(October 13, 2015 at 6:55 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: I looked up the information above for a report I did when I attended Gordon Mork's "Hitler and the Holocaust" at Purdue.  I stand by what I said.

So? Fitting the demographic doesn't say anything about the nature of the group. As I said, one fact doesn't paint the whole picture.

(October 13, 2015 at 7:25 pm)abaris Wrote:

(October 13, 2015 at 6:55 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: I looked up the information above for a report I did when I attended Gordon Mork's "Hitler and the Holocaust" at Purdue.  I stand by what I said.

So? Fitting the demographic doesn't say anything about the nature of the group. As I said, one fact doesn't paint the whole picture.

No, but it's a important part. But we have more. Der Frage. Heard of it?

(October 13, 2015 at 7:30 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: Der Frage. Heard of it?

What's that supposed to be? The question - in this case it would be "Die Frage", but nitpicking aside, is that a book? Give specifics, so that I can look it up. I'm not giving an uniformed opinion here.

Is that the one about Josef Mengele?

(October 13, 2015 at 7:35 pm)abaris Wrote:

(October 13, 2015 at 7:30 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: Der Frage. Heard of it?

What's that supposed to be? The question - in this case it would be "Die Frage", but nitpicking aside, is that a book? Give specifics, so that I can look it up. I'm not giving an uniformed opinion here.

Is that the one about Josef Mengele?

Sorry about the bad German, it's been a while since I looked at that. Die Frage was the questionnaire Germans had to complete as part of the denazification process. It became the "poster child" of postwar social reconstruction. The German government kept tabs on some people based on their replies to die Frage, and one of the things they looked at was "church attendance." Over 90% of the SS officer corps went right back to their original religions after 1945. The people who compiled the data came to the conclusion that they had been following the SS "mythos" solely to get ahead in that organization. Other studies supported that idea.

Okay then.

(October 13, 2015 at 6:44 pm)sinnerdaniel94 Wrote: I'm the asshole for claiming that humans have inherent value and were not just animals, alright then.

We are animals. We're mammals. We have hair and nipples. We have every characteristic of a Great Ape.

That said, I don't even know what "just" animals means? What other options are there? Robots? Angels? Dragons? Aliens?

I am not really clear on what the term "inherent" value might even mean. Next time I meet someone a religious fanatic has chained in a dungeon for being of the wrong faith, I'll ask them what their "inherent" value is.

Meanwhile, back here in reality, we human animals are as valuable as we decide among ourselves that we are. No more, no less.

That's both a good and a bad thing, and it's our duty to make it as good as we can, since as Edmund Burke put it, 

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

You really should learn why I call myself a Secular Humanist, what we are and what we believe, to understand why I meet your accusations of nihilism with such derision and scorn.

Most Americans during WWII were Christians. If you put a bunch of them in a dark room with a bunch on Nazis you couldn't tell them apart. They were all bigoted racist assholes who took great delight in killing their enemies.

(October 14, 2015 at 2:34 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Most Americans during WWII were Christians.  If you put a bunch of them in a dark room with a bunch on Nazis you couldn't tell them apart.  They were all bigoted racist assholes who took great delight in killing their enemies.

You were never in the military were you?