Refuting the Favorite Nonsense of the Right-Wing

And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule: that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear.

The New Organon, Aphorisms - Book One, LVIII

In other words, be especially suspicious of claims that you strongly would like to be true. Of course, most peoples' mental process is precisely the opposite: if I want it to be true, why, it scarcely needs any proof at all - it is true! And there lies the pathway to error.

2000 - "The Year the Earth Stands Still"

In recent months, a great deal of hysteria has been stirred up by alarmists warning of impending doom over the Y2K problem for computers. The most vocal of them has been Gary North, who states flatly that these computer bugs will result in "the breakdown of Western society." Allegedly, the banks will fail, the stock market will crash, grocery stores will run out of food, the electricity will go off and never come on again - and it's too late to do anything about it!

However, what many people don't realize (and what North will not mention on his Y2K-hysteria website) is that North is a leading spokesman for an extremist fundamentalist movement , known as Christian Reconstructionism, and the collapse of the pluralistic, secular-democratic states of Western society is their fondest wish! Their intention is to replace our present society with one "reconstructed" according to the strictest of Biblical guidelines. , They advocate bringing back stoning as punishment for Sabbath breakers, unchaste women, unrepentent homosexuals, and many others, with lesser offenses being punished by restitution, possibly including slavery. The "reconstructionists" fervently hope that, by fanning the flames of absurd hysteria, their predictions of a 2K collapse can be made into a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, if enough people can be frightened into taking all their money out of banks, the banks will collapse!

Read some samples of North's writings on religious subjects .

A group of so-called "skeptics", led by microbiologist Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley, are claiming that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS. Rather, they say, the AIDS that is rampant in the gay community is caused mainly by their widespread use of illegal drugs, which weaken the immune system. (Presumably those monkeys and cats that die of immune suppression when infected with a viral relative of the human-infecting HIV virus must also have led dissolute lives of drug-induced stupor).

A Fact Sheet from the National Institutes of Health explaining The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS.

Dr. Steven B. Harris, M.D., debunks The AIDS Heresies,

John S. James explains what's wrong with Duesberg's arguments.

Skeptical Resources on So-Called "Scientific Creationism"

W. R. Elsberry's valuable resources on Evolution vs. 'Scientific Creationism'.

The National Center for Science Education, working tirelessly against the dumbing-down of America by promoting and defending science education.

An impressive collection of scientific resources on evolution from Harvard University.

A large number of files debunking Creationist claims (and other nonsense) is on Fredrick L. Rice's The Skeptic Tank.

Click to see an example of "creation science education" materials published by the Institute for Creation Research of El Cajon, California.

Not all Creationists are right-wingers. Read about Creationism on the Left.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, the so-called "revisionist historians" are basically apologists for the Nazi regime. Their best-known activist in North America is self-styled kampfgruppe leader Ernst Zundel, whose emblem is seen to the left.

Zundel has long been selling blatantly pro-Nazi materials offering "inspiring and nourishing food for the Aryan soul": tapes featuring "blackshirt and brownshirt storm trooper songs and marches," or a book depicting Hitler as "a trinity, as a man IN time, AGAINST time, and ABOVE time." He openly admits to having used deceptive means to get on radio talk shows, such as claims about 'Nazi Flying Saucers,' to then talk about 'the myth of the six million.' The "revisionists", like the feminists, are highly practiced in deception, and are masters of the use of the half-truth, quarter-truth, and the irrelevant truth.

For example, one net.nazi wrote me, objecting to this page. He pretended to reject Zundel as an extremist, just as feminists pretend to reject "extremist" Andrea Dworkin while privately praising her highly and working with her on achieving common goals. He suggested, however that other, more reasonable "revisionists" had valid arguments. For example, "No large scale executions of Jews occurred at Dachau, or, for that matter, anywhere in Germany." This is perfectly true, and perfectly irrelevant. The Nazis set up their extermination camps in occupied regions of Poland and the USSR to keep this ugly work as little-known as possible. It is rare for any government to openly admit or display its misdeeds. By routinely using disingenuous arguments such as this, the "revisionists" demonstrate their intention not to educate or persuade, but to bamboozle.

"Revisionists" insist that they are not antisemetic, and are interested only in "the truth." You be the judge of that after seeing some of the repulsive and offensive cartoons from a "revisionist" website by Michael A. Hoffman II, critiquing "Holocaustianity." Hoffmann is one of the leading "revisionists" active today, and is often depicted as 'credible'.

Skeptic Magazine's special issue on Pseudo-History, and especially "Revisionism."

The Nizkor Project is set up as a memorial to those who died in the Nazi Holocaust, and debunks point-by-point neo-Nazi claims that the Nazis had no organized plan of extermination for the Jews. Contains a vast archive of material on "revisionsm."

Responses to Revisionist Arguments from The Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Denying History : Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It by Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman, Arthur Hertzberg

Is Christian morality "elevated"? In my article on Friedrich Nietzsche's book Der Antichrist, I explain why he considered Christian morality beneath contempt.