Atheists Protest Ground Zero Cross

The organization American Atheists is protesting a proposal to use a large steel cross found in the rubble of the World Trade Center in a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Describing itself as a "nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of nonbelievers," the group said in a statement yesterday that use of the cross in a government-funded monument "would violate the separation of church and state, be insensitive to those victims who had no religious beliefs and would incredibly pay homage to religion – the prime motivating factor in the faith-based attack of Sept. 11."

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is the local agency in charge of planning for the rebuilding of the site.

Ed Malloy, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council and a board member of the agency, has asked that the cross be made a permanent part of any future memorial.

According to the New York Daily News, construction workers, firefighters, police officers and family members have held weekly Sunday services at the site of the cross since Sept. 11.

"We're hoping it will stay right where it is and become part of any permanent memorial," Malloy was quoted as saying in the Daily News.

Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists objects to the possibility that the cross might be used in a taxpayer-supported project.

"This is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money," she said in the statement, "You can't take government funds to promote religion, especially sectarian religion in the form of a cross or any other religious symbol."

Johnson added that any memorial to the victims of the attacks "should bring Americans together, not divide them on the basis or religion or anything else."

Ron Barrier, national spokesman for the group, stressed that Muslims, Hindus and other non-Christians were killed in the attacks as well.

What about them? he asked. "Are we going to turn the site of the WTC into a religious shrine with competing religious slogans, symbols and displays? Any monument to the victims, and those who helped in the aftermath of Sept. 11 should be tasteful, as well as a unifying statement about America and humanity.

"Christian symbols are as inappropriate as a Muslim crescent or some other religious label," Barrier said.

Construction worker Frank Silecchia happened upon the perfectly symmetrical cross in the midst of the WTC wreckage just a few days after the attacks. It was standing straight, 20-feet high, surrounded by many smaller crosses.

"When I first saw it, it took my heart," Silecchia said. "It helped me heal the burden of my despair, and gave me closure on the whole catastrophe."

Said WorldNetDaily columnist Ann Coulter in an October column : "The cross at Ground Zero was not simply the cross beams remaining from an existing building. It was formed out of beams from Building One plunging, splitting and crashing into Building Six."

"There's no symmetry to anything down there," an FBI chaplain said at the time, "except those crosses."

Johnson said that her group would go to court if necessary to challenge the use of government money for the placement of any religious symbol at the WTC site.

What about the separation of church and state? If one religion's symbol (ie cross, star of david, etc) is allowed to be an official part of an official govt. site, then doesn't that open up dangerous issues for future endeavors?

The First Amendment guarantees Freedon of Religion not Freedom from Religion.

Below is a photo of "an official U.S. Government site": an American military cemetery of World War II dead. Crosses and Stars of David (purchased by the U.S. Government) adorn their graves. That is Freedon of Religion.

Do you propose that these Crosses and Stars of David be pulled out?

Denying these dead Americans the symbols of their faith would entail Freedom from Religion. That is a totalitarian concept advanced by Nazi Germany in the case of the Jews and by the Communists in the case of all religions. These men died to defeat such totalitarianism.

That premise has two problems: it isn't established as true and the word "necessary" lacks any meaningful context (necessary for what?).

"Oh, come now, modalities like "necessity" and "possibility" have been continuously employed in logical discourse for what -- a thousand years, give or take a century.

Except that "necessity" typically has context. Saying "God is necessary" is a null statement -- it has no meaning because there is nothing to which the necessity relates. I had a feeling that Spinoza wasn't as inarticulate as the argument presented, so I went and looked up the actual syntax of the argument. Of course, being the scatterbrained person I am I had forgotten that proving Spinoza's god is somewhat trivial, as Spinoza essentially defined god as the sum total of everything that exists in the natural universe. To say that such a God necessarily exists makes more sense in that context, because this God must exist in order for anything at all to exist (where everything that does exist is simply an extension of God). Personally I find such a definition of God meaningless except as a nice catch-all term because it certainly implies nothing regarding this God's nature, and in fact does not even imply that this God (as a whole) has any level of sentience or awarness. I won't argue if someone wants to call the sum total of the universe "God", but I'm hardly going to consider that a real deity.

Since the early Scholastics down to Spinoza and, especially, Leibniz, who had a great deal to say about logical modalities. Never mind that modalities of necessity and possibility are standard fare in logic today. All this is merely ephemeral since an atheist has legislated that "necessary" means nothing, regardless of Kripke semantics and all that confusing stuff.

"Necessary" implies essential for a specific result or definition. Saying simply "God is necessary" is meaningless because there is no result or definition specified. I admit, I should have looked up Spinoza's "proof" myself once it was presented because Spinoza's definition does actually have context for "necessary" simply by virtue of his definition for God.

"It's also somewhat meaningless without a definition for the "God" being referenced."

Do you need to know the definition of "Socrates" in order to evaluate the logical validity of [...]

There is a difference between a logically valid argument and a meaningful logically valid argument. "All Xs are Y, Z is X therefore Z is Y" is logically valid but it gives no useful information about the world. Without defining God any arguments as to its existence don't have meaning, no matter how logically valid. In the case of Spinoza, his God is defined but as I said, it's just a nice catch-all term for the sum-total of the natural universe and not exactly a traditional concept of a "God".

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.