This is a guest post by Luke James Taylor
In the increasingly secular age of the Internet, have 9/11 conspiracy theories and new age beliefs become the new sacred cows?
As a music loving expat, Facebook is somewhere I go to share music and keep in contact with friends and family who live thousands of miles away. For the most part it is a peaceful realm of smiley faces, kisses and people posting about how wonderful and fluffy their life is, but ever since the anniversary of 9/11 that sickly sweet amicability has been shattered. Part of me celebrates this exciting turn of events, it can be so boring to read nothing but posts about how much you love your partner or how beautiful your kids are. A bit of political debate and argument is healthy and I prefer some honest disagreement to the Utopian veneer of universal Internet love that is the usual Facebook to and fro.
The problem is, the stone that was launched in to the tranquil Facebook waters has not a been political ideology or a cultural preference, both of which are open to debate. The debris that has demolished the peace has been 9/11 conspiracy theories.
In the past few days, many intelligent Western educated, liberal friends I respect have been posting a link to Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth whilst floating the idea that the most obvious reality we live with today, is one where the thoroughly evil George Bush murdered thousands of his own citizens and successfully covered it up so he could go to war for oil.
The majority of people replying to these posts seem to agree wholeheartedly and anyone who disagrees is grouped against and shot down in a barrage of derisive, hysterical replies that range from the slightly deranged screaming of “BUILDING 7, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN BUILDING 7!!!!!!” and stuff about false flag operations being common throughout history, to the frankly patronising response, that people who believe the official peer reviewed scientific research about the events of 9/11, more than the opinion of a few scientifically trained conspiracy theorists are sheeple who deserve pity.
I have tried to explain about Occam’s Razor (when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions is usually correct) and why it makes the complicated and far fetched possibility that Bush attacked America and managed to cover it up so he could declare war for oil, much less likely than the rather simple answer that a few planes were hijacked by some religious fanatics and flown into some buildings.
I have quoted Carl Sagan’s succinct and devastating put down of this kind of tomfoolery “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, all to no avail.
I have explained why peer review makes the official account of 9/11 not only the best explanation of the events on that day, but also puts to the sword the idea that you can’t believe the official science because it was written by those inside the conspiracy. Peer review is by definition an independent analysis of the science by the best most adversarial experts on the subject. Thus, even if it was written by stooges of the evil masterminds Bush and Cheney, for it to pass muster in a respected scientific journal, means it is more likely to be the truth than the odious and far fetched opinions of some conspiratorially minded “experts” who have not placed their “science” under the scrutiny of their most brilliant and antagonistic peers.
For us to be living in the world these conspiracy theorists inhabit, we would have to be living in a James Bondesque reality, where the thoroughly satanic George Bush not only managed to pull off the most audacious and dastardly act of mass murder in the history of humanity, but everyone from White House insiders (politicians, advisers, military brass and civilian personnel) to the mainstream media, police, firemen and and the most respected scientific journals in the world must either be in on the conspiracy, silenced by force, the threat of force or somehow hoodwinked by the sheer genius of the Bush Administration!
It’s also worth noticing that these conspiracy theories conveniently confirm the hard left dogma that Western democratic nations like the US, UK and Israel are the most demonic threats to humanity since time began and that the evil that is done by liberal democracies far outstrips anything that is done by Assad in Syria, Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the genuinely sickening genocide happening right now in the Congo.
Just like a religious idea, 9/11 conspiracy theories are evangelised, (since my Facebook debut as a 9/11 conspiracy heretic, my inbox has been bulging with links to “scientific” papers about controlled demolition etc) They confirm a dogma and they are immune to the evidence because any evidence to the contrary can be written off as created or manipulated by the the all powerful Bush cabal. Judging by the hurt, angry and volatile reactions of the challenged conspiracy theorists, I can only assume they are held as deeply personal and cherished beliefs bordering on the sacred.
Just like the ubiquitous new age belief in The Secret, the frankly vapid yet unfalsifiable belief that you can wish for anything you want, and as long as you believe it in your heart it, will become true! So a starving Somalian refugee in a camp will become the next Richard Branson if he truly believes it. If he remains a starving refugee, it was because he failed to believe!!! Western educated, secular, liberal people have replaced the monotheism of the past and become enthralled by the most quasi-religious bullshit known to humanity!
As a fully paid up atheist and secularist in this increasingly secular age, I have to concede that the monotheists who warned, “When we stop believing in God, we will believe in anything” were right!
