[gore3000]

It stretches the bounds of reason and what we know of human nature to say that this many humans would have gone to the deaths for a hoax.

An excellent point! People are unwilling to die for a lie. This was shown abundantly well with the death of Hitler where the day after there were no Nazis in Germany or after the fall of the Soviets where nowadays there are no Communists.

[Phaedrus]

And I do mean "All" ... I am more than a little tired of some poster calling another a liar, however cleverly worded, and there are lots of clever, entertaining ways to question someone's veracity. On rare occassion, someone questions my honesty and at that point I instantaneously shut down debate with that poster (it just happened on another thread so it's fresh in my mind). You may accuse me of being misled or misinformed or even lacking mental wattage (be careful) but you may not call me a liar, which is about intent, and expect me to let it pass.

My two bits ...

[js1138]

An excellent point! People are unwilling to die for a lie.

They died for David Koresh and Jim Jones. Not only that, but they killed their own children. Of course, in the case of DK, they might have rationally expected the government not to behave like a two-year-old having a tantrum. (But I suspect many of them knew what would happen).