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David Ray Griffin

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David Ray Griffin (b. 1939) is a professor emeritus of philosophy of religion and theology, at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California.

History

Dr. David Ray Griffin is a longtime resident of Santa Barbara, California, a full-time academic from 1973 until April 2004, and is currently a co-director of the Center for Process Studies, and one of the foremost contemporary exponents of process theology, founded on the process philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. He is also a leading exponent of theories that dispute the accepted version of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Griffin grew up in a small town in Oregon, where he was an active participant in his Disciples of Christ church. After deciding to become a minister, Griffin entered Northwest Christian College, but became disenchanted with the conservative-fundamentalist theology that was taught there. While getting his master’s degree in counseling from the University of Oregon, Griffin attended a lecture series delivered by Paul Tillich at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. At this time, Griffin made his decision to focus on philosophical theology. He eventually attended the Claremont Graduate University, where Griffin received his Ph.D. in 1970.

As a student in Claremont, Griffin was initially interested in Eastern religions, particularly Vedanta. However, he started to become a process theologian while attending John B. Cobb’s seminar on Whitehead’s philosophy. According to Griffin, process theology, as presented by Cobb, “provided a way between the old supernaturalism, according to which God miraculously interrupted the normal causal processes now and then, and a view according to which God is something like a cosmic hydraulic jack, exerting the same pressure always and everywhere (which described rather aptly the position to which I had come)" (Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, p. 3). While applying Whitehead’s thought to the traditional theological subjects of christology and theodicy, Griffin found that process theology also provided a sound basis for addressing contemporary social and ecological issues.

After teaching theology and Eastern religions at the University of Dayton, Griffin came to appreciate the distinctively postmodern aspects of Whitehead’s thought. In particular, Griffin found Whitehead’s nonsensationist epistemology and panexperientialist ontology immensely helpful in addressing the major problems of modern philosophy, including the problems of mind-body interaction, the interaction between free and determined things, the emergence of experience from nonexperiencing matter, and the emergence of time in the evolutionary process. In 1973, Griffin returned to Claremont to establish, with Cobb, the Center for Process Studies.

While on research leave in 1980-81 at Cambridge University and Berkeley, the contrast between modernity and postmodernity became central to his work. Many of Griffin’s writings are devoted to developing postmodern proposals for overcoming the conflicts between religion and modern science. Griffin came to believe that much of the tension between religion and science was not only the result of reactionary supernaturalism, but also the mechanistic worldview associated with the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. In 1983, Griffin started the Center for a Postmodern World in Santa Barbara, and became editor of the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Philosophy between 1987 and 2004.

Since his retirement, he has moved his focus from questions of philosophy and religion to one of politics and, specifically, questioning the accepted history of the 9/11 attacks. His recent work includes the book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11 (2004) and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, books in which he argues there is compelling evidence members of the United States government were complicit in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In The New Pearl Harbor, Griffin supports the work of other researchers who assert that elements of the US government were involved in the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City. He purports to use his training in logic to analyze the validity of their arguments. Griffin states the overall thesis of his argument: There should be a well funded and thorough-going investigation of all the questions raised about the 9/11 attack. Griffin also appeared on C-SPAN 2 when he delivered his talk, '9/11 and American Empire: How should religious people respond?'

In an interview with Nick Welsh, Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts: Theologian Charges White House Complicity in 9/11 Attack , Griffin analyzes charges that the US government sent airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and these airplanes were only a cover for explosives that the US government had planted within the World Trade Center towers. Griffin also talked with Alex Jones

The second edition of The New Pearl Harbor contains additional material on the Saudi Arabian hijackers, Sibel Edmonds, his analysis of the official 9/11 Commission set up by the US government, and his belief that the US Government deliberately changed its standard rules for analyzing military intelligence in order to allow the attacks. Historian Howard Zinn, the author of A People's History of the United States, describes The New Pearl Harbor as "the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation on the Bush administration's relationship to that historic and troubling event."

The New Pearl Harbor, after identifying the supposedly unanswered questions concerning the 9/11 attacks, attempts to fit them first, to a conspiracy/complicity theory, and second, to a coincidence/incompetence theory. Then he explores the contradictions inherent in each theory, concluding with the need for a full and independent investigation led by the Fourth Estate.

Critics of Griffin's thesis, such as Chip Berlet, say that many of the claims in the book are refutable. Griffin has rejected these criticisms and debated his critics, . Other reviewers like Mike Williams claim to have found various problems .

In a review published in the Nation magazine, former CIA agent Robert Baer dismissed the gist of Griffin's writings as one in a long line of conspiracy theories about national tragedies, but noted that the Bush administration had created a climate of secrecy and mistrust that helped generate such explanations. ("Dangerous Liaisons," September 27, 2004).

Robert Baer has admitted, though, that evidence point to a possible "inside job" in connection with 9/11: "In an interview by Thom Hartmann, when asked "Are you of the opinion that there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government?", Baer responded "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." ". (Misplaced Pages, "Robert Baer").

Affiliations

He is Affiliated with:

Books

  • Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, with John B. Cobb, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976, ISBN 0-664-24743-1
  • The New Pearl Harbor
  • The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions

See also

External links

Audio/Video links:

Categories: