'm on a mac... OS X 10.4, Safari...

Boy, that's when television was really something.

I remember that series well, I think I watched it through several times. It was a big part of my own intellectual development, and I do remember that scene.

I think it was the end of the last installment of the series, and it certainly left a mark. A show about the development of human intellect ending with the statement "You have to touch people."

Would that I could force-feed that scene, clockwork orange style, to all the players in the war on terra.

I need to write down that quote about absolute knowledge.

Does the irony escape anyone that the Nazis were a secular right wing extremist party that was a symptom of 20th century modernism, Social Darwinism (not to be confused with straight up Darwinism), and they specifically manipulated for their purposes and then ultimately targeted people of faith? Jews, Catholics, some Protestants, Jehova's Witnesses, Adventists. This guy's emotional interest in the holocaust has nothing to do with his subject matter of belief in God driving men to kill one another. His speech is over the top rhetoric and as someone above mentioned, his factual errors and penchant for the dramatic cheapen both his argument and the actual slaughter at Auschwitz.

This is a video clip that should have stayed in the dust bin with all the other things we pretend never happened in the 70's.

Dionysus:

You're kidding, right? They didn't hand out iron crosses because they were atheists.

They only targeted (non-Jewish, non-gypsy, non-homosexual, non a few other things) people of faith who opposed them. Hitler had no problem siding up next to a pope who didn't.

The point wasn't religion it was dogma. Religions are not the only organizations that rely on absolute 'truth' but they are certainly among the very best.

"You're kidding, right?"

No, look back at Bill O'Reilly's favorite work of history (that he bases all of his political philosophy on), William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. They had a staged plan to completely manipulate and eradicate religiosity and replace it with a Wagnerian Norse Mythology cult based upon the same symbolism and ritual that influenced the Catholic Church when it Paganized under the Roman Empire's direction. They couldn't kill their entire population of believers, that's just stupid. But they targeted church hierarchy that stood in their way, and played the Vatican like a violin. Of course many Protestant and Catholic prayer leaders got away with unheard of dissention from the pulpit, but that was an undefined line that when crossed could become a serious problem for you, especially in the later years of the war.

Make no mistake, Fascism was built around mobilizing the faithful, but Nazism saw this as a mere vehicle for a higher purpose. Just like the SA hierarchy, the Nazis were very willing and ready to implement the handover of power from Rome to Berlin in terms of religion. They just wanted the easily led Germanic people, not their superstition. The Poles being religious was icing the cake for the bevy of reason to eliminate them.

"The point wasn't religion it was dogma. Religions are not the only organizations that rely on absolute 'truth' but they are certainly among the very best. "

Right and we've been here before, anti-religious dogma has caused as much if not more death and destruction in one century than religious dogma has in, probably, forever.

I really don't buy this notion which has been adopted by many contemporary liberals that our moral and political problems should be chalked up to too much certainty. At root I think our problems are moral not epistemological. I do believe in rationalism, but I don't think that this is to deny that 1) prejudice in some sense is a part of the human condition (the trick being to refine it rather than eliminate it); 2) there are bad consequences that result from too little certainty, particularly among those on the side of truth ("but who are we to say we're on the side of truth?"--that's precisely the problem among liberals and democrats); and 3) totalitarian regimes may indeed be outwardly abosolute and single-minded, but in fact rest on the willingness of their leaders to commit acts of breathtaking criminality, deception and moral anarchism. The totalitarian mindset I think is much more an excercise in absolute will than absolute knowledge. This is all over facist writings.

Dionysus,

Your statement doesn't make any sense, you can't have dogma without belief. No belief, no dogma.

Like Norm said, its not just religious beliefs that cause the only problems, it's any belief system (although religion produces the most dangerous memes).

Erick,

You didn't understand what I meant, and said what I said doesn't make sense, then agreed with me but then contradicted my point (which you say you didn't understand).

You lost me.

Modern Political Christians, Muslims and Jews are responsible for 1/1,000th of the death that secular Political movements are guilty of, and Norm has been consistent in his view that religion is irrational and leads to senseless murder, but his arguments hold as much water as those who say marijuana is a gateway drug. This video cannot be reviewed on its sole merits or faults disconnected from that consistent theme which this blog provides.

And Dionysus argument holds as much water as saying the religious beliefs of the 9/11 hijackers had nothing to do with the 3000 who died on 9/11. Religion, no more harmful than a date with the magic dragon.

3,000 on 9/11 is peanuts compared to the Gulags.

Lying with statistics is an easy thing to do. You just pick and choose what period of time to measure. Dionysus chooses 'Modern' so as to exclude a rich history of religion being the main cause of death on a massive scale. He further seems to be saying that gulag deaths are somehow worse than 9/11 deaths because they are greater in number. While true that they are greater in number qualitatively they are the same. A death is a death whether the dogma that inspired it is secular or religious. It's not a contest trying to prove which is worse they are both bad. He simply want's to remove religion from such ignoble company and can't. But if we chose we could pick our period of history and 'prove' that religion is worse. The last five years may be such an example. I'm not really interested in playing the game, but I do find it disgusting that comparisons of quanity are somehow meant to exonerate religion in 'modern times' it's a little like saying a person who kills his wife is a good guy while one who kills his wife and children is bad. This is still not an either or question and religion is still a significant part of the problem.

That's all nice and well but I'm not exonerating religion, nor am I trying to exclude it. For all we know the 21st century could be the century of religious massacres on a scale that makes Stalin blush.

What I'm saying is that your atheism and anti-religious rhetoric is fueled more on the same irrationality that drives religion than you'd like to admit. Plus, your deep ignorance of the effects of 20th century radical secular political movements is wholly complemented by your blaming the history of terror and death on religious nuts when indeed its main culprits were secular atheists.

I'm on the same exact page as you on almost all counts. You just pose such a weak argument that I'm compelled to critique it. Don't ever expect people who are in accord with you to let you get away with specious reasoning and juvenile sophistry.

"We never grow toward genuine love while worshiping a god who offers redemption from his own cruelty." - Unknown

"atheism, etc. fueled on same irrationality as religion, etc."

Yes, I was mistaken about "Spock" Now I remember a book by pschologist, Albert Ellis, I believe, (I believe!), "Is Objectivism a Religion?" The topic was Ayn Rand, her pseudo atheist Chosen People God, Who was named, "No-god), but it applies to touchy feely liberals too, specifically, some OGMers(Who will remain Unnamed).

The 20th century dictators, meanwhile, fade into ancient history, Hitler fluorished before DNA was discovered and Lysenko was exposed. And Lamarck didn't know he was a Meme-ologist.

How about the relevance of Heisenberg, Bronovski, and quantum computers to evolution though? If you want Certainty's opposite. Can't you see the handwriting on the Sky, the galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters, etc., the writing is Darwin's!

Bullshit.

You just pose such a weak argument that I'm compelled to critique it.

jake bronowski was my childhood hero. not only do i remember this episode, i remember my parents calling me down to see it. they were/are both jews and scientists, and my mom lost the whole european branch of her family in the holocaust. they loved brownowski and were moved to tears by this episode, which in turn left a deep lasting impression on me. have reread the book many times since then, but haven't seen the tv show since it was rerun a few years later. thanks for the post, norm.

If two men rob a bank one an atheist the other a christian we don't claim they robbed the bank because they were christian or atheist. If however the christian robbed the bank because it was written in his holy book that he should rob banks and if he does he'll go to heaven then we can say religion was a reason for his action. There is no parallel case for an atheist.

Copyright that one! It's as good as the teapot atheist analogy.

Firstly it is no straw man argument to say that atheists have killed more than believers in the 20th century by astronomically larger numbers, and to say otherwise or undermine these facts is majorly skirting the issue. On that I would definitely say that this is a new century, fundamentalism is a new beast that will change many things, and relating things to the 20th century could be just as irrelevant as relating things to the Crusades in good time.

Secondly there is no doubt that atheism is not a religion unto itself, and atheists are not of a cultural identity beyond demographic chance in commonalities. This however does not exclude one from having an identity, nor does it prevent one from having a sense of absolute knowledge and superiority.

It was quite odd how you posted the bit on South Park making anti-Evolutionism be represented by Ms. Garrison but didn't post any of the parallels Parker and Stone drew between identity wars amongst atheists of the future (between the Beavers and the weird guys with 70's haircuts and the other guys with dildos on their hats) and religions of today, which was a pretty funny comparison.

Religion is man made, we're complicit in its madness. Those who came up with the great Dionysus and Apollo also came up with Allah and Gabriel, and also came up with the struggle of the proletariat, the ubermensch, populism, terrorism, the Price is Right, and repealing the Death Tax. One holds some reverence for that holiest of madnesses above other man made madnesses, I would dare ask if one reveres Religion as a higher enemy than irreligious belief systems and ideologies because perhaps one thinks it could not be man-made?

Saying religion is responsible for most of the death and destruction in history is like saying the stove is responsible for burning my house down. We're the dumbasses who let it sit there, stewing. Humans are to blame for our dumbass ideas, including absolutism over atheism, but most certainly not atheism nor religion themselves.