The 9/11 Truth Movement is a movement that is much more faith-based. Many of the people behind it are not scientists or investigators, but philosophers and theologians. And while they may raise many valid questions, many of their conclusions are not fact-based but faith-based. That's fine -- it is a free country. All new religious movements like this one have arisen over humanity's efforts to make sense of a world which does not make sense. In that regard, the 9/11 Truth Movement is no different than any other religious movement. And by way of definition, I would define a 9/11 Truther as anyone who does not accept the fact that Bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center or the Pentagon with planes, or who believes that a plane did not hit the Pentagon, or who believes that the government shot down the 4th plane, or who believes that the government demolished WTC-7.
There was a diary written Sunday about how superthermite was found by Stephen Jones and six other 9/11 Truthers and published in a peer-reviewed publication. Now, superthermite is very much different from ordinary thermite that has been used for decades in building construction. Poster P.J. Burke explains in the comments:
First off, no one is talking about yes/no of planes here... at least not vis-a-vis this particular study. The study is neither asking, nor trying to answer, any questions about planes. That's a non-germane distraction.
Ummm... No. Reading the study itself is advised.
There's thermite, thermate, and some new stuff that is known as ultra-high-grain (UFG) sol-gel (sprayable) nano-thermite, called in this diary (and elsewhere) 'super thermite.' It can sprayed onto surfaces, incorporated into other materials, and be detonated remotely and wirelessly. This new sol-gel sprayable stuff was still very much in experimental development as late as 1999, and so was not available at the building of the WTC.
The latter is what the study authors say they've identified. Via chemical and other analyses of a high concentration (0.1%) of the tell-tale residual 'chips' and the correlative nano-debris of iron micro-spheres found in four different samples of dust from around Manhattan (one collected before WTC7 fell, the other three collected afterwards), the study authors claim to have identified residue of a very highly-restricted, highly-classified, military-only incendiary explosive designed exclusively for the purposes of aggressive demolition in warfare.
If that's verified, then someone has some serious explaining to do.
But I still have a hard time believing that somehow, someone was able to sneak into the building in the face of all these firefighters and cops, lace the buildings with enough superthermite in a 30-60 minute window of opportunity with nobody noticing them, and then putting in enough superthermite to blow down the whole building. For that to have worked, the perpetrators would have had to have known in advance that the planes were coming and would have known exactly what buildings to head for in advance. For that to have worked, the 911 Truthers somehow have to establish a conspiracy between Bin Laden and the government. We know, of course, that Bush had extensive business dealings with the Bin Laden family. But associations do not establish or prove conspiracies.
When confronted with two competing theories about what took place, the most likely theory is the naturalistic theory. That is the way that we have solved questions ever since Copernicus. The most naturalistic theory that I can think of involves not conspiracies, but human stupidity -- I suggest that Bin Laden destroyed the WTC with planes and that the reason that Bush did not act even though he had been warned was because due to his family's extensive ties with the Bin Laden family, it never occurred to him that Osama was about to attack the US with planes. Now, in conjunction with that theory, it is totally fair to ask questions about what Bush knew and when he knew it.
Now, there is nothing wrong with forming religions or philosophizing over what happened on 9/11. But when religion encroaches on the domain of science and purports to explain what only science can explain, then that is when it crosses the line and usurps the role of science. That is no different than the creationists using pseudo-science to claim that God created the world in seven literal days and that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. That would be like science trying to explain where God came from -- that would be the same thing because it would be outside the realm of observation and thus no longer be science.
Now, we know that a lot of the evidence obtained by the 9/11 Commission was obtained by torture, and the whole report should therefore be looked on as unreliable. But we also know that thousands of eyewitnesses saw the planes hit the buildings, and we also have the records of the cell phone conversations of the passengers on board the planes. What we don't have is any evidence of any conspiracy between the government and Bin Laden or any evidence of a conspiracy by the government hijacking and crashing planes into the buildings and making it look like Bin Laden was responsible. All we have are the religious conjectures of Stephen Jones and his movement as well as Alex Jones and others. Again -- it's a free country and they can do whatever they want to. But those of us in the reality-based community have to deal with actual facts and evidence, not religious speculation.
The fact of the matter is that God can't be empirically proven or disproven -- the closest we can come is to develop theories that the Universe has always been here and always will be. And even that would not disprove a God somewhere out there. It follows that whether one chooses to believe in God is a matter of what one wants to believe. And that is the case in the 9/11 Truth Movement. A lot of the people who push these theories do so because they want to believe that Bush or Cheney did something this horrible, not because of the actual merits of the evidence. If we are to get to the bottom of this matter, then we must do the latter.