You made the decision to base your beliefs on the flimsiest of evidence and when somebody calls that evidence into question they are being snidey.Originally Posted by Matt
Calling people names doesn't make your argument look any stronger. In fact, it's beginning to look like you've totally given up trying to defend your position using evidence and logic.
Changing the subject already?
I'd always been under the impression that belief in absolute certainty was the exclusive right of religious fundamentalists.
Certainty in beliefs is the hallmark of fundamentalist religion
Certainty in uncertainty is the hallmark of fundamentalist scepticism
Acceptance that, that which can be reproducibly demonstrated by independent investigators in adequately constructed experiments is the tennent of skepticism. Once the basics have been determined, then levels of evidence required to demonstrate that a given explanation, which is compatible with that which has been reliably established, does not need to be ridiculously stringent.
It's only a more probable suggestion for people who've decided a priori that 9/11 wasn't an inside job.
In any case, what has airport security and surveillance got to do with this discussion? Matt is claiming that the evidence exists and that it's strong enough to convince him that the hijackers boarded the planes. I'm asking why the evidence has only been shown to one newspaper and one author, why it was exhibited at the Moussaoui trial as a Flash applet and not in its original format, what happened to the CCTV footage that the still was taken from, and why the 9/11 Commission didn't question the airport staff.
The authorities weren't slow at showing off the miracle passport, the copies of the Koran, the flight manuals and the convenient list of all the hijackers' names left in a car at the airport. In other words, they went out of their way to show the public easily-fakable, circumstantial evidence, but provided no concrete evidence whatsoever that would have held up in court.
When the police arrest a suspected murderer and bring charges against him, they have to provide evidence to the court that he committed the murder. If the prosecution provides no evidence, there is no case for the defendant to answer.
I have no reason to believe that the planners of 9/11 would allow the patsies to continue living on this Earth after the morning of September 11, 2001.
This is a red herring. The fact that tickets weren't faked is not evidence that the hijackers boarded the planes.
Thank you. 'Hallmark' is the perfect word.
The distinction I drew was between 'belief' in certainty and certainty in beliefs.
Absolute certainty is a description that can only fairly be applied to one's own existence or various mathematical and logical proofs which are independent of our falliable perceptions.
However certainty as a relative concept is still useful. If you're intepretting my certainty to be a provisional truth that I'm prepared to revise in the face of new evidence then you're absolutely correct.
Don't take that to mean however that there's any significant chance that my opinion will change. I've seen a great deal of evidence presented by both sides. If you've got evidence that overrides tens of thousands of eye witnesses, numerous photos and video footage and ATC reports, I'll reconsider that planes hit the buildings.
Sorry to butt in here - I'm trying to keep up with a subject I don't know too much about.
Bryan, you seem to believe that 'the hijackers didn't board the planes' and you have reasons for believing that. If you are right, then who was it that flew the planes into the buildings? Sorry if that's a stupid question.
Nope just trying to bring it back on track after that daft red herring, attempting to shift the burden of truth.
We all know what the evidence is that says the planes were hijacked. We all know that the evidence could be better or the evidence could be worse. That's a trivial observation, it's always true. There could be better evidence that Johnathon Ross works for the BBC.
You're doubting the veracity of that evidence, is it really changing the subject to ask why?
But then you can end up with a situation like the one at the 911myths website. The authors (is it that creepy Mark Roberts?) have presented four pieces of evidence that supposedly prove the hijackers boarded the planes. One of these pieces of evidence is so flimsy that even the authors acknowledge so. They then make the claim that it doesn't matter because that particular piece of evidence just corroborates the other three pieces of evidence. The trouble is, all four pieces of evidence are extremely flimsy and the result is that they are all confirming each other.
This kind of thinking works its way up to the bigger picture: we know the hijackers boarded the planes, so the planes must have brought the buildings down, therefore there was no controlled demolition.
It would be interesting if the believers in the Official Fairy Tale (OFT) could name the one piece of evidence they feel proves beyond reasonable doubt that the hijackers boarded the planes.
Be careful you don't use up all your red herrings. You might need some for later. I've noticed that when anybody challenges the official 9/11 story on this forum, the regulars won't even discuss the matter unless the poster states what he believes to be evidence of an inside job. I've pointed out that the lack of documentation to show that the hijackers boarded the planes cannot be explained by the official version. It's obvious that nobody wants to discuss this issue and you are repeadedly trying to change the subject to issues you think support your cause.
You think the burden of proof is on the accused even if no case has been made against him?
It's likely that Johnathon Ross's bank statements could prove that he works for the BBC.
You seem to be genuine, but I'm very wary of this question because I've seen it used time and time again by debunkers to change the subject and derail the discussion. If I offered an alternative theory, everybody would then be focused on my theory and all the anomalies in the official story would be forgotten. I can't possibly know in detail what happened on 9/11 and it's not even necessary to have an alternative theory to show that the mainstream media version is fiction.
I don't follow that train of thinking. Why would anybody claim that it is the hijackers boarding the planes that caused the planes to bring the buildings down? Whether or not the hijackers boarded the planes, it remains a fact that the planes hit the buildings. Whether or not there was a controlled demolition (in addition to the planes impacting) is a different matter that isn't connected to whether or not there were hijackers on board isn't it?.
Sorry, I didn't think I was changing the subject. Somebody flew the planes into the buildings. If it wasn't hijackers it must have been somebody else.
I can't speak for anyone else, but with regard to 9/11, I start from the premise that any conspiracy by US authorities to engineer or deliberately allow the 9/11 atrocities would have been impossible. Why? Simply because any such conspiracy would have involved hundreds if not thousands of individuals in dozens of organisations. How long could such a conspiracy remain hidden? How long would it be before some latter-day "deep throat" had a crisis of conscience and phoned the Washington Post? Eight years?? Don't be daft - any conspiracy on that scale would have leaked and been completely blown in days. Only a fantasist could entertain thoughts that 9/11 was the result of a massive government conspiracy.
Consequently I refuse to engage with 9/11 nuts on the minutiae of that dreadful day. To them any inconsistency or unknown points to a cover up - any coincidence is evidence of contrivance - any correlation is proof of causation. You cannot argue logically with such persons because the real world doesn't work like that! In the real world all investigations reveal inconsistencies, there are always unknowns, coincidences are common and correlation generally doesn't mean a damn thing.
I base my conclusions about 9/11 largely on the basis of the live and recorded video coverage of the atrocities and the published material from the FBI and the 9/11 Commission. I see no reason to doubt that both investigations were conducted in a professional manner by experienced and able investigators, and that both were honest and largely successful efforts to uncover the truth.
I think Brinap hits the nail on the head here. All such investigations are retrospective attempts to understand complex events. As anyone who has lost someone to a tragic accident or crime will know, the what if's are unending. So if you start with a premise that there must be dark forces at work guiding events, the number of opportunities for supposedly supportive evidence will be limitless. In such senarios Occam's razor should be applied. Thus the explantation should be the simplist that fits the known facts.
As far as I can determine the simple known fact is that internal passanger planes were deliberately crashed into the buildings, killing many ordinary commuters, trapping many people in floors above - who talked to their families and friends about their plight before dying. If you question whether the planes really hit the buildings, and whether the phone calls to friends and collegues around the world were real or not - then as far as I am concerned you are an nut job.
Once this central tenent is accepted, then without suicidal hijackers, no other explanation for simultaniously deranged pilots really works. Now as to whether the identity of the hijackers was correct etc - well no one can really know, but if it was not Islamists that had connections with each other, who undertook flying lessons, then other more complex explanations are required, and this falls foul Occam.
This is where you differ fundamentally from 9/11 truthers. Your premises are based on a priori assumptions that are unfalsifiable. How do you prove one way or the other whether they'd be able to stop the whistleblowers?
My premises are based on evidence, logic and the laws of physics. For example, unless the videos were faked, we know that WTC7 collapsed in around 7 seconds, falling into a relatively neat little pile. For that to happen, the 81 steel columns that were holding up the building must have failed virtually simultaneously at below ground level, and each column must have broken into smaller parts during the collapse. A basic knowledge of physics and everyday experience of the world is enough for anybody to see that minor localised fires and asymmetrical damage to the building could not possibly have caused that to happen. Some form of controlled demolition is the only logical explanation for what we see in the videos. Physical evidence should always trump assumptions derived from a particular world view.
A wise move. The devil is in the detail and you wouldn't last five minutes discussing the minutiae.
The point is, when each piece of evidence is examined in isolation, none of it stands up to scrutiny. It's only by vaguely linking it all together that the official story can be made to look coherent to people who haven't scratched below the surface. Anybody can see from the videos that the buildings were demolished, but a lot of people rationalize it away because they believe there is conclusive proof that the planes were hijacked.
Regarding the bare facts of 9/11, I think it's safe to say that seven buildings were completely destroyed in New York, the Pentagon was damaged, a small crater appeared in a field in Pennsylvania, and many people were murdered.
You seem to be implying that because you don't think it was anybody else it must have been hijackers. Have you tried approaching it from a different angle by examining the evidence? Follow the links that were posted earlier and see if you're convinced by the evidence presented there as proof that the hijackers were on the planes. Do you not find the lack of documentation hard to explain?
Last edited by bryan; 17th October 2009 at 08:03 AM.
What you are saying here is not clear to me. What do you mean by 'demolished'? They were certainly destroyed of that there is no doubt but by demolished do you mean as in a controlled way - not as a result of being hit by planes?
I just don't see why anybody should rationalise it away like that - the planes obviously hit the buildings. The result of the planes hitting the buildings would hardly be influenced by who was flying them.
Interesting. You don't include planes hitting buildings as one of your bare facts?
I'm not implying that at all! All I'm saying is that somebody flew the planes. If, as you are saying, it wasn't hijackers then I am saying it must have been somebody else.
Have you seen them? Why haven't Johnathon Ross's bank statements been shown to more than one newspaper - blah blah boring blah. As I said the evidence could be better.
However you go further this time. Now you claims that the evidence is less than should be expected.
So let me ask upon what comparible examples are you forming a baseline of how good the evidence should be?
Can you give examples where the evidence is better than pre-recorded confessions, passenger manifests, videos of hijackers boarding the plane, witnesses who inadvertanly helped trained the hijacker pilots for their missions, commincations from hi jacked planes.
I mean yeah you can poo poo that mountain of evidence by saying it could be better. As I pointed out, that's a trivial excercise, whatever the evidence base, it could be better. Point is, all of the available evidence points in the same direction, none of the available evidence suggests anything otherwise.
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