Beware Conspiracy theorists: Aliens built the Pyramids

This particular theory of faulty thinking has annoyed me for quite some time and will thusly be refered to as: Pyramidiocy.

Pyramidiocy is characterized by having an outlandish, farfetched theory about the origin, nature or purpose of the Egyptian pyramids. The theories of pyramidiots are barely supported by slender threads of evidence. They serve little purpose except to stand as bad examples of speculative thought and fanciful imagination.

Some pyramidiots, such as Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, claim that the ancient Egyptians were too backwards to have constructed the pyramids without the help of extraterrestrials. Edgar Cayce (professional bullshit artist, also known as "psychic") claimed that beings from Atlantis helped the Egyptians build the pyramids by showing them how to levitate stones. Charles Berlitz claimed that Atlantis lay beneath the Bermuda Triangle and had a pyramid the same size as the Great Pyramid at Giza. Pyramidiots think Atlantis is the link between the pyramids of Egypt and the pyramids of Mexico.

They are not dissuaded by the fact that the one was primarily funerary while the other was primarily used for ceremonies, including some which involved human sacrifice. Arguments demonstrating that the ancient Egyptians or Mexicans were intelligent and resourceful enough to build pyramids are to no avail. This is a particularly frustrating aspect of this fanciful thinking, as it assumes our collective ancestors were as dumb as the proponents of this theory.

Other pyramidiots ascribe super technological or paranormal powers to the ancient Egyptians. Traditional explanations in terms of religion, tombs for pharaohs and their families, belief in immortality, or paid workers, slipways, canals, slaves (new evidence indicates that slaves were not directly used in the construction of the pyramids) , etc. are rejected by pyramidiots in favor of theories claiming that the pyramids were power stations or water pumps. They don't seem to realize there was little use for a power station in ancient Egypt (they didn't have light-bulbs, or anything that requires AC or DC current); plus like all ancient societies it's labor was drawn from slaves and paid-workers - not machines. Not to mention the lack of plumbing beneath the pyramids.

Some pyramidiots claim that the pyramids were built according to some sort of mystical numerology to contain coded messages. Some believe that the Great Pyramid at Giza is at the center of the world (The fact that the Earth is spherical escapes them). Some think the pyramids are a map of the sky. To put it shortly, numerological beliefs about the pyramids are like a horn-of-plenty. Some believe only God could have designed such a numerical mystery. That almost anything in the universe can be found to have interesting mathematical proportions or be related to several interesting mathematical formulae is of little interest to pyramidiots.
That there is no evidence for such beliefs seems to cheer rather than dishearten pyramidiots.

I can't quite figure out why, but then they don't seem to be the most logical bunch.

Beware Conspiracy theorists: Holocaust Denial

While I don't want my humble blog to become the vanguard against zany conspiracy "theories" - the fact is, given the sizable multitude of the simply weird things people believe, I feel it's unfortunately necessary.

That said, let's start with a particularly damaging and ugly conspiracy theory: Holocaust denial.

The mass extermination of the Jews and other “undesirables” at the hands of the Nazis during World War II is referred to as the Holocaust. It has become a symbol of evil in our time. Like many symbols, the Holocaust has become sacrosanct. To many people, both Jews and non-Jews, the Holocaust symbolizes the horror of genocide against the Jews, Romani, Homosexuals, and the disabled. Some modern anti-Semites (that includes persons on the extreme political right, and left) have found that attacking the Holocaust causes as much suffering to some Jews as attacking Jews themselves. “Holocaust denial” refers to attacking the accuracy of any aspect of the symbology or history of the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial seems to be the main motivation of the Institute for Historical Review and its Journal of Historical Review. Since 1980 this journal has been publishing articles attacking the accuracy of various claims about the Holocaust. There is clearly an agenda when a journal is devoted almost exclusively to the single issue of making the Holocaust seem like an exaggeration of biased historians. Indeed, I personally consider the entire "Institute" an affront to academic scholarship. If truth and historical accuracy were the only goals of this group, it would be praised rather than despised. However, it seems that its promoters are more concerned with hatred than with truth.

Thus, even the inaccuracies that they correctly identify are met with scorn and derision. For they never once deal with the central question of the Holocaust. They deal with details and technical issues: Were there six million or four million Jews who died or were killed? Could this particular shower have been used as a gas chamber? Were these deaths due to natural causes or not? Did Hitler issue a Final Solution order or not? If so, where is it? These are legitimate historical issues. However, the Holocaust deniers do not deal with the questions of racial laws that led to the arrest and imprisonment of millions of Jews in several countries for the “crime” of race. They do not concern themselves with the policy of herding people like animals and transporting them to “camps” where millions died of disease or malnutrition, or were murdered. They don’t address the moral issues of medical experimentation on humans or of persecution of homosexuals and the infirm. Why not? In other words, they only concern themselves with questions that are convenient to them.

Michael Shermer devotes two chapters of Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) to the arguments of the Holocaust deniers. One of the favorite appeals of the Holocaust deniers is to demand some proof that Hitler gave the order for the extermination of the Jews (or the mentally retarded, mentally ill, and physically handicapped). Holocaust deniers point to Himmler’s telephone notes of November 30, 1941, as proof that there was to be no liquidation of the Jews. The actual note says: “Jewish transport from Berlin. No liquidation.” Whatever the note meant, it did not mean that Hitler did not want the Jews liquidated. The transport in question, by the way, was liquidated that evening. In any case, if Hitler ordered no liquidation of the Berlin transport, then liquidation was going on and he knew about it. Hitler’s intentions were made public in his earliest speeches. Even as his regime was being destroyed, Hitler proclaimed: “Against the Jews I fought open-eyed and in view of the whole world. . . . I made it plain that they, this parasitic vermin in Europe, will be finally exterminated.” Hitler at one time compared the Jews to the tuberculosis bacilli that had infected Europe. It was not cruel to shoot them if they would not or could not work. He said: “This is not cruel if one remembers that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer when infected, have to be killed so that they cannot damage others. Why should the beasts who wanted to bring Bolshevism be spared more than these innocents?”

It should be noted that white supremacists aren't the only ones denying the holocaust, though it is funny to see that whitey's story of what happened is far from consistent; such as when members of neo-nazi groups don shirts that proclaim that Hitler didn't go far enough. Guess they didn't get the memo. Quite a few Iranian, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Saudi leaders have, you guessed it, denied the Holocaust. These are often the same forked tongue leaders that cry for peace with Israel in front of the world, but cry there will be peace when Israel is in pieces to their followers.

As just a side note, the image for this blog was found at an affiliate site of IHR, heretical.com (their "scholarship" just has to be true with that kind of bias!)