Debunking David Ray Griffin (Again)

I am going to have to stop listening to these David Ray Griffin interviews. I could only make it about 16 minutes into this interview before wanting to smash my head against the monitor.

George Kenney: David’s analysis is an important litmus test for intellectual honesty. I am not saying he is right about everything or that one must agree with him, but intellectual rigor and neutral methodology are clearly on his side.

You have got to be kidding me. This is the guy who wrote "These reports of having seen a missile or a small military plane [at the Pentagon] must, accordingly, be given more weight."in his book, when he didn't even list a single report that fit that description. Intellectual rigor indeed.

Here Griffin explains why he writes such crap:

Griffin: Process theology and philosophy is inclusive, and deals with the interconnection of various disciplines that have been kept apart by too many forms of thought. One of those is science and religion. So a lot of my work has been, not in theology proper but in philosophy and religion with a heavy emphasis on philosophy of science. In fact several of my books are on science and religion, and the philosophy of science.

Kenney: So you are following Alfred North Whitehead I guess?

Griffin: Yes, his philosophy made the interconnection of science and religion the most important issue. And so that was uh, and important part of my background. And secondly, this form of thought stresses the interconnection of religion and politic. So I had also done quite a bit of thinking about political matters….

I would have to agree completely, this guy applies religious-like beliefs in his cause to science in ways that would make the most fervent televangelist jealous.

Now this part I couldn’t believe. Keep in mind, this is not just some guy I found on the Internet who only watched his first Youtube video yesterday. This is supposedly the most learned mind the 9/11 deniers can come up with. The guy has written 5 books on 9/11 for God’s sake, and yet he will still say crap like this:

Griffin: Likewise, when they finally confront the evidence that there was molten metal under the towers and building 7.

Kenney:For a considerable period of time after the event.

Griffin: Oh, weeks if not months. And it was still in a molten state when people were… crane operators were pulling out the beams and said it was dripping molten steel at the end, which is just what you would expect if it was explosives that had sliced the steel.

What? Did he really just say that? Let me rewind this and play that again…
"it was dripping molten steel at the end, which is just what you would expect if it was explosives that had sliced the steel. "

You have got to be kidding me. Explosives don’t melt steel, least of all not months after they are used. They do their work through pressure, not intense lasting heat. Whenever they blow up a hotel in Vegas do you see the fire department spending weeks hosing down the red hot debris afterwards before they can clean it up? No, once the dust settles you can go pick it up if you want.

And this is the best they got?

Update: Griffin later argues that the steel in the towers could not have weakened unless they were exposed to fires for several hours, because steel is a good conducter of heat, and the heat would be conducted away from the source of the fires almost instantly. He does not explain, however, how this works with his previous theory, that once steel is molten, it dissipates heat so poorly that it manages to stay in this molten state for weeks after that.