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Old June 5th, 2008 #11
Roberto Muehlenkamp
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Join Date: Jun 2008
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Quote:
>Well, my challenge to publicly debate Roberto Muellenkamp on an archaeology forum seems >to have failed completely due to his cowardice and utter fear of holding his incredible tall tales >up to the scientific method. Please notice that none of his fellow funnyboy freaks over at >holocaust controversies has the courage to defend their delusions here either. Typical.
Let’s see if I understand this correctly:

Gerdes is retreating to the "Archeology and Anthropology" section of a "White" forum because he figures that he can there invoke "science" to dismiss all evidence other than archeological/anthropological evidence.

Is that the point you’re trying to make, Gerdes?

If so, you’re really a funny bone.

Are we asked to believe that archeologists or anthropologists ignore all evidence other than the "scientific" evidence they find under ground or in human remains?

That archeologists reconstructing, say, life in Roman Pompeji and its destruction by the Vesuvius shunned all chronicles and other written records from Roman times and drew their conclusions exclusively on the basis of what they found on site? That they knew nothing about Roman culture and history from written records and learned it all from the physical traces that they found while excavating?

If archeologists had proceeded in this manner, looking only at the physical evidence and ignoring all other sources of evidence, their work would not have been a scientific undertaking. It would have been highly unscientific guesswork. What made the investigations of Pompeji scientific was that archeologists matched what they found on site with what they knew from written records about Roman culture and everyday life in a Roman city, and from the writings of Roman chroniclers about the destruction of Pompeji by volcanic ash from the Vesuvius.

Looking at all evidence one can get hold of, leaving none out and trying to reach a conclusion that duly takes all evidence into account – that’s scientific, Gerdes. Restricting the record of evidence to one category which, by its very nature, cannot possibly be expected to allow for reconstructing a historical event on its own, as you are trying to do in limiting the Treblinka evidence your are willing to look at to physical evidence (and moreover the documentation of that evidence to photographs) is not scientific, as I already pointed out in one of my above-mentioned Topix posts. It is highly unscientific charlatanry.

Quote:
>Oh well. What I'll do is just keep posting all my updates of the "debate" on this forum, so I can >keep a record of and show everyone what a total fraud Roberta is and just what a complete >lack of any tangible physical evidence there is for the Treblinka holohoax.
What Gerdes will be showing to any attentive reader with brains inside his or her skull is that he has not been able to explain

a) What exactly he means by "tangible" physical evidence,
b) Why the physical evidence I have provided is not whatever it is he calls "tangible" physical evidence, and
c) Why, according to what rules and standards other than his irrelevant own, "tangible" physical evidence is the only evidence that can be used to prove the occurrence of a certain event, or why the presentation and assessment of such evidence is an indispensable requirement of proof.

Any attentive reader with brains inside his or her skull will soon realize that all Gerdes has managed to do is make a fool of himself with pointless "show me" requests, the relevance of which he cannot explain, and his ignoring or unreasonably dismissing the evidence that has been shown to him.

Quote:
>BTW, this is what Roberta had to say when I challenged her to debate on VNN forum:

>"VNN consists of Nazi fucks like yourself, Gerdes. I see you don’t feel comfortable debating >out in the open and need the company of your buddies to give you moral support... >Historiography is a science, if you ask me. Historiography’s approach to evidence is a scientific >approach, which consists in working towards a conclusion by looking at all the evidence >available and seeing how it fits together. What you call "science", on the other hand, has >nothing whatsoever to do with science. It consists in distortion, misrepresentation and attempts >to reduce the record of evidence to the category that you figure is hardest for your opponent to >obtain – i.e. physical evidence – in order to push through conclusions pre-ordained by your >ideological articles of faith."

>You can just sense her utter fear of debating the Treblinka holohoax on a forum devoted to >archeology and the scientific method, can't you?
Yeah, especially from my characterization of the pseudo-scientific approach that Gerdes claims to be the "scientific method", which characterization Gerdes was dumb enough to quote:

Quote:
«Historiography’s approach to evidence is a scientific approach, which consists in working towards a conclusion by looking at all the evidence available and seeing how it fits together. What you call "science", on the other hand, has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It consists in distortion, misrepresentation and attempts to reduce the record of evidence to the category that you figure is hardest for your opponent to obtain – i.e. physical evidence – in order to push through conclusions pre-ordained by your ideological articles of faith.»
I’m not the one who is afraid of the scientific method, Gerdes. I cherish it and always work by it. But your ignoring or dismissing evidence without being able to explain why you ignore or dismiss it shows that the scientific method scares the shit out of you.