Magna Carta, document on freedom and rights in "Catholic" England, A.D. 1215...(not unrelated)
Posted on 11/30/2001 7:55:36 AM PST by Aquinasfan
Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail
When Steven Spielberg made a movie about an intrepid archaeologist’s fight to keep a precious and powerful artifact — the Holy Grail — out of the hands of the Nazis, it was not widely known that the tale was based on truth. There really was a Nazi archaeological unit and it did send teams across the world to try to find the Grail.
History meets Indiana Jones in HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL, a one-hour documentary airing on PBS Monday, November 27, 2000, 10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings). Host Michael Wood (IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT) explores how history was used as a political tool and how the theories of the Nazi historical department provided the ideology used by the SS (Schutzstaffel – "protection squadron") to justify genocide.
The program outlines how the racialist theories of the SS were drawn from archaeology, myth and legend, as well as selected history. Nazi ideas about "Aryans" and the "master race" came out of historical and ethnic fantasies in which legends such as the Holy Grail and the lost city of Atlantis — supposed to be a home of the Aryan race — played their part.
HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL contains rare and previously unseen footage, including
* color film of the Nazi expedition to Antarctica;
* film of the Nazi expeditions across the world, from the Baltic to Venezuela;
* footage of the 1938 expedition to Tibet, with the measuring of skulls of Tibetans;
* documentary evidence for expeditions to Peru, Iceland and Iran, and footage of SS chief Heinrich Himmler at archaeological sites.
The film conjures the eerie world that permeated the thoughts of key members of the Nazi leadership, especially Himmler, and shows how top scholars, some of them still alive, collaborated in this project.
HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL includes interviews with a former member of Himmler’s personal staff and the wife of a top SS commander, who give unique and unrepentant insight into the mentality of the Nazi inner circle. The program also includes a dramatic recording of the Nuremburg trial of Wolfram Sievers, the head of the SS Ahnenerbe ("Ancestral Heritage Society"), Himmler’s archaeological and historical unit. The Ahnenerbe’s task, according to Himmler, was "to restore the German people to the everlasting godly cycle of ancestors, the living and the descendants."
Himmler was a member of the Thule Society, an extreme nationalist group named after one of the mythical homes of the German people. It was the society’s almost mystical belief in the greatness of the German past — to which Himmler subscribed with fanatical devotion — that was to provide the intellectual ballast to Nazi belief in race and destiny.
The chief administrator of the Ahnenerbe, Dr. Wolfram Sievers, had been heavily involved in the criminal medical experiments that were carried out on Jews in concentration camps, all to prove racial differences and the superiority of the Aryan race. After Germany’s defeat in 1945, Sievers was brought before a war crimes tribunal, found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed on June 2, 1948. The archaeological world of the Ahnenerbe died with Hitler, Himmler and Sievers; the Ahnenerbe, too, melted away. Many of its top archaeologists, however, returned, unpunished, to university life, only to re-emerge as leading academics in postwar Germany.
Day & time: check with your local station
Underwriters: Public Television Viewers and PBS. Producer: Maya Vision. Producer: Rebecca Dobbs. Director: Kevin Sim. Format: CC STEREO TV Calendar PBS Previews PBS Picks Telstar/C-band Schedule Primestar, Dish Network & DirecTV Schedule PBS KIDS Channel PBS YOU Schedule
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Wicca has connections to ancient panthiestic and pagan religions. Since it is "a" religion, it is a religion as much as any other religion is -- I take it that is your point?
A broad range of religious expressions must be tolerated by the State, in the interest of domestic tranquility and freedom of conscience. That does not mean that they are all intellectually equivalent in their apprehension of truth, or equally benefically to society.
Or: Maybe your point is, that in your eyes, Catholicism is as silly as wicca? The problem is, progress (to which most materialists adhere as a worldview if not a dogma) is an outgrowth of the Judeo/Christian apprehension of history: time being linear from beginning to end; history having purpose; the world having been created in a rational manner such that it can be understood. (Einstein: "the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible". Well, at least HE understood the theory of relativity!!)
The history and philosophy of science are fascinating. As was posted above, the symbol chosen by the Nazis (the swastika) was an ancient symbol of many old religions, which believed in eternal recurrance, rather than the linear view of history adopted in Western thought.
So it has mattered and does matter what a people believes . . . to their future on this earth as well as the next. BTW, I think we are all here trying to understand and reach truth, not to trying to win debating points . . .
Now if you really believed this, you wouldn't moralize, because it would be pointless. But then in the next sentence, you make a truth claim:
Nobody would argue that there are some extremely sicko religions out there (ahemElRonahem). But Wicca ain't one of 'em. It's just weird.
So is Wicca really weird? Or is this just your ultimately meaningless opinion?
If only materialists would be more rigorous about their own philosophy, they would see how untenable it really is.
Magna Carta, document on freedom and rights in "Catholic" England, A.D. 1215...(not unrelated)
Something is true or it is not true. Logic and science itself depend upon it. I.E. drawing an inference from known facts . . .
Norse/Teutonic cosmology
C. S. Lewis studied Norse lore extensively, and he eventually embraced Christianity. (e.g. his Mere Christianity). (Wasn't he a big time skeptic for a while?) He knew a lot more about the Norse/Teutonic mythology than I do at the moment. However, the Nazis embraced the recurrence notion associated with the swastika, whether the Norse did or not. The reason it was called "the thousand year Reich." They anticipated the cycle of history overtaking the Reich, but wanted to grasp the ring for the Nazi time . . .
The Greeks and Romans left a lot to civilization. It was left to the Christian West to preserve and build upon their achievements in law, philosophy, etc. (Reading a history of Islam: during a time they were open to Europe, they obtained Greek/Roman knowledge from the West). It could be argued that the Greeks/Romans took progress as far as their philosophical worldview would permit. The scientific method, etc., then came from the Christian West . . . (The Vandals and Vikings and other tribes wandering around Europe didn't seem to be particularly interested in preserving Greek/Roman writings?)
LOTS of wacky weirdness
The basis of Catholic thought however is not weird, but rational. There was an encyclical released a couple years ago, I'd butcher the Latin title: Faith and Reason. In a nutshell, faith and reason are compatible. They each lead to one and the same truth . . .
The theory of relativity, for example, gives insight into the understanding of what eternity might be like, timewise . . .
If you happen to be one of 'em then obviously it won't seem silly. But to everone else...
As you suggest, the supposed "weirdness" of Catholicism is not weird when you understand it, using the gift of rational thought . . .
Do you realize that this statement is self-contradictory?
You don't even get your own philosophy. Either everything is absolutely, utterly, meaningless matter in motion or not. Nothing can be "more important" than anything else by definition.
The reason why you have trouble understanding your own primitive, materialistic, philosophy is because we don't live in a purely material, meaningless universe. Such a universe can only exist in a thought experiment, and a very difficult one at that.
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