The cross wasnt *in* the rubble. The cross IS the rubble. The building was made of steel crossbeams. Its not a miracle that workers found a steel crossbeam in the ruins of a building *made of steel crossbeams.* Its like if you take a deck of cards and you dump it on the ground, and the ace of spades, your favorite card, happens to land face-up. Look! you say. The ace of spades, and its just sitting here in the middle of the floor! What are the chances?! Of course its sitting in the middle of the floor. You just dumped it there. A deck of cards is made up of individual cards and youre going to find individual cards everywhere you look if you dump them out on the ground like that. That your favorite card landed face-up is not miraculous. If you believe that, you seriously need some remedial statistics. Heres a free, college-freshman level intro statistics course from MIT OpenCourseWare that will run you through intro-level probability, Bayes Theorem, etc: ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-environmental-engineering/1-010-uncertainty-in-engineering-fall-2008/ The only reason anyone is calling this thing a cross instead of a crossbeam is that it was standing on one end, just the way the physics of it blindly ended up working out when it landed. There is *no* significance to this at all. The only reason it has any meaning is that someone who happened to be Christian and had no understanding of statistics (and was probably exhausted, hungry/thirsty, and traumatized) thought it looked like a Christian cross. It was modified from there to better fit the platonic ideal of a Latin cross, and then it was blessed by a priest using holy water. Christian services were held around it, and Jesus was carved into it. There is absolutely no way anyone should be able to argue that this is not a religious symbol with a straight face. It wasnt when it fell but by doing everything I said in the paragraph, they intentionally made it one. They even called it the Miracle Cross. And you dare to say this is a historical artifact and not religious? Give me a break. You made it religious. You didnt have to do that. If you just want a historical artifact of a steel crossbeam in the museum then you shouldnt care which one it is. The reason you want this one specifically is that its NOT just a steel crossbeam anymore. You have made it into a religious symbol. This is not about offense. Im not offended by the cross. I have a thick skin. Do you really think I would get offended by something like that? I get told Im going to hell multiple times a day. Come on. What offends me is that my rights are being ignored; that my countrymen are bullying me for daring to demand to be treated equally, that my own government is refusing to give me a place at the table because I am an atheist. If I were Jewish, I would already have a place at this table. If I were Hindu, I would already have a place at this table. Because I am an atheist, I am being excluded. That is discrimination; this is an example of the government demonstrating preferential treatment to religion over non-religion—and THAT is a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Its that simple. Equality means you dont discriminate. It means you treat everything the same. It means that if you give some right to one person or one group, you give the same right to everyone else who wants it. I will not be made to feel like a second-class citizen in my own country. I have just as much of a right to have my worldview represented in this museum to honor the people who died that share it as Jews or Hindus or Christians. And I *want* my worldview represented. What is so difficult about this? I am truly at a loss about why we have to fight about it at all. The Jews didnt have to fight for inclusion. The Hindus didnt have to fight for inclusion. Youre forcing us to spend our donors dollars and take a huge negative publicity hit, looking like insensitive jerks for suing over something as emotionally charged as 9/11, when we have a right to equality in the first place. Its easy to make the mistake of saying that were suing because, as atheists, we are offended by the presence of the cross, and extrapolate from that, that we want it removed from the museum. Thats whats being reported. But thats a very simplified version of whats going on, and without the details, it does sound bad from a PR perspective. Were offended that the cross is in the museum honoring the Christians who died *and theres nothing there to honor the atheists who died.* Its the second half of that sentence that makes all the difference. We want to be treated equally. If Jews get to put in a Star of David, if Hindus get to put in holy water from India, why cant we put in something? There is no reason other than discrimination. Equality is all or none. I dont personally care if the cross stays in the museum under the condition that atheists get to put something in that represents those who share our worldview who died there, too. There was no shortage. Its very likely that about 1 in 6 people who died was nonreligious. Not that these numbers are what matters but thats far more than the number of Hindus or Jews who died. Why are we being shoved aside like this? I wont stand for that and neither should you, regardless of whether you believe in gods or not. Discrimination is wrong no matter what its form. We dont allow discrimination in this country. Its one of the foundational values we hold as a people: that we all have certain unalienable rights, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law, that we have the right to be free, to be alive, and to go after what makes us happy. Simple stuff, guys.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 10:21:12 +0000
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