 |
| Ohio billboard put up by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which now demands the removal of the Star of David from the Ohio Holocaust museum. |
Atheist Jerry Coyne has called in the Freedom From Religion Foundation in his personal crusade against a Christian astronomy professor at Ball State University who teaches a course on the philosophical implications of modern science.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is a militant anti-religious hate group that specializes in dragging Christians into court in order to silence them.
The FFRF now demands that the State of Ohio remove Stars of David from its planned Holocaust memorial.
The Star of David is a symbol of enormous historical and spiritual salience for Jews. It is supremely relevant to the Holocaust-- a religious symbol cherished by the Jewish people under oppression and a patch that Nazis required Jews to wear.
To ban the Star of David from a Holocaust memorial is to deny a very real part-- in many ways the core-- of the Holocaust.
The term "Holocaust denial" should be used cautiously, but the FFRF's demand that the Star of David be banned from a Holocaust museum is clearly a form of Holocaust denial. A demand that the government remove the Star of David is a demand that an important part of the truth about the Holocaust be concealed. That is genuine Holocaust denial-- not the denial that the Holocaust occurred, of course, but the denial of an essential symbol of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust.
Jerry Coyne is now collaborating with an organization that is actively engaged in Holocaust denial.
No surprise there. It is important for the haters of religion like Coyne to deny the anti-religious factors at work in genocidal anti-Semitism, just as he denies his own barely-disguised hatred of Christians.
Coyne recently compared people who support academic freedom and college courses that examine the philosophy of science from perspectives that include theism with Holocaust deniers:
Prominent Professor: teaching creationism is like Holocaust denial
Yet to deny the academic freedom of professors and students to discuss theistic understandings of science, Coyne enlists actual Holocaust deniers.
Don't you love the irony?
OMG, I know many public buildings and spaces without the Star of David! Holocaust denial is everywhere!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it takes a special kind of idiot to say that a Holocaust memorial (not a museum) without religious zymology is a form of Holocaust denial.
-KW
@KW:
DeleteIs the Star of David relevant to the Holocaust? Did the Nazis require Jews to wear it? Do Jews consider the S of D relevant to their experience?
Why do you want to conceal an important historical fact and a symbol of the Holocaust?
Zymology: the science dealing with fermentation
DeletePopeye, you are my favorite Proglodyte.
"The term "Holocaust denial" should be used cautiously, but the FFRF's demand that the Star of David be banned from a Holocaust museum is clearly a form of Holocaust denial."
ReplyDeleteGood example of pretzel logic.
Hoo
@Hoo:
DeleteDo you agree that the demand to ban the Star of David from a Holocaust museum is a demand to conceal an aspect of the historical truth about the Holocaust?
You had to redefine what Holocaust denial means. It's funny watching you go through these contortions.
DeleteKeep up the good work, doc.
Hoo
Holocaust denial takes many forms, some overt, some subtle.
DeleteI repeat my simple question:
Do you deny that the demand to ban the Star of David from a Holocaust museum is a demand to conceal an aspect of the historical truth about the Holocaust?
I substituted "deny" for "agree", to help clarify your answer.
Words have meanings, doc. Holocaust denial is defined in my previous comment. FFRF's request to remove the star of David does not fit any of it.
DeleteSo, no, I don't agree that FFRF denies the Holocaust. Neither do you, deep down. But that's OK: a little bit of cognitive dissonance is good for you.
Hoo
@Hoo:
DeleteHolocaust denial is the denial of an aspect of the historical truth about the Holocaust. It may be total denial ("the Holocaust never happened") or partial denial ("the Star of David had no salience in the Holocaust").
There are different degrees of severity in Holocaust denial.
My question, for the third time:
Do you deny that the demand to ban the Star of David from a Holocaust museum is a demand to conceal an aspect of the historical truth about the Holocaust?
I've already answered your question in my previous comment, but I can repeat for the stupid: I deny that the actions of FFRF amount to Holocaust denial. They fit neither the commonly accepted definition of Holocaust denial, nor your watered-down version.
DeleteThe statement "the Star of David had no salience in the Holocaust" is your own invention, not a quote from FFRF.
Hoo
@Hoo:
DeleteI didn't ask you if you thought that the FFRF was denying the Holocaust.
I asked you if you agreed or disagreed with the statement: the Star of David is an aspect of the historical truth about the Holocaust.
So you are asserting that the Star of David is NOT part of the historical truth about the Holocaust?
Why are you so reluctant to answer the question I asked?
Ah, the sound of goalposts swooshing by! So, in your own words, the FFRF were not denying the Holocaust. Excellent!
DeleteThe only problem is that thus is in contradiction with the last line of your opening post, "Coyne enlists actual Holocaust deniers." Time to retract that.
Hoo
@Hoo:
DeleteDoes the Star of David have salience to the Holocaust?
It's funny to watch you evade this obvious question.
Of course it does! But nobody denies it.
DeleteHoo
And now that you have admitted that the FFRF does not deny the Holocaust, have the courage to retract the statement in the OP: "Coyne enlists actual Holocaust deniers."
DeleteHoo
@Hoo:
DeleteYou admit the obvious: that the Star of David has salience to the Holocaust.
Presumably the FFRF agrees with you.
Yet the FFRF demands that it be concealed.
That is is denial of a salient aspect of the Holocaust.
What's your problem?
By the way, do you agree with the demand for concealment of the S of D? Should school text books show the banned symbol in photographs of Jews under Nazi oppression?
How far do you want to carry the censorship?
LOL, doc, your attempts at obfuscation fail miserably. The FFRF objects to the display of the star of David not because they deny its relevance to the Holocaust but because they view it as a "constitutionally problematic endorsement of religion."
DeleteI do not agree with the FFRF argument and think that it's perfectly fine for a museum of Holocaust to have a religious symbol incorporated within it. But you are clearly mischaracterizing their argumentation and I am calling you out on that.
Hoo
@Hoo:
DeleteHolocaust denial is Holocaust denial, whatever the pretense.
The FFRF objects to the Star of David because it casts religious believers in a sympathetic light.
The FFRF is a hate group, and it naturally objects to any sympathetic portrayal of religion, even if it means denying a salient aspect of the Holocaust.
You can dislike the FFRF all you want, but they do not deny the Holocaust in any way. They object to the promotion of one religion, but that is not the equivalent of Holocaust denial.
DeleteHoo
It is a denial of history. Like refusing to include a reference to the railroad tracks entering Auschwitz. Like removing the Spanish Mission Church cross from a government seal in California. You in favor of that denial of history as well, PROFESSOR?
DeleteHoo,
DeleteHow do you equate the symbolism of the yellow star (infamous) on a holocaust memorial with the 'promotion' of a single religion? The memorial does not suggest conversion to Judaism, it simply noted the Jews were the primary target of the machinery of the holocaust. They were. Also, you may want to consider the Nazis saw the Jews in racial terms. Their method was clinical and their justification was pseudo scientific; it was not a religious war.
They were not given the opportunity to convert. A drop of Jewish blood was enough to have you STERILIZED and your marriage dissolved.
The star was a symbol of that 'racial impurity'.
I don't, crus. If you skim my previous comments, you will see that I do not agree with the FFRF.
DeleteBut I also don't think that their actions can be characterized as Holocaust denial.
Hoo
The Holocaust had other victims besides Jews. There were about 11 million of them, of whom 6 million were Jews. The others included the Romani (gypsies), homosexuals, pacifists (such as Jehovah's Witnesses), Polish intellectuals, Slavs - anyone the Nazis considered inferior and not worthy of living.
ReplyDeleteIgnoring the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust is as bad as Stalin's refusal to acknowledge its Jewish victims after Soviet troops captured Auschwitz in January, 1945.
If the Holocaust Memorial included symbols of non-Jewish victims would you be happy? How about it including a 'Hammer and Sickle' to reflect the fact that the Nazis also included Russian and Ukrainian Slavs in their list of the inferior to be disposed of, including the millions of Soviet POWs captured in 1941 with no planning to feed them? And the plans to reduce the population of the Soviet Union, when defeated, by 20 to 30 million through starvation (including the 3 million in Leningrad, which was going to be eradicated)?
Georgie,
DeleteYou should get out of your bathtub and stop playing with your toy plastic battleships. It's water logging your brain. If it had been a Shoah memorial, just a Star of David would have been reasonable.
Anyway, the Soviets won the war for the western allies. If it wasn't for the enormous casualties they incurred, the Germans would have been able to have had more troops to oppose the Normandy landings.
The western democracies were unwilling to incur large numbers of casualties. That's what makes democracies worth living in.
If any of you have not researched the Wannsee conference, here is an excellent introduction. This is an excellent if disturbing film version of the minutes of that conference called 'Conspiracy'.
ReplyDeleteFree to watch on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPIctGbAZEQ
I admire the author's mental gymnastics to try to tar people whom he hates with the most disgusting pejorative he can. My, what a fantastic species we are.
ReplyDeletedo you mean this?
Deletehttp://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4766
Every sentence on this site makes me cringe. Not only are you just as offensive as the examples of atheists you bring up, you have no reasoning. I also believe you have a kinky thing for someone named Coyne, you seem obsessed with him and atheists. Who gave this conservative a computer?
ReplyDeleteGodwin's Law in full effect.
ReplyDelete