as we're the atheist & skeptical group, can we officially mind-meld the doctrines of religion and politics and be as wary of lies like God as we should be as wary of a world government telling us two burning jets brought down three steel bulidings on 9/11?

or is that one belief leap too far?

with a side order of New World Order and 5 billion manufactured deaths?

all good tucker.

wow,
so everybody here thinks religion is VERY DIFFERENT from politics - fair group comment, I guess.

:)

I think whether or not jet planes can burn down steel buildings is a scientific question not a political one.

I think you shouldn't bogart the doobie, man.

You're right, Mike. government=religion. It seems like a lot of atheists like to call themselves rational but they don't like to apply rationality to everything.

But the 9/11 thing is a leap, and an unnecessary one at that.

Hi Mike --

There's a difference between the evaluative skepticism practiced by many atheists and the runaway skepticism that passes for the same thing among conspiracy theorists. The idea that the towers collapsed from anything other than the attack is indeed one "belief leap too far."

The reason is that the rule of parsimony compels us first to accept the simplest explanation of an event as the true reason. Until someone can show why the simplest explanation of the collapse isn't the best one, they cannot take that leap.

As to the melding of religion and politics, we cannot "officially" meld their contents or activities without a process of argumentation that demonstrates a tautological relationship between the two concepts (meaning they're really the same thing). Although religion is surely intermingled with politics, the two concepts nonetheless remaing distinct, as far as I can tell.

Mike,

There is not a world government conspiracy covering up 9/11. Jet fuel explodes - causes fire - fire causes structure to weaken (not melt) - buildings fall - chaos and anger ensue.

9/11 happened because of religious fundementalism, plain and simple.

Religion and politics have similarities. They are both organizations that set rules and norms. Ideally in a democracy and in a reform faith, questions can be asked, criticisms made and change/adaptation occurs. In a totalitarian state and a fundemenatlist faith, dogma and ideology cannot be questioned without consequences.

then the building regs for steel structure buildings have to change - WARNING: a generally cold office fire may one day bring down all 100 floors of your building, at free-fall speeds, in its own footprint.

also, this puts hundreds of demolition companies out of a job - all's you need to bring your building down (like a controlled demolition) is a bucket of waste pape and a pyromaniac urge.

the sooner we all wake up to the horrors of a religous-based political agenda, the sooner we'll avoid more witch burnings, and inquisitions.

anyway, you all know I don't entertain such philosopical tosh without a lot of scientific goading from THE EVIDENCE THAT'S COME TO LIGHT about the reality of Jesus in our lives.

:)

I believe politics and religion are one in the same. It all cuts to the heart of what a person is. What do you want for us as a society and what do you feel is your obligation to your fellow man. When it come to the steel thing, I am not an expert in civil engineering, but I trust my friends that are. If they say a building can fall from the melting of steel, i trust them enough to believe it.

well said Kristen,
here are a large number of Architects and Structural Engineers who've got lots more to say about steel buildings like those three (did you even know it was THREE WTC buildings?) that fell into their own footprint that horribole day.

http://www.ae911truth.org/ -- keep the faith, sheeple, that helps their gov/rel cause.

:)

And yes I realise (and sympathise) that 3,000 people died that day but lots more will die if politics and religion are united.

Here is a link to a Popular Mechanics article debunking most of the 9/11 conspiracy theories:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technolo...

The problem with most conspiracy theorists is that once they have decided that their theory is correct and supports their world view, then no argument or evidence can sway them. (BTW: the definition of a delusion is a fixed false belief) At this point, you can accurately refer to them as "True Believers"

Face it Mike, the scientific consensus is that the buildings fell because Islamic Extremists crashed jets into them. It seems that you have a stake in being a non-conformist, which clouds your objectivity. that's cool, we all have biases. But to think scientifically, you have to account for your biases as much as possible. Sometimes the truth is on the mainstream, sometimes it's not.

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are always much more complex than they would otherwise need to be.

They remind me of movies where the bad guy does something overly complex in order to accomplish some goal that could have been accomplished in a very straight forward way.

Ockham's razor baby!

yeah, James, I know this - the latest NIST report also goes back on several of the things it said (and it never analysed the 'catastrophic failure' of the buildings, just certain things up to that point. And it never tested for thermate - it wouldn't need to, right?

Yes there's evidence on both sides, and I get my THEN THE STEEL BUILDING REGS HAVE TO CHANGE from NIST's own finding that the fire brought down not only the top portion of the building (which should have toppled off) but caused the rest of the building to 'disintegrate spectacularly'.

Surely an act of God (yet the insurance was paid). How odd.

:)

James, we believe what we can deal with. If it's Catholicism, Buddhism or Islam. If it's complex government conspiracies involving Eugenics and New World Order. If it's little green men. Or leprocauns.

In the evidential system, it's all a question of, "Does this seem valid to me?"

If 9/11 was a government-orchestrated conspiracy to offer pretext for launching wars of choice, then why did they do such a horrible job of implicating the countries we desired to invade? Why was the Pentagon one of the targets of this attack if the Pentagon is a part of the apparatus involved in the conspiracy and the resultant military campaign? It's not like America or even Washington, D.C., are lacking other terror targets that would evoke sympathy from the American people.

read the documents ... the denial that 'no one would think of flying planes into the WTC/Pentagon' was discussed at the military level on a number of exercises. They had plans in place to combat such. And on the day, all the airforce STOOD DOWN.

I'd like to know why anyone would need to plant explosives in the WTC buildings. It's not enough to crash planes into buildings in a terrorist attack to build support for a war nobody wants right now...the buildings actually have to fall down? Why, exactly? Lets take the time to rig the buildings with explosives, risk someone being spotted, risk the explosives being spotted, and risk someone talking, just in case a terrorist highjacking/suicide attack doesn't generate enough public support for our nefarious plans? Who came up with this idea?

This controversy always amazes me. We all saw (some in person, most on a video recording) two jet aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center, and then it fell down. In order to understand how to create buildings that don't collapse when struck by jet aircraft, engineers modeled the the entire system on supercomputers, and we now know the exact mechanism involved.

If someone finds this impossible to believe, I am amazed they can navigate their daily life, which is full of much more incredible events. Or is everything a conspiracy?

they only needed to get THE AMERICAN PEOPLE on their side, and trying to frame their CIA-assets 'Al Qaeda' and implicating Iraq in funding/nuclear certainly garnered a substantial amount of public support for an unjust war.

Right?

You do all see this, right?

I mean, it's not like you're all asleep and living in a government-sponsored religious fugue now is it?

This is the Atheists and SKEPTICS group right?

:)

Building 7 never needed to come down. Unless it was 'hiding' something. R.I.P. Barry Jennings. Wake the f*** up.

:)

It would seem if the government were trying to garner support for an invasion of Iraq via a conspiracy, they would have went the extra step and actually have made the perpetrators of the atrocity from Iraq. Simple step to get wrong isn't it?

No conspiracy.

Also, do you know the kind of work that goes into placing charges in a building in order to implode it? This is not the kind of thing that can be hidden. The charges are obvious as is all the work one does to the supporting structures that must be destroyed (beams, pillars, etc.) before explosives will be effective.

Mike said:

"Building 7 never needed to come down. Unless it was 'hiding' something"

Building 7 burned and then collapsed. Buildings often burn and then collapse.

The sequence:

1. Massive damage due to energy of 2 skyscrapers collapsing nearby.
2. Fire that could not be put out due to a lack of water.
3. Fire damage to key internal column leading to structural failure.
4. Gravity creates an increasing downward force, causing total collapse.

This was all verified by detailed computer models. The only mystery is why people need conspiracy theories to create meaning in their lives.

Mike,

Your sequence makes sense, except for step 4. Gravity is a government conspiracy designed to keep the people down. It was created by DARPA many years ago in a secret laboratory with technology stolen from Nazi scientists. Every once in a while the government turns gravity up to oppress us even more. Is it a coincidence that in the run up to a presidential election, gravity gets so strong that it pulls the leaves right off of the trees? I think not!

Dan, if you confuse me with Mike, we will never get this straightened out. Or maybe I am the one confused??

For the record, I do not believe in a 9/11 conspiracy. Gravity though -- prove it!

R.C.

Oh, sorry, R.C. My typo. I'd hate to slander Mike and accuse him of furthering the gravitist agenda.

I once spoke to a Taiwanese man claiming that Confucius was a Chinese government invention, designed to make the Chinese people docile and obedient. It took me off guard at the time (I was a devote Christian back then), but it almost makes some "conspiratorial" sense when you read some of Confucius' quotes: =)

-"The superior man does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow."

-"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses."

-"When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."

-"With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud."

Whether or not this particular viewpoint can measure any truth or not is beyond me (mainly due to a consistent laziness to investigate any further than I have), however I do feel that something must be said about governments and dominion over the ignorant and poor. It appears to me that they like to have stupid sheeple for citizens; makes for quicker line formations and easier to swallow voting formalities, etc.

Dan, R.C.,
your condescension was amusing to watch, but honestly, you can tweak any simulation to do whatever you want. The facts are in the viewing. Steel buildings burn all the time and DON'T fall down.

I think the first few minutes of this should tell you all you need.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnjIzamn...

it might seem insane right now to believe that your government is shitting all over you - that's what governments do to the sheeple. But I hope when you all come to help pay off the 5 trillion dollar bail out of the corporate gambling syndicate. Or when it comes out that martial law has to be instigated because of organised hyperinflation to burn the dollar. I hope you remember that I tried to allow your skepticism to save you.

:)

Yes, steel buildings burn all the time and don't fall down-----they burn with jet fuel inside at extremely high temperatures and don't fall down...oh wait, no they don't.

nathan,
jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough - are you paid to be intentionally in denial?

:)

Are you paid to act just like the Christians in this room? You make assertons with no evidence to support them. That is the same thing they do. Let me demonstrate:

"it might be insane to think the gov't is shitting all over you but [it is:]."

substitute jesus:

"it might be insane to think jesus is god but he is."

How about actual evidence and not jsut your idiotic assertions.

Nathan,
naughty boy - you know the rules of this group. No name-caling.

;)

Mike --

Are you now saying the conspiracy also involves the multiple private engineering firms that build the WTC models, and validated the results? And all the academics who have the software and the data and will be analyzing the model for educational purposes?

Also, having worked in the area of large scale simulation models, no you cannot "tweak" them to give the results you want. Once started, the computer runs algorithms far beyond any hope of human control. Think "Deep Blue" when it beat Kasparov in chess. The computer makes decisions at a rate and scope that outside the capabilities of humans.

Jet fuel is mentioned here. In the case of WTC 7, the model showed that fuel played little role in the fire, it was in fact a lack of water. When Mike suggests that steel buildings don't burn, it is not because they are made of steel, it is because steel buildings, being modern, have excellent automated sprinkler systems, and fires do not typically get out of control. In the case of WTC 7, it had an manual sprinkler system. This did not matter of course, because the twin tower collapse destroyed all water supplies in the area anyway.

And Mike, You Tube videos as a response to public reports from highly respected engineering groups is not going to hack it.

The conspiracy groups could create their own Beowolf super computer cluster, and present the findings from their own model of the disaster to refute the NIST findings. But like evolution deniers, they wont, because they have not even a fundamental understanding of what they are talking about.

I'm just as skeptical as the next atheist Mike, but I think the media got it 100% this time. There was absolutely no way that they misinformed the public in any way. The public must know the truth no matter how inconsequential the results may appear; and because of the level of importance that this event takes, I know for a fact that they weren't misguided or misled at all this time. Every government figure-head was open and honest with every aspect, down to even the smallest detail. There was absolutely no reason for us to start a war until that pivotal moment. They caught us completely and totally unguarded and it just goes to show that we needed an extreme, justifiable, and righteous motive to open the doors of every God-fearing Christian American home to find those dirty Islamic terrorists. Any financial gain, control of resource allocations, or increased power is strictly coincidental. Now, let us end this silly little debate so we can return to our main focus; There is absolutely no religious sway or bias from our stalwart politicians!

Mike --

I watched the You Tube video. It is not a complete analysis of the properties of steel. It presents only information about materials that support its claim.

You said the video would give me all I need to know. I would suggest that 5 years of engineering school would give you a start on what you need to know. You would then see the video as the misinformation it is.

Why do people claim that their ignorance in a subject makes their knowledge superior to those that have spent years studying a subject? Again, this reminds me a lot of the evolution debate.

And here are You Tube links to steel structures collapsing due to fire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3bvfdCog...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM7pRyEJq...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPgHc8IjJ...

which completely destroys the premise of your "all you need to know" video.

And now I am off to cook breakfast. I will be using a steel pan that is badly warped because I used it on an open campfire once. An iron skillet would not have done that. But unfortunately, steel, containing carbon, is subject to stretching and warping at lower temperatures. There is no free lunch -- to make steel lighter than iron, you must give up something.

Technically I just called your conspiracy theories idiotic, not you. And besides---name-calling is good fun.

The fact that people profited off of 9/11 doesn't not prove that they orchestrated it. People also profited off of hurricane Katrina. I'd like to see a youtube video "proving" that Katrina was also a conspiracy. Read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. It does a good job of explaining disaster capitalism, where elements are in place waiting for disasters like 9/11 to capitalize off of them. Is this abhorrent behavior? Yes. Does it prove conspiracy to take down the towers? Not remotely.

You still haven't answered the basic logical questions of your theory: why? Why did the buildings need to collapse in order to engender support for the war when the plane crashes would have been enough? Why did the Pentagon need to be hit when the Pentagon is part of the war-making apparatus? Why did the 9/11 attack completely fail to implicate Iraq in any capacity? How could people be smart enough to orchestrate a conspiracy of this magnitude without getting caught but stupid enough to choose such a ridiculous method to achieve ends that certainly could have been achieved much more simply?

Dan --

Thanks for the book recommendation. Since this is a website for book readers, we should all do that more often to support our discussions.

I want to emphasize: Books, not You Tube or Blogs or Websites.

(I will try very hard to take my own advice).

Hi Jack Ash --

I do feel that something must be said about governments and dominion over the ignorant and poor. It appears to me that they like to have stupid sheeple for citizens

I was recently discussing overt versus covert censorship on another group, and I said that overt censorship is dead for the reason you mention. The government does in fact have enough control over the press to direct attention away from problems it doesn't care about, including poverty.

Of course, this is a far cry from saying the government has engaged in an active, clandestine and deliberate criminal conspiracy. Such a thing is hypothetically possible, but it doesn't make any sense for the government to try it.

You still haven't answered the basic logical questions of your theory: why?

Mike is experiencing the need for answers in a world that doesn't have them. The fact that something so absurd can happen contradicts our minds' need to form patterns, which all humans employ in their thinking.

At the heart of conspiracy theories is the feeling that somewhere out there, somebody knows something. If somebody knows something, then the event makes more intuitive sense. Unfortunately, that's not the case here, and no inner peace about 9-11 will ever be forthcoming from any explanation of it.

@ 35: I would add, "Why attack the Pentagon instead of sticking solely to civillian targets, which would evoke more sympathy world-wide than an attack that included a military target?


With regards to Hurricane Katrina, that wasn't a conspiracy, that was the wrath of god on a hotbed of sin and evil, and those that made money from it are god's righteous servants. There'll be a hurricane hitting Las Vegas any year now.

I was trying to be sarcastic in my last comment (message 32 for reference)...much funnier that way. lol

I feel like conspiracy theories are only made thus because they don't follow the mainstream herding of acceptance and presentation. Many conspiracy theories are not based upon actual evidence and have no tangible proof of any veracity, so it isn't a large step to state that ALL "conspiracy theories" are false explanations without any merit. Regardless, its easy to see why this conclusion is not logical, and why most of us reach this thinking error anyway. Simply because a conflicting perspective falls into the category of conspiracy theory doesn't mean it belongs there.

911 is not obvious and clear. There are many speculations and accounts that don't find mutual ground even though they come from reputable sources. When has something of such historical magnitude ever been portrayed accurately in our nation's annals? How many times have we witnessed that the American government changes, deletes, or delays it's account of important events or even it's own history? What government has ever been innocent of such a deed?

Skepticism is at least a step in the right direction, in my opinion. Why would anyone want to place their bets on the accuracy of the media or some public relations bigwig? I'd rather waste my time on delirious speculation than attempt to interpret the biased prattle of the 5'o'clock news.