Because of the highly publicized libel trial in England--in which Holocaust denier David Irving sued Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a denier--denial of the Holocaust is back in the news. Is it possible, as Irving and other revisionists have claimed, that significantly less than six million Jews were killed during the Second World War, that gas chambers were only ever used for delousing clothing, and that the Nazis never intended to exterminate European Jewry? Since there is no exact count of the total number of victims, nor any film footage of people being gassed, nor a written order from Hitler to eradicate the Jews, how do we know what really happened? For that matter, how do we know anything in the past happened?
Dr. Shermer's latest book, Denying History, will be released from the University of California Press in June just in time to combat these pernicious challenges to the Holocaust and to history itself. In addition to exploring who denies the Holocaust and why, Shermer will explain precisely how we prove what happened in the Holocaust and, for that matter, how historical scientists prove any hypothesis about the past. In the process Shermer will consider other forms of historical denial, such as the Rape of Nanking, and challenge historians to take a more scientific approach to history, showing how the postmodern movement of the 1980s opened the door to historical denial of various forms.
2:00pm, Sunday, June 11, 2000
Baxter Lecture Hall, California Institute of Technology
Directions: Off the 210 freeway exit Lake Blvd and go south. Left on Del Mar, right on Michigan, park in faculty parking lot (okay on Sundays to do so). Baxter Lecture Hall is on the second floor of the Baxter building to the southeast of the large white round building called Beckman Auditorium. Baxter is on the eastern side of the large grass rectangle. Off the 110 freeway follow to the end and the freeway becomes Arroyo Parkway. Right on Del Mar, follow directions above.
Dear Dr. Laura (An Open Letter),
Inasmuch as countless others are contacting you daily regarding God's law and family matters, I felt that I should do so as well.
My teenage son became rebellious, disobedient, and drank and ate too much. I knew that the Old Testament(OT) required me to gather my neighbors together and take my unruly son to the edge of the city and stone him to death(Deut. 21:21). Should I have obeyed the OT?
My neighbor suspects his young vivacious wife with infidelity. He is consumed with jealously just thinking about this. His wife denies his accusations. The OT(Numbers 5:11-31) provides a way to reconcile this dilemma for the couple. What it allows, is, for the husband to take his wife to the priests, or rabbis, and have her fed poison. If she is innocent she will not be harmed. If she is guilty she will get what she deserves; her insides will bloat and her thighs will rot away and she won't be able to have any more children (they already have five). My question to you is: "Do you believe this a failsafe way for my neighbor to handle this problem?"
I recently heard of someone who has come down with leprosy, of all things. According to the OT(Leviticus 14:1-8), the first step in cleansing leprosy is to have the priests or rabbis to kill a dove and spill its blood into an earthen bowl. Then the priest or rabbi is to take a live dove and, dip it in the bowl of the blood of the first dove. Then the live bird is to be loosed in the fields. If this doesn't work one can take a larger more expensive animal, such as sheep, and do a similar exercise(the priest gets to eat the meat). Would you advise that this person, diagnosed with leprosy, seek this kind of help from one of your Rabbi friends--perhaps the one with whom you co-authored your book?
My spouse, --"the wife of my bosom"-- for some 57 years, has, in recent years, sought comfort and solace in some aspects of the "New Age" religions. She has talked repeatedly and glowingly, to me, other members of our family, and people generally, about the joy and contentment she finds in some aspects of this. Sometimes I fear she may be becoming a later-day pagan. She has definitely turned away after other gods. I am told(Deut.13:6-11), in no uncertain terms, that I must personally kill her, lest she contaminates me and others with these gentler, un-God like, non-biblical beliefs. I really don't want to stone her to death. Our children and our grandchildren love their mother and grandmother very much, and are opposed to my killing her, refuseing to help me as they are required to do. After all she is her children's mom. Is there any way out of this for me?
I have two brothers who pre-deceased their wives. One of these women was childless. I understand that it was my duty as the husband's brother(Deut. 25:5-10), to go in unto this childless sister-in-law, and bed her, and take her as my wife and bring up an heir for my poor dead brother. Dr. Laura, did it matter that I was already married? Did it matter that my wife took a dim view of my actually doing this? Was letting my sister-in-law publicly spit in my face the only alternative I had to doing this? That was pretty damn humiliating, I can tell you! Even so, that is much better than what happened to poor pitiful Onan(Gen. 38:9-10)! Now that was a sad business. Not only God killing Onan was sad, but also extrapolating from this that male masturbation is a capital offense, is a real downer for a lot of men and boys--this includes a good many deeply religious folks.
Dr. Laura, I know that you have not long been a convert to the God of the OT. But you do speak as one of the anointed ones, with the most certainty I have ever heard. Certainty is not uncommon in new converts but yours is exceptional. You say that you are knowledgeable in all the world religions. You can see why I have turned to you. My personal problems are rather pressing. Even though I have several biblical reasons for stoning my wife to death(she may have also been guilty of using perfume and body oil intended for priests and rabbis, Exodus 30:22-38)--I wouldn't put it past her--I just can't bring myself to throw the first stone. Like me, my wife is 75 years old, and if I put off killing her indefinitely she may die of old age, or I may die, and then I would not be able to kill her. What am I to do?
Oh by the way, do these commands of God apply only to Orthodox Jews? Are Reformed Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, or others, who worship the OT God, bound by these laws as well? If you are an Orthodox Jew and your wife becomes a Christian, are you required to kill her, or is that OK? Is it all right for wives who believe in the OT God to kill their husbands if they turn to other gods, like football, say? These are just a few of the questions I have when I hear you singing the praise of your newfound fundamentalist faith.
Blessings and Shalom!
Bob Minick, minick@csnsys.com
Just a brief note to advertise a little conference being held at the University of Calgary from July 14 - 16, 2000. The conference is called "Unravelling Belief" and will feature several discussions about belief and how it impacts society in various ways. A lot of attention will be directed toward developing an understanding of how belief is formed.
Some notable presenters include Michael Shermer, John Ralston Saul and William Jarvis. Topics include health, economy, media and religion.
This is taking place during the last weekend of the Calgary Stampede and we have secured some accomodation for out of town guests that can be less than $50 per night CDN (which is almost free in US dollars!). Accomodation in general is almost impossible to find in Calgary during Stampede, nevermind the price.
The conference itself is very reasonably priced and is sponsored by the University of Calgary Alumni Association.
More info and registration can be had at the following website:
http://ucalgary.ca/alumni/unravel
This article turned up on the online magazine Slate, at the URL http://Slate.msn.com/Features/FreundFeature/FreundFeature.asp. Thanks to Brian Siano for calling it to my attention
The End of Mystery
The encroachment of science on fantasy's last redoubts.
By Charles Paul Freund
Posted Tuesday, June 6, 2000, at 4:00 p.m. PT
In 1981, a former Trappist monk named Laurence James Downey hijacked an Aer Lingus flight over France. He didn't want money, and he wasn't demanding the release of political prisoners. What he wanted was for Pope John Paul II to reveal the dreaded Third Secret of Fatima, first vouchsafed, according to Catholic tradition, to three Portuguese children in 1917 during a series of visions of the Virgin Mary.
Downey thus earned a special place in the curious world of wild history, a tradition that seeks solutions to the past's more intriguing unanswered questions. It is an often-fascinating world of mystery, anomaly, hidden history, and occult knowledge. But it is one that is suddenly shrinking. More and more of the past's secrets are being revealed, especially in the laboratory, and the results are considerably different from the drama and romance that are at the heart of the wild historical tradition.
The last secret of Fatima--the others had long ago been revealed--was certainly one of the world's best-kept secrets; some Catholics had staged hunger strikes to force Rome to reveal it, and even many non-Catholics wondered what sort of apocalypse the Vatican could find literally unspeakable. Nuclear war? Schism? The Antichrist? The associated papal folklore was quite promising: Popes, on learning the secret, were reputed to have fainted or to have been left speechless for days.
Last month, the Vatican finally resolved the matter: Fatima's remaining secret, it said, prophesied the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II. While dramatic, the news fell short of the Apocalypse that had dominated speculation for over 80 years. That the much-feared prophecy had been fulfilled 20 years ago was, for some, anticlimactic.
Only three weeks before the church revealed its Fatima secret, a pair of geneticists announced that they had resolved the mystery of the Lost Dauphin. In 1795, the 10-year-old son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette died in prison. Or did he? As soon as the boy was reported dead, stories arose that the real dauphin had been rescued and a substitute left in his cell. People have been arguing about little Louis XVII for 200 years. Hundreds of books address the mystery, including Huckleberry Finn, and a long line of claimants has intrigued their contemporaries. Indeed, one claimant is buried in the Netherlands under a headstone that identifies him as the heir to the French throne.
But scientists have now compared DNA from locks of Marie Antoinette's hair with DNA extracted from the heart of the boy who died in the French prison. They match. The Lost Dauphin has been found, and disappointed romantics will have to take what succor they can from the unlikely fact that a succession of people hrbored the little prince's desiccated heart as a curio for so long.
Indeed, disappointed romantics of history had best keep a careful eye out for such succor. Last year, DNA findings also ended speculation about the "real" fate of Czar Nicholas II and his family. That wild history had included the names of the Romanovs' courageous rescuers, their escape route, a history of sightings, a parade of claimants, a hit movie, and a Pat Boone record.
The accelerating use of modern laboratory techniques in resolving old mysteries is very good news for history. But it may not be such good news for the cause of enchantment. Since at least the Enlightenment, enchantment--a sense of wonder at the anomalous and the seemingly inexplicable--has been in rapid retreat from the world. One of its last redoubts (if one omits the purely spiritual, a quite different category) has been in the odd nooks and crannies of history's unanswered questions. There, nourished by an infinity of possibility, history is transmuted into the Romantic.
There are compelling themes running through wild history. Among the most common is the Secret Survival. The desire to believe that a particular figure is actually alive, despite reports to the contrary, is a powerful aspect of celebrity. In our own time, JFK supposedly lived on a remote island belonging to Aristotle Onassis, and Elvis has of course been sighted in Kalamazoo, Mich. The belief that the Doors' Jim Morrison faked his death is virtually interchangeable with once-popular beliefs about the 19th-century Czar Alexander I. He was said to have faked his death to become a monk. Persistent survival stories are attached even to such figures as John Dillinger, John Wilkes Booth, and comedian Andy Kaufman.
Interestingly, not all such alternate histories gain followings. For example, there is an intriguing case to be made that Joan of Arc was not burned at the stake after all, but returned to France, married, raised two children, and died the peaceful death of a country woman. The tale of the post-stake Joan was told exhaustively by Jules Quicherat in 1841, but the material is infrequently cited. What wish is fulfilled by a Joan who survives her burning?
Lost Identity is nearly as popular. Instances are relatively rare--the mysterious identities of Kaspar Hauser and "The Man in the Iron Mask" are the best-known examples--but the enthusiasm is bottomless. Wild histories have turned both figures into secret royalty (though the most likely candidate for the man behind the mask--actually made of cloth--is Gen. Vivien de Bulonde, imprisoned for cowardice). Hauser, the total innocent who turned up in Nuremberg in 1828--only to be mysteriously murdered in 1833--is approaching the transcendent: The point of Werner Herzog's 1975 film about Hauser is his very lack of an identity or place in the world.
There are many other such themes. Unacknowledged Genius cults honor Wilhelm Reich, inventor Nikola Tesla, and the Earl of Oxford (as the true Bard). Hidden Murder theorists re-examine the deaths of Napoleon, Warren Harding, and Meriwether Lewis. Not all of these themes are necessarily false by any means; many reasonable persons have been drawn to such subjects, sometimes to the benefit of "mainstream" history. But what often marks wild history as a field is its tendency to solve one mystery by positing another, often greater one. The case of Jack the Ripper is a legitimate whodunit, but its wild versions involve not only the British royal family but also the Freemasons. The suicides of Habsburg Crown Prince Rudolph and Mary Vetsera at Mayerling in 1889 are certainly bizarre, but wild history turned them into an assassination with international implications.
Perhaps the most intriguing such case involves a place called Rennes-le-Cheteau, where wild history has grown to unprecedented proportions. In 1885, Beranger Saunier, priest of a poor, remote French parish, was repairing his dilapidated church and found a pair of unusual old documents. He was soon very wealthy. Just why is not known, but proffered solutions have included the Holy Grail, the Cathar heresy, the Knights Templar, the lost treasures of the Jerusalem Temple, and the possible survival of Jesus. And these are the comparatively reasonable elements of an expanding library of wild, cosmic histories.
It would be easy enough to dismiss wild history as tabloid history, but that would be missing the point=97not only of the histories but of tabloids as well. Wild history is often a popular art, offering similar satisfactions. The admirable survive death; the lost are found; the guilty accused. Frequently, wild history takes that which is extraordinary but incomplete and fills it out to the most extraordinary dimensions imaginable. The world is then made marvelous again, enchanted.
Comes science with its DNA and its bioarchaeology, its mummy CAT scans, its satellite imaging, its sonar, its computer analysis, and soon lost cities are found, dead royalty turns out really to be dead, pretenders to be but pretenders. The past must then reveal itself in fantasy's ashes.
But sometimes the past pays its debt. Who would have dared imagine that a child's heart could have been lovingly saved until it could, in effect, speak for the Lost Dauphin and return him to history?