David Ray GriffinThe New American Dream Interview
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN, 69, lives in California in the Santa Barbara area.
He grew up in Oregon.
He is a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA.
The author of over thirty books, he has recently published seven books on the subject of the Sept. 11 attacks:
•The New Pearl Harbor
•The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions,
•Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11
•9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (edited with Peter Dale Scott)
•Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
•9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press
•The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
In these books, he provides multiple lines of evidence pointing to the falsity of the official account of 9/11.
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The New American Dream Trivia Question
To win a round button that says, "Bush Is Lying About What He Knew," be the first one to correctly answer the following.
David Ray Griffin would rather be ....
a. Dressed in camouflage and orange, grilling venison burgers in his backyard in Mill City b. Studying controlled demolition science at MIT c. Fishing for bluegills in an Iowa farm pond d. Meeting Karl Rove in the alley behind Zodo's Bowling & Beyond e. Pope For A Day f. Writing a book about God and Gawd.
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"... once the Bush-Cheney administration is out of office,
so that people will be less fearful of retaliation
and all the government agencies are under new heads,
there will at least be a chance."
so that people will be less fearful of retaliation
and all the government agencies are under new heads,
there will at least be a chance."
NAD: David, hello, thank you for taking the time for this.
Where did you grow up?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Although I was born in eastern Washington, near Grand Coulee (where my father worked on the dam), I grew up in Hermiston, Oregon.
NAD: What was on the list of activities under your senior picture in the yearbook?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Tennis team, band, honor society, thespians, director of the dance band, director of the pep band.
NAD: What did you start out wanting to be?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Trumpet player.
NAD: Is there still time?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
No, and I changed my mind (during my first year of college), anyway.
By the time I finished my BA and MA, I had decided what I wanted to be: a philosophical theologian.
NAD: Did you ever want to just get a job on one of those ocean ships at Coos Bay and just go?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
No, although I love being BY the ocean, I don’t like being ON it.
NAD: Did the forest, the ocean, the nature of Oregon have anything to do with your budding interest in God and religion? Just a thought.
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
No, on the eastern side of the state, where I grew up, there was little green. I didn’t get to the green side of the state until I went to college (in Eugene, Oregon), and at that time I didn’t find the green to be worth the price (almost constant rain).
Indeed, one morning I woke up thinking about doing a correlation on the amount of atheism on college campuses and the annual rainfall.
NAD: Would you like to choose one of these to answer, elaborate on?
We don't ask this to make fun. We ask because we really seek the answers.
— Are UFOs real?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Of course there are lots of flying objects that have been unidentified. As to what people usually mean when they say UFOs, the phenomena are extremely puzzling. I tried at one time to find a theory that would take account of all the well-attested data but found that I couldn’t.
— Did we land on the moon in 1968?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
You and I didn’t, but some other guys did (I assume).
— Did Bush knock down the towers?
-DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Whether Bush himself was behind it at that time, I don’t know, but certainly Cheney and other people in the Bush administration were.
— Was Paul Wellstone's death an accident?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I strongly doubt it (see my review of The Assassination of an American Senator, by James Fetzer and Four Arrows, on Amazon.com).
— The Oklahoma City bombing? Wasn't that just another U.S. government terrorist exercise? Or not.
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Although I haven’t studied the evidence sufficiently to make a very strong statement, what I have read thus far has led me to believe that the official story is a lie.
— Waco. We burned kids, right? You can see flames shooting out of the tanks. Or not.
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I’ve studied that incident even less, so don’t feel qualified to say.
— Is Bigfoot real?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Yes, he won several gold medals in the swimming races during the recent Olympic Games in China.
— Is there a God?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Not under the normal definition, according to which the word “God” refers a being who can interrupt the world’s normal causal processes (see my books on the problem of evil and on the relation between science and religion).
But I have provided several reasons to believe in the reality of a divine reality that is more worthy, in my opinion, of our reverence and worship.
(The answer to the trivia question above is that I would rather — if only we could get the truth about 9/11 exposed — be writing a book called: Why Gawd Does Not Exist—but God Does.)
... What makes you think that?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
On why not the traditional God (“Gawd”), see God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy.
On why the non-traditional God of process philosophy and theology, see Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion.
NAD: Do you have hope in Obama?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Yes.
NAD: What happened to Kucinich, Nader, McKinney, Paul — and why did they not have a chance?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
That’s too obvious to answer.
NAD: Who decided our candidates would be Obama and McCain anyway?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Answering that would be beyond my pay grade.
NAD: Please tell us more about yourself, the things you have done, what you would like to do, what you did today. What do you eat, what do you drive, what do you drink.
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I have mainly taught (from 1968 to 2004), run centers (the Center for Process Studies [in Claremont] and the Center for a Postmodern World [in Santa Barbara), and written books and articles.
What I did today is answered below.
I am a virtual vegetarian. Today was heavy on the “virtual” — I had French toast, Manhattan clam chowder, cheese and bread.
I drive a Honda Insight (53 mpg).
Water, tea, and Zin.
NAD: What color is your toothbrush? [Without going to look.] Automatic or manual?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I have six, various colors, all manual.
NAD: Pajamas or sweatpants?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
If you mean what I sleep in, shorts.
NAD: Does your favorite coffee cup have words on it?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I don’t drink coffee, only tea.
What are they? I have multiple tea cups, which I love with equal amounts of affections — some plain, some with writing.
NAD: What did you absolutely have to get done by noon today?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Nothing, absolutely. But what I wanted to do, and did, was to incorporate dozens of helpful suggestions from one my readers for Chapter 5 of my book on NIST’s WTC report — a chapter dealing with NIST’s ignoring of testimonial evidence for explosions in WTC 7 (which included its distortion of Barry Jennings’ testimony).
NAD: How about by Christmas 2009?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Nothing. But what I would like to do is write congratulatory letters to all the members of the 9/11 truth movement who helped the truth finally get publicly exposed and accepted.
NAD: Do you think Bush did it, or do you just think we don't have the answers?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
Already answered.
NAD: Do you think we are getting closer to closure on this, or is it all just drifting away from us, like a red beach ball off the Newport coast?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
I don’t know, but I believe that, once the Bush-Cheney administration is out of office, so that people will be less fearful of retaliation and all the government agencies are under new heads, there will at least be a chance.
As Commerce Secretary, for example, Bill Richardson may be open to the evidence that NIST wrote its WTC reports as a political, not a scientific, agency (which is the book I’m currently working on).
A hopeful sign is the emergence of various new organizations with petitions for members to sign: Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, and Scientists and Mathematicians for 9/11 Truth.
NAD: What else should I have asked?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN:
What’s the title of your present book in progress?
"The Mysterious Collapse of WTC 7: Why NIST’s Final 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False."
What is the title of your most recent article?
“Is Osama bin Laden Dead? If so, How Does He Keep Sending Messages? And Why Do We Hunt Him?”
NAD: Thank you.
You’e welcome. David
