David Ray Griffin, pillar of the 9/11 Truth Movement

reply to post by mmiichael

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I have opened this new thread, as I think it's clear that the material covered here wasn't addressing the topic of the original thread it was in, but I felt it was still good to address it.



You can make all the claims you like concerning him. This doesn't make them true.




That link is rather dated I believe. David Ray Griffin has since published atleast one more book and grown even more in stature since 2007, which is apparently the most recent entry in that link. I've read "9/11 and American Empire, a book he edited with Peter Dale Scott, and which included works such as Steven Jones' excellent essay, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?, from acclaimed physicist Steven Jones. I'm currently reading Dr. Griffin's book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking and find that it's quite good.

I presently am not inclined to put in time and effort to debunk a web page from a site that I've only seen a few times. David Ray Griffin himself has focused on much more well known official story articles and reports in the aforementioned book.




I believe what makes sense to me. I think that if you took the time to properly read the material I've provided, you'd realize that I'm right.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by scott3x]

If David Ray Griffin is the "pillar" of the 9/11 Truth Movement there's absolutely no doubt there will be a pancake collapse at near free fall speed.

reply to post by trebor451

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What draws you to that conclusion?

I think Dr. Griffin has done a great job.

He may be a professional theologian, but he is a layperson in the area of criminal investigation. That being said he is one of those people in the truth movement who is enough of an intellectual heavyweight to quickly acquire an excellent grasp of the issues in the 9/11 case and to write intelligent books on it.

Real American patriots might do well to remember that their country wasn't founded by experts in war and revolution, but by laypersons of principle, like Dr. Griffin, the sort of persons who are overlooked on the "depth chart" of a nation but who can come out of the backfield, so to speak, to give you fits.

If people like Dr. Griffin and others at the heart of the movement, stay the course, I think we will move steadily toward a critical mass that the powers in the country will no longer be able to dismiss in such a contemptuous way as they have been doing.

The mere fact that persons such as Dr. Griffin and others, such as A&E for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, scientists like Steven Jones, insiders like Sibel Edmunds and even legislators who raise questions about the 9/11 Commission report, are either ignored as if they didn't exist or shrugged off as if they were cranks, speaks volumes about the sort of individuals who currently hold power in the United States.

The American oligarchy has lost contact with reality. One thinks of Marie Antoinette or Czar Nicholas of Russia.

Dr. Griffin and others are bringing a much needed wake-up call to the American people and they are not going to stop ringing that number.

[edit on 28-10-2009 by ipsedixit]

David Ray Griffin has sucked a lot of people in. People who choose not to apply a little critical thinking to his claims and pronouncements just indicate to the rational world that they suffer from some heavy confirmation bias.

I illustrated this in a poster I made based on the famous poster about Richard Nixon. Now, we rational people will immediately ask who "they" are and how "they" were responsible for everything from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. We never get an answer and 9/11 Truthers are notorious for refusing to explain who "they" are and how "they" did all these things over a sixty year period.



Sorry, scott3x, David Ray Griffin is at the top of the list of the frauds, charlatans, and outright liars of the so-called 9/11 "Truth" Movement. I hope you start to ask yourself some rational questions on why you would fall for him.

i reckon 9/11 was allowed to happen to start a war to make more money for the warmongers

or the forces of evil were hoping it might start a nuclear war

they want mankind to destroy ourselves

they r the real enemy of all the world

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[edit on 28/10/2009 by Mirthful Me]

David Ray Griffin is a professor of philosophy and religion. If I wanted to know more about, say, the ten commandments as compared with the nonconfessionals from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, I would definitely go to him. Matters that pertain to physics and structural engineering, I'm going to have to side in with the people from NIST, FEMA, MIT, Perdue, etc etc etc whose specialty is physics and structural engineering, rather than people with irrelevent backgrounds simply becuase they happen to agree with what I myself want to be true. Otherwise, I might as well be going to a lawn care specialist to perform a brain operation.

I find that it's ironic that someone of his background would get involved with the 9/11 truther movement. Between the single minded zealotry that cannot be reasoned with, the widespread introduction of mysterious, impossible to explain events tantamount to the supernatural, runaway circular logic, and designated spokespeople whose full time mission is to "spread the truth" exactly like David Ray Griffin, the truther movement resembles a religious organization, more than it does a grass roots research movement.



[edit on 28-10-2009 by GoodOlDave]

reply to post by GoodOlDave

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Sorry, but there is some truth there but that isn't fully true. He is a philosopher and as such, he can understand "arguments" better then most. Yes, a lot of this had to do with theological issues, however, his analytical skills would be highly developed as a analytical philosopher which also studies the nature of argumentation.

So he is in a good position to evaluate certain arguments the Gov has made and to offer his own.

While, he might not be the best "debater" he certainly would be formidable in a public written debate.

I disagree, for the obvious reason that if someone were to be truly analytical, it'd be unlikely they'd wind up being a professor of philosophy and religion to begin with. Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit, as that guy who wrote "The Little Prince" once said.

It's obvious that his is a background that takes a hypothesis and holds it up as being correct and unimpeachable FIRST, and who then forces all remaining arguments to conform with that hypothesis and he doesn't particularly care how many loose ends in logic the process causes. This is about as much of an analogy of the truther movement as an analogy gets.



The problem I have with Griffin is that, if he honestly and truly believed some secret entity staged an event which caused the murder of over 3000 people, he'd be screaming it to everyone and anyone off the top of his lungs, NOT write a book and tell people, "everything you know is wrong, and I'll tell you the truth if you give me money". Imagine Paul Revere riding around, and instead of yelling, "the redcoats are coming", he yelled "Something dreadful is coming and I'll tell you what it is for $19.95". Heck, according to the truthers, the 9/11 commission report is supposedly full of lies, but THAT is still free to download.

Such a person will never conduct any public debate, ever, written or otherwise.

Goodoldave, Thanks for giving us your interesting opinion that philosophers are unlikely to be truly analytical. Speaking of the word unlikely, maybe it would bother you to discover the actual probability that all the chain of events on 9/11 happened like it did. The term wildly improbable could be used.
To state my question clearer: Judging from pre and post 9/11 history, how statistically likely is it that:
1. Four passenger airliners pilots would not hit the 'hijack' code they had been trained to press
2. Four airliners would not quickly be intercepted and escorted to the ground
3. Fire would cause steel skyscrapers to collapse to the ground
4. The pentagon airspace would be invaded by a non-authorized flight with no interception
5. This list could go on and on...

People have done the math, I'm still trying to find the link to the paper. It is statistically virtually impossible for this many unlikely events to happen one right after the other. This is what renders the official story wildly improbable in my eyes.

[edit on 28-10-2009 by superleadoverdrive]

That's not what I said and you know it. I said that it's unlikely for religious scholars to be truly analytical. I'm not the only one here who knows about the issues Galileo had with the church when he said the Earth revolves around the sun, am I?



Statistics have nothign do do with it, it's planning. The doors to the cabin were unlocked and they were rushed by not one, not two, but five hijackers, so they probably didn't have the chance to hit the hijack switch. Not that it matters, since two of the hijacker teams misunderstood how the communications system worked, and radioed out their "Please stay calm" message to the world, rather than the passengers, which is how the FAA knew there were hijackings to begin with.



If interceptors were given enough lead time to scramble, AND controllers could pick the hijacked aircraft out from the 500,000 other aircraft in the air at the time, AND knew where the hijacked aircraft was heading, AND the interceptors could reach them in time, then the odds are 100%. The key phrase is, "in time". If they weren't in time, then it's 0%.



With the particular design of the WTC, which no other structure in the world ever used, 100% obviously



Seeing that some whacknut grumbling that his daddy never told him he lived him grabbed an airplane and crashed it onto the White House lawn back when Clinton was president, 100% actually.



I don't have to tell you that attempting to use statistics to analyze an event that has never happened before is goign to give you skewed results. What was the statistical likelihood that the Titanic was going to hit an iceberg and sink when it left Liverpool?

Thinking about the odds involved in the collapse of the WTC towers is very revealing and the comparison with the Titanic makes the situation even clearer.

Below is a quotation from Lawrence Beesley's, "The Loss of the SS Titanic". He was a second class passenger who survived the sinking. He was a well educated science teacher in his working life.

en.wikipedia.org...



www.titanic-titanic.com...



Similarly the chances of the WTC towers collapsing were very small, the odds against it were very large. The planes didn't cause them to collapse and the fires weren't hot enough and didn't burn long enough to cause them to collapse. It was the presence of the explosive charges that did the job and in fact made the odds 100% that they would collapse.

YouTube Link

Scott,

I will ask you not to take fragments of my posts out of context.

As I haven noted, and has been amply reinforced by the scientifically minded and more knowledgeable people who bother to read Griffin - he is yet another opportunist selling contrivances to a receptive audience, milking interest in 9/11 conspiracy for whatever he can. Essentially a 21st Century snake oil salesman.

Some have taken the trouble to unravel his attempted deceptions, like here:



Others have reviewed his books and pointed out the gross errors and false assumptions.




M


[edit on 29-10-2009 by mmiichael]

reply to post by mmiichael

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Your quote from Morrock contains nothing but blather which has been refuted in numerous threads on ATS. Griffin may not be a genius but Morrock makes him look like Einstein.

Morrock's dim-witted take on the events of 9/11 was steam rollered a long time ago. I'm amazed that this kind of stuff continues to be recycled.

goodolddave, you said improbability statistics have nothing to do with 9/11. This is true for you and many others, however for me, it has everything to do with me finding the official story so unlikely as to be impossible.
You gave some good examples of single occurances of unlikely events, which are acceptable to most people including me. However, once you string five or more unlikely events together in succession on the same day, it quickly progresses from unlikely to improbable, implausible and ultimately impossible.
Each taken as a separate event would be believable, but not one right after another. What is the statistical probability that:
1. On the same day, four pilots could be overcome by men of small stature with box cutters, then...
2. Four passenger airliners pilots would not hit the 'hijack' code they had been trained to press ...
3. Four airliners would not quickly be intercepted and escorted to the ground, then....
4. These pilots could have hit wtc1 and 2 and pentagon on the first try at the speed they were traveling, then....
5. Fire would cause steel 3 skyscrapers to collapse to the ground on the same day, and their collapse would be at near free-fall excelleration, then...
6. The pentagon airspace would be invaded by a non-authorized flight with no interception, and..
7. The airline crashes would produce debris fields that were so controversial and appear unlike any crashes seen before, and...

This list could go on and on, each one compounding the impossibility further and further from reality.

You are deliberately skewing your statistical population to favor the result you want to have

-First, you are omitting the fact that the planes caused unknown amount of damage to the integrity of the building. We know this becuase the impact destroyed many of the emergency stairwells, and they were deep in the core. We will probably never know the full extent of the damage.

-Second, you are omitting the fact that the jet fuel set whole floors ablaze all at once. Every *other* building fire starts at one location and migrates to the rest of the building, consuming/removing the available fuel as it progresses.

-Third, you are omitting that in addition to the fuel burning, there was also the myriad objects in the tenent space- paper, plastic, wood, carpetting, and so forth. They were fire retardent as per code, but nothing is actually fire proof.

-Fourth, you omit the fact that structural steel does not need to be heated all the way to the melting point before it becomes malleable. Every blacksmith in existence can tell you that you only need to heat metal half way before it loses its structural integrity, particularly when a hundred thousand tons are pushing down on it from above.

-Fifth, you are DEFINITELY omitting the peculiar design of the structure, which every authority ruling on the collapse declared as being the backbone of the failure. The system of mutual redundencies made for a lighter building, but it contained an achilles heel noone fully understood was there- when one component failed, all other components that depended on it's integrity failed in a domino effect.

It's clear that once a specific set of prerequisites have been met, the building would unquestionably have fallen, so the question isn't over statistics of whether or not it would have fallen,, but over whether those prerequisites that would've caused the collapse had actually been met. The events I've listed above fully show that they were. If you still wish to continue to argue conspiracy, be my guest, but the reality is the conspirators wouldn't have needed any controlled demolitions to bring the towers down.

I'm not even going to go into the ghastly statistics behind the possibility there could even have been controlled demolitions in a heavily occupied building without anyone noticing them to begin with. It's such an absurd long shot that the odds are right up there alongside the odds of UFOs landing in your back yard.

Thanks for your opinion. As this is a thread on Griffin, and a link to a long analysis of his theories has been supplied - where is the commentary on it?

I've come to the conclusion Griffin's defenders have no actual interest in examining his claims. It's all a matter for blind faith.

I recommend reading through the work for a reality based perspective.





M

Hi, I have read DRG's debunking book, and have a question. I'm not defending him necessarily, and I don't have blind faith in anyone. Just curious what has been put out there to refute his viewpoint on: The cell phone calls and their probability of occurring at high altitudes. If there was clear evidence that all of the cell phone calls that drove the official story in the media were really placed, then why was evidence that these calls took place not a part of the FBI's case during the Moussai trial? For example the Barbara Olsen call? The FBI's evidence showed there only two calls attempted calls by her and none of them connected.
All of these alleged calls, by cell or seat back phones should have a clear paper trail to prove they took place?

Maybe a refutation to this was in the link you posts, but the abstract was very vague as to any specifics he got wrong and I honestly barely made it through the abstract without wanting to stab a pencil into my eye. It was so clouded with opinions it was hard to find any substance.

reply to post by superleadoverdrive

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Your list, as you say, goes on and on...ONLY in the minds of those who parrot the same nonsense, as you just did.

Shall I further refine mypoint, by taking each of your points one by one?