Posted on 06/18/2002 2:52:56 AM PDT by Bad~Rodeo
Decry plan to use symbol as part of 9-11 memorial
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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.
It is not the use of taxpayer money that is objectionable. Rather it is the use of taxpayer money that allows the athiests to use the courts to try to influence what is done. For this reason, I think that there should be not one thin dime of taxpayer money spent on the memorial. It can and should be financed strictly through private donations. Any taxpayer funded memorial will be an amalgam of such PC offend-nobody blather that it will be offensive to anybody with half a brain. The government corrupts everything it touches, and it should have no role here.
The cross should definitely be part of the memorial. I see it's function as being the same as the British ceremony of The Trooping of the Colors. In The Trooping of the Colors, the soldiers are lined up and the regimental flag is carried by a rider around the formations so that each and every soldier can get a good look at it. It is all done with great pomp and pagentry, but it serves a very real purpose, which is to make sure that each soldier can recognize the colors instantly in the heat of battle, and know who is friend and who is foe.
The battle is coming for us. We should troop the colors now, so when the conflagration is upon us we know who to fight and who to defend. When it comes down to Crosses and Crescents, I'm getting behind the Cross.
I can very well understand people not believing in God. But these people are simply @$$****s.
The government corrupts everything it touches, and it should have no role here.
Absolutely.
Im still hoping that the Boy Scouts will have the good sense to divest themselves from the government schools, and only meet on private property.
And Im hoping the Civics merit badge will teach kids about the Second Amendment, the Boston Tea Party and ways to disable a tank.
One does not have to worship a personal deity, or any deity at all, to be participating in a religion.
Religions that believe in the spirit of the rocks and trees, or that the earth is our mother, are an example of the former. Buddhism is an example of the latter.
You can dispute whether atheism is a religion or merely a world view. In my opinion, for some "atheists" it's a world view. For others, it's a religion.
For the particular people demanding the cross at ground zero be removed, it's their religion.
Whoops, sorry! Wrong arguement. THATS what they always tell us.
My bad.
You're free to display and do whatever you want on private property.
So, you're free to express your opinion on private property only? You're free to peaceably assemble on private property only? You're free to petition the government about grievances on private property only? You're free to associate with whomever you chose on private property only? Interesting logic you have.
How is Congress passing a law establishing a religion by there being a cross on the WTC site?
Because they're planning on using the tax dollars of jews, mulsims, atheists, flat-earthers and democrats to build it.
Show me the law Congress passed making Christianity the state religion.
Shortly after the attack an OBL video spoke of the world being divided into the "camp of Islam" and the "camp of the cross lead by President Bush".
If they don't like the cross as a religious symbol, we can always cite that speech and tell them it's an act of defiance against the attackers.
The troparion of the Holy Cross seemed to have the ring that it must have had in the days when Constantinople was under threat when we sang it three days after the attacks:
O God save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance, granting to Thy people victory over all their enemies, and by the power of Thy Cross protect Thy community.
(The democratized version sung in America--the old version asked victory for our believing kings.)
A religion is a system for relating to the transcendent. Atheism qualifies: it relates to the transcendent by being rude to all suggestions of transcendence, ignoring it at every turn and vilifying those to attempt to relate to the transcendent in a more open manner.
So?!!
Instead of a cross, how about a cowboy boot?
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It came in the way of a secular story. There in the Journal News servicing suburbs of New York was a column about photographers who spotted a strange man near the World Trade Center on September 18. They had tried to snap pictures of him playing his trumpet in the wake of the disaster, said the newspaper, but their shutters jammed mysteriously.
One of the witnesses was a well-known photographer who goes by the name of Miklos. As reported by the newspaper, which we linked to last week, "After hearing a report about the trumpeter on WNYC radio, Miklos said, he went to Ground Zero to photograph him. In the eerie quiet of lower Manhattan, he could hear a trumpet as he approached a police barricade. About 150 yards away, Miklos says, the trumpeter stood 'in this abandoned urban canyon, illuminated by shafts of light caused by the smoke and dust.'"
The article went on to say that Miklos raised his telephoto lens, feeling he had "an incredible image" -- the photograph of a lifetime -- but he couldn't depress the shutter and so never got the shot.
Other photographers, one describing "something so special about this guy," reported the same experience. And one man who looked into the matter, Mark Judelson, executive director of the Arts Council in Rockland County, N.Y., wondered publicly if it was an angel -- in particular, the Archangel Gabriel, who is so often pictured with a trumpet.
Could it really have been an angel? And was the trumpet of major significance?
Obviously, we'll never get to the bottom of this story -- not without a photo of the stranger -- but experiences with mysterious people have been circulating for years. Many such accounts mention specifically this: Gabriel's trumpet.
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