That east Europeans should want to remember the deportations and killings of "class enemies" by the Soviet Union during and after the war is entirely understandable. So is their pressure on Russia to account, say, for the killing of Polish officers at Katyn – even if Soviet and Russian acknowledgment of Stalin's crimes already goes far beyond, for example, any such apologies by Britain or France for the crimes of colonialism.
But the pretence that Soviet repression reached anything like the scale or depths of Nazi savagery – or that the postwar "enslavement" of eastern Europe can be equated with wartime Nazi genocide – is a mendacity that tips towards Holocaust denial. It is certainly not a mistake that could have been made by the Auschwitz survivors liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
The real meaning of the attempt to equate Nazi genocide with Soviet repression is clearest in the Baltic republics, where collaboration with SS death squads and direct participation in the mass murder of Jews was at its most extreme, and politicians are at pains to turn perpetrators into victims.
We can conclude what probably exists based on evidence. The absence of any evidence for the divine except for man-made creations that have an anthropological basis is a rational basis to conclude the absence of its existance.
It doesn't mean we can conclude with 100% certainty that there is no God, Ghosts, Poltergeists, Invisible Pink Unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters that exist. But the evidence for them all is equally zero and therefore probably don't exist.
That is the scientific method. If the evidence changes, our conclusions can change.
You're right, of course we can't. Yet people continue with the canard that 'science' has disproved the existence of God. Makes them feel better I suppose.
Because it has. The notion that we can't be 100% certain so therefore we can't say God is disproven is invalid because scientific proof doesn't mean 100% certainty which is an impossibility. Our theories of how gravity works are changing but that doesn't mean gravity isn't right since we're not 100% certain on everything.
There is not only zero evidence for mythical creatures but what those mythical creatures have supposedly done has been disproven. We can therefore conclude that the myths are disproven unless and until there is any evidence at all to the contrary.
Oh dear. I think the only elusive mythical creature that there's no trace of here is a coherent argument.
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But the pretence that Soviet repression reached anything like the scale or depths of Nazi savagery – or that the postwar "enslavement" of eastern Europe can be equated with wartime Nazi genocide – is a mendacity that tips towards Holocaust denial. It is certainly not a mistake that could have been made by the Auschwitz survivors liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
The real meaning of the attempt to equate Nazi genocide with Soviet repression is clearest in the Baltic republics, where collaboration with SS death squads and direct participation in the mass murder of Jews was at its most extreme, and politicians are at pains to turn perpetrators into victims.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/second-world-war-soviet-pact
Nazi genocide.
Soviet repression.
That's OK then. Stalin was cuddly Uncle Joe after all, apart from a smidgen of over-enthusiasm by some officials.
He should have had a fitting.