Tag Archives: 9/11

Atheists sue museum for displaying 9/11 cross

Posted on by
3

American Atheists have filed a suit against the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation because the WTCMF is displaying a cross formed from some steel beams left after the building collapsed.

The fact that the cross was on display for five years as a symbol of hope to thousands of people makes it an historically significant artefact worthy of display in a museum.

That is not good enough for today’s atheists whose hatred for the God in which they disbelieve is so bitter that they cannot countenance any reminder that billions of people know that he is real. As Kenneth Bronstein, New York City Atheists President pointed out: “That a worker resurrected one of these girders and dubbed it a Christian cross is an affront to all of us who believe in our constitutionally based right to have public places free of religious propaganda and religious coercion.” That the cross is an affront to those who are perishing is not exactly a new idea, but that its display is somehow religious coercion defies all the rationality that atheists are so eager to claim as their own.

Contemporary atheists will not rest until all expression of Christianity is expunged from our civilisation and its citizens’ lives are rendered as narrow, unimaginative, and vacuously meaningless as theirs.

From here:

The American Atheists organization has sued the National September 11 Memorial and Museum over the installation of the “9/11 cross” in the museum. The organization’s president, David Silverman, insists that it will not “allow this travesty to occur in our country.”

The 20-foot cross — two steel beams that had held together as the building collapsed — was discovered in the rubble of Ground Zero on September 13, 2001, by construction worker Frank Silecchia. The 9/11 cross became a venerated object, and many of those who were searching for survivors and clearing debris from the “pit” took solace from its existence. On October 4, 2001, it was moved to a pedestal on Church Street, where it was treated as a shrine by visitors to Ground Zero for the next five years. In October 2006 it was removed to storage, and in July 2011 it was returned to the site for installation in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

 

Cirque du Guantanamo

Posted on by
1

Five of the 9/11 conspirators are appearing before a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay.

So far, they have refused to answer the judge’s questions, extended the proceedings by repeatedly kneeling on the floor and praying – a perverse accommodation of the court since conspicuous Christian prayers would not be allowed in a secular courtroom – removed their translator headphones and feigned indifference to the proceedings by ostentatiously reading magazines.

And now the defense attorney for this execrable bunch is not only wearing a hijab herself, but has passed on the prisoners’ request that other women in the courtroom show respect for the defendants’ religion by doing likewise so that her merry band of sexually-repressed, psychotic, mass-murdering Islamofascists don’t have to go to the trouble of averting their gaze.

I wouldn’t suggest this under any other circumstance, I really wouldn’t, but in this case, it’s justified: to show the religion of these gibbering demoniacs the respect it deserves, all the women in the courtroom should show up topless.

The whole fiasco is a powerful argument for the judicial efficacy of summary lynching.

From here:

A female defense attorney, who is not Muslim, wore the traditional Islamic hijab to the military court staging the trial of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners accused of the September 11 attacks yesterday.

Cheryl Bormann, 52, who represents Walid bin Attash, said that her client had demanded she wear the clothing and insisted that other women at the hearing also wear ‘appropriate’ clothes out of respect for his religion.

Today she explained her decision at Guantanamo Bay, saying she always wears the hijab around her client.

She asked that other women follow her example so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes ‘for fear of committing a sin under their faith’

First Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco

Posted on by
4

Now he’s mislaid his brain in Timbuctoo.

From here:

Legendary singer Tony Bennett has waded into a new controversy by saying America “caused” the attacks on the Twin Towers.

[….]

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said talking about the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

[….]

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett said. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

N. T. Wright on abortion, the death penalty, Iraq and 9/11

Posted on by
1

From here:

You can’t reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty. Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world. As far as they were concerned, their stance went along with the traditional ancient Jewish and Christian belief in life as a gift from God, which is why (for instance) they refused to follow the ubiquitous pagan practice of ‘exposing’ baby girls (i.e. leaving them out for the wolves or for slave-traders to pick up).

Mind you, there is in my view just as illogical a position on the part of those who solidly oppose the death penalty but are very keen on the ‘right’ of a woman (or couple) to kill their conceived but not yet born child…

From where many of us in the UK sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn’t see things in this horribly oversimplified way…

While we’re about it, how many folk out there were deeply moved both by the reading of the 9/11 victim names and by the thought that if they’d read the names of Iraqi civilians killed by your country and mine over the last ten years we’d have been there for several days?

To summarise:

  1. The execution by the state of a person guilty of the crime of murder is equivalent to the killing of an innocent baby for the sake of convenience. Therefore, the only consistent position is a polarized one where either abortion and capital punishment are both permitted or neither are permitted.
  2. The polarization of American politics is all wrong – except for point 1 above where it is obligatory because it is the Wright kind of polarization.
  3. If you are moved by remembering the deliberate murder of 3000 of your own countrymen, you must be equally moved by the wartime deaths of enemy civilians, even though you tried your best to minimise such casualties. This may appear to be a yet another polarized viewpoint, but it’s fine since it is an example of a number of issues piled into one great Wright-approved heap, not two.
  4. The rest of the world isn’t deceived by American Horrible Simplifications. That’s why, for example, UK sophisticates riot at the slightest pretext, routinely indulge in binge drinking and erect sharia controlled zones  –  all horrible, but at lease not horrible simplifications.

I get the impression that N. T. Wright doesn’t much like America; oops – that’s another hopelessly polarized opinion.

 

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori displays Islam myopia

Posted on by
Reply

On September 11th, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached the sermon at St. Paul’s Chapel in the shadow of Ground Zero. Among other things, she said this:

I saw a pickup truck a couple of weeks ago with a waving American flag painted on its rear window.  As I walked through the parking lot, I realized there was something written on the tailgate – the word ISLAM stood out first.  Finally I saw the whole sorry slogan, “everything I need to know about Islam I learned on September 11th.”  How will we change hearts that seem closed to learning more about peace?

Are we willing to recognize and then proclaim that as children of Abraham, Christians, Jews, and Muslims share that vision of a healed world that Micah paints for us?

That isn’t true – at least, it’s not true in the sense that Jefferts Shori means it. In the majority of Islamic nations there was rejoicing on September 11th, 2001 because America had finally got what was coming to it. The Islamic vision of a “healed world” is one of an Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law where democracy, free speech and Jefferts Schori style “diversity” have been obliterated.

Here is a not untypical Islamic reaction to 9/11 from Saudi Arabia:

Then we all knew it wasn’t an accident. We heard sporadic yelling in the streets and happy shouts from Saudis in our own hospital. In the terminal cancer ward, patients were hooting and screaming “Down with USA,” much to the horror of the American nurses tending them.

A Christian response to 9/11

Posted on by
1

Christians inhabit two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. Jesus confirmed this when he said, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).  The difficulty is deciding which things are God’s and which Caesar’s.

One thing that belongs to God is forgiveness. Not the self-indulgent maudlin corporate forgiveness of those who have next to nothing to forgive, but the painful personal forgiveness that God requires of each of us if we are to receive his forgiveness.

True peace also belongs in the kingdom of God and, as St. Augustine noted, insofar as it is immanent in this world, it is related to but not the same as the peace of this world:

In its sojourn here, the Heavenly City makes use of the peace provided by the earthly city. In all that relates to the mortal nature of man it preserves and indeed seeks the concordance of human wills. It refers the earthly peace to the heavenly peace, which is truly such peace that it alone can be described as peace, for it is the highest degree of ordered and harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God and of another in God.

So, as a citizen of both kingdoms, it is a Christian’s responsibility to further the peace of the kingdom of heaven and of this world. Not, however, as many half-baked clerics. They have chosen to be the citizens of a third kingdom: the foggy land of interfaith diversity where earthly peace has supplanted its heavenly counterpart and is supposed to arrive wafting gently on waves of dialogue, candle lighting, mutual back-patting and ecumenical peace quilting.

The Biblical way for a state to maintain peace is by the sword: in other words, through force or the threat of force (Romans 13:2-5). It may appear contradictory to love an enemy while being required by the state to kill him, but it isn’t. As C. S. Lewis put it in “Mere Christianity”:

Now a step further Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war [WWII], and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew…

When soldiers came to St John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major – what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight – the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause – is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage – a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness…..

We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.

9/11 numerically speaking

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

Nine eleven: By the numbers

Number of years since the attacks: 10

Number of Muslim hijackers: 19

Number of airplanes hijacked: 4

Number of intended targets: 4

Number of targets struck: 3

Number of murder victims: 2,977

Estimated financial cost of the attacks: $3.3 trillion (source)

Number of apologies from Muslims, Muslim countries, or Muslim organizations for the attacks: Zero

One more.

Number of apologies by Christian leaders to Muslims for anti-Muslim bigotry: too many to count.

Cross at 9/11 Memorial upsets atheists

Posted on by
3

From here:

A group of atheists has filed a lawsuit claiming the display of the World Trade Center cross at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan is unconstitutional, calling it a “mingling of church and state.”

[…..]

The cross, which consists of two intersecting steel beams that were found intact in the rubble at Ground Zero, was initially constructed on a side of a church in lower Manhattan. The cross was then placed inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum during a ceremony over the weekend.

“The WTC cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross,” the group’s president, Dave Silverman, said in a press release. “It’s a truly ridiculous assertion.”

What is truly ridiculous is David Silverman’s objection to displaying the cross that was formed out of the two beams. If he is right and there is no God, the cross is meaningless and he is free to ignore it. If there is a God, particularly a Christian God, the cross is a symbol of God’s identification with people’s suffering and of the future resurrection; Silverman is free to ignore that, too. Either way, it is nonsense for him to cavil because a God he doesn’t believe in won’t run the universe the way he, Silverman, wants.

It’s amazing how much atheists hate someone they claim doesn’t exist.

 

Bishop Mary Glasspool promotes 9/11 harmony

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

On Saturday, Sept. 10, Los Angeles city hall will host One Light, a vigil for peace on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the devastating events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Under the leadership of Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno, the three Abrahamic faiths have partnered with LA city council to hold the vigil at 7: 15 p.m. “People of all faiths are invited and people of no faith are invited,” says Suffragan Bishop Mary Glasspool. Saturday evening coincides with the end of the Sabbath for Muslims and Jews and the beginning of the Sabbath for Christians.

“We proactively wanted to say ‘one light, one peace, one world’ to have a visible sign of unity for peace to preempt any kind of terror or fear,” says Glasspool.

The religious leaders, who include Rabbi Mark Diamond and Imam Shaquile Sahid, intentionally picked a secular venue so that no one religious group would appear to be favoured. Some 5,000 people are expected, and 500 symbolic glass light globes will be given out.

“The idea is for a representative from each house of worship—whether it’s a church, a synagogue, a mosque, an ashram or a temple—to take a globe back to their home house of worship,” says Glasspool. “It will be a huge celebration.”

Everyone will then proactively sing “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, while holding a glass light globe.

I’m anticipating this will not only be the end of terrorism but will usher in a new age of peace, love, universal accord and free love – mostly gay.

Bishop Mary Glasspool is the first Episcopal lesbian bishop: a person whom potential Islamist terrorists will respect.