After contemplating Andy Sabai's letter in defense of Barrett, it struck me that argument by believers in 9/11 conspiracies are almost exactly the same as that which comes from supporters of Intelligent Design.
Those who accept Barrett's argument about 9/11 are driven by faith that the Bush administration is an evil regime, aspiring to dominate the world through violence and deception. Thus, you can accept the idea that the government would do something like 9/11. What use is there for real evidence?
IDers do the same thing. If you start with an unshakeable belief that evolution is a secular demon, it doesn't matter that there is 150 years of good scientific evidence supporting the theory.
It was Sabai's comment on Galileo that made this connection for me. I read an article a few months ago about how a few IDers saw Galileo as a hero for challenging the established doctrine. Their attack on evolution seemed to them to be like Galileo's challenge to the church. Sabai, of course, makes exactly the same argument.
Thus, we have the left and the right agreeing in their distrust of reality, for completely different reasons. . . As someone once argued, the political spectrum looks more like a circle than a line!
Perhaps the link between 9/11 conspiracists and holocaust deniers, suggested by a few comenters, is more real than we would like to think. . .
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I think you are completely missing the point of Andy's statement, which was not a defense of Kevin Barrett or his views, but an explanation of the motivation for the campus greens having him come speak at one of their events. I don't think he was comparing Barrett to Galileo, I think the point he was trying to make was that let's have the guy come share his view, which I don't think many students are all that familiar with, and let everyone make up their own minds instead of having the state legislature try to dictate what can and can not be discussed in our universities.
At least that's the way I read it.
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