Belle

Rome City does look haunting in those pictures. :o

AWESOME!!!! CONGRATULATIONS, RASCAL!!! Now you need to get a tattoo!

WG, I'm so glad that the preacher was willing to see the error of the teaching. Has he corrected it among the rest of the church yet? It's also wonderful that your husband stepped up to the plate, so to speak, to discuss the concerns. I hope the tingling goes away quickly. I'm sure it will with the stress of this being over. Stress can do amazing things to our bodies.

And, there's "naked" which means merely not wearing any clothes and "nekkid" which means not wearing any clothes and being up to something. I much prefer being nekkid to being naked.

Ahhh..... kewl! Thanks!

Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, www.skeptic.com and author of How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Denying History and The Borderlands of Science, devotes a whole section of his book Why People Believe Weird Things to the Holocaust deniers. The section spans 68 pages, so I'm not going to go into too much of it, but highly recommend reading it for those interested. I'm assuming WTF is not interested as it would take the wind out of his sails and it's only written in normal size fonts. He says about the deniers' methodology: They concentrate on their opponents' weak points, while rarely saying anything definitive about their own position. Deniers emphasize the inconsistencies between eyewitness accounts, for example. They exploit errors made by scholars who are making opposing arguments, implying that because a few of their opponents' conclusions were wrong, all of their opponents' conclusions must be wrong. Deniers point to the human soap story, which has turned out to be a myth, and talk about 'the incredible shrinking Holocaust' because historians have reduced the number killed at Auschwitz from four million to one million. They use quotations, uisually taken out of context, from prominent mainstream figures to buttress their own position. Deniers quote Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg, Arno Mayer and even leading Nazis. They mistake genuine, honest debates between scholars about certain points within a field for a dispute about the existence of the entire field. Deniers take the intentionalist-functionalist debate about the development of the Holocaust as an argument about whether the Holocaust happened or not. They focus on what is not known and ignore what is known, emphasize data that fit and discount data that do not fit. Deniers concentrate on what we do not know about gas chambers and disregard all the eyewitness accounts and forensic tests that support the use of gas chambers for mass murder. They ignore the overwhelming convergence of proof: Written documents: Hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches, articles, memoirs and confessions. (Even OM has posted a link to articles of recently released information that just compounds the overwhelming evidence) Eyewitness testimony: Accounts from survivors, Kapos, Sonderkommandos, SS guards, commandants, local townspeople and even upper-echelon Nazis who did not deny the Holocaust. Photographs: Official military and press photographs and films, civilian photographs, secret photographs taken by prisoners, aerial photographs and German and allied film footage. Physical evidence: Artifacts found at the sites of concentration camps, work camps and death camps, many of which are still extant in varying degrees of originality and reconstruction. Demographics: All those people who the deniers claim survived the Holocaust are missing. When all else fails, deniers shift from wrangling about intentionality, gassings and crematoria, and the number of Jews killed to arguing that the Nazi's treatment of the Jews is really no different from what other nations do to their perceived enemies. ... Just because another country does evil does not make your own evil right. Second, there is a difference between war and the systematic state-organized killing of unarmed people within your own country, not in self-defense, not to gain more territory, raw materials or wealth, but simply because they are perceived as a type of Satanic force and inferior race. At his trial in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann, SS Obersturmbannfuhrer of the RSHA and one of the chief implementers of the Final SSolution, never denied the Holocaust. His argument was that "these crims had been legalized by the state" and therefore the people that "issued the orders" are responsible. This was the classic defense used at the Nuremberg trials by most of the Nazis. Since the higher-ups all committed suicide - Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Hermann Goring - they were off the hook, or so they thought.

Great thread, Todd. I think th

Hey, Dan, you still haven't followed up on the comments to the last discussion you started. I was interested in the clips after reading Todd and cman's comments, but that's over an hour of stuff - can ya give a gal a synopsis of what you're most interested in discussing? Are you interested in a discussion? What do you think of what you posted? Start the discussion and give me something other than two long clips and I'll play.

:unsure: Where? I see pictures showing what the coins from that time period looked like - some found in front of an oil press and another picture, but nothing showing any coins actually taken from fish. Am I missing another link?

WTF do we have senses for if we're not supposed to use them?? :blink: That was one of the dumbest things and Rascal said it so well, I can't really add to that - it was nothing more than yet another tactic to control our lives: Don't trust your own senses and brain - pay no attention to that still small voice - We'll tell you what to think, feel and do.

It has to be possible for some people or they have the difficult task of coming to terms with family or loved ones being guilty of the same treachery and having a direct hand in enabling vee pee. Imagine Ramona Bidon is your sister - you either have to call everyone else a liar or you have to admit that your sister is one evil bee-yotch.

((((W and W))))) (((((Waysider))))) (((((excathedra))))) The incredible abuse, debasement and destructive behavior of PEOPLE in TWI never ceases to amaze me. :( So much for doing good unto all men, especially those who are of the household of faith, eh? I wonder, I really wonder if those abusers ever lay awake at night concerned about how they are going to justify their behavior at the Bema. Do they just not care or do they really not believe a word of what they teach?

((((((((WG))))))))))))

Thank you, Notta! The feeling is very mutual! Yeah, Highway, I concur. I've come to really enjoy "my" time and "my" place and doing things with others when I choose to. I'm perfectly okay with being alone for the rest of my life if Mr. Perfect doesn't show up. I'd much rather be comfortable being me and being alone than with someone who doesn't share mutual love and respect. Funny thing about eHarmony is I looked into it when I was doing the online dating thing and I didn't even want to sign up with them because it looked like a Christian dating site and the last person I want a relationship with is another religious Jesus freak - no matter what "ministry" he belongs to.

Alright, fine - we've established that Rocky & Groucho don't care for Jonny's stories - fine - can't you two just ignore him? Why must you two follow him around trying to pick a fight? Geeze! Grow up already! Jonny, I love your stories and I don't care if they are true or not - I enjoy reading them very much and I do so hope you are putting together a book. I picture something like "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" - You're our resident Mark Twain if I may say so. Dot, the nudist beach was a stop during some cruise they were on. It was funny to compare the excitement of going to the incredible let down afterwards. We have a nudist beach nearby and one Monday morning a co-worker came in all ....y and in a grumpy mood - I asked him what the problem was since he's normally a pretty cheery guy. Turns out he had gone to Playalinda on Sunday for some fun & sun when a family came up to the area where he was. Since it was a family with young kids he covered up, but was utterly peeved - "We were the only ones on the whole d@mn beach and they had to come over to where I was?!?!"

Distressing and disturbing? Yes. Unique to America? No. I've no doubt that you could find equally idiotic people all over the world. What kills me is the people who are so obviously sure of themselves.

I just sent this to a friend of mine who has just found out that she is pregnant with Child #5 and has been lamenting the fact that she will never be finished potty training.

Goey, it's so good to "see" you again! :) To your point, if the Bible is indeed the word of God then God is the ultimate evil speaker since He had all that stuff recorded and preserved for eternity.

HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS, BLUZEMAN!!

My parents were excited about their first foray onto a nudist beach and when they came back, Daddy said the only people at the beach were people who did NOT need to be there without clothes. Me? When I come home the first thing I do is strip down to nuttin'. It used to be 1) let the dog out 2) take off all my clothes. Now I have a doggie door.

ex! I love you! :P I just gave up dating. If God wants me married, he's gonna have to drop him off at my front door.

That was fun, Rhino. Thanks! I thought this was going to be something from the Archive of Misheard Lyrics

Bulwinkl, if there was a Mr. Belle, I can assure you there would be some finger pullin'. Sadly, it's just me and a cute little four-legged, fingerless daughter who doesn't understand or appreciate the finer art of finger pulling.

I don't know whether that's scary, sad or just pathetic. :(