The twin towers are a potent iconic symbol employed constantly since that terrible event by many people with different intentions.

Exactly, but I’ll put it more strongly: They represent a powerful mechanism for suspending critical thinking.

When the Bush administration wanted to push their Iraq war, they invoked the symbol of the twin towers, and it worked. Few people paused long enough to think that the link was tenuous at best, nonexistent at worst.

Everyone has used the powerful symbol of 9/11 to push their own agenda. Pat Robertson thought that it was because of lesbians and the ACLU. The FFRF seems to think it’s because of religion in general. Both of these examples show the power of using 9/11 to suspend critical thinking.

Turns out I have a budding young atheist in my family! He has known that I no longer believe (I told him and his brother when I stopped going to church), but we hadn’t really discussed it at length because I didn’t want my husband to think I was “indoctrinating” the kids against Christianity.

Well, I found out I didn’t have to do any indoctrinating! My son’s best friend is a completely deluded fundamentalist and seeing that has turned my kid off completely to Christianity – and religion in general. I can’t help but say I’m very proud of him and the way he used reason to come to his very smart conclusions.

Hmmm …. maybe we’ll have to look into those students scholarships before too long.

Without religion, women could have done great things all along,

There’s a chicken/egg debate there. Did chauvinism come first and then get codified, or vice-versa? Religion certainly has been a real obstacle though. Here and in the ME.

I don’t appreciate the insinuations of racism, either.

I assume you’re referring to the last sentence. I really did mean “we” as in everyone including me. The government tries to instill fear in us of the other so we can vote to go to war with them for “security.” Meanwhile, we bomb and plunder them and call them “dangerous” and “crazy” when they resist, much like we did to native Americans. I can’t help seeing a pattern in the US government’s approach to world affairs.

I regard education as my only defense against a world that attempts to manipulate me with lies and propaganda.

And I’m not prepared to defend a statement that no egregious acts have ever been committed in the name of science…

There’s also the fact that still to this day scientific progress is seen as an affront to Islam in most of the middle-eastern Muslim countries.

Other than possibly anti-darwinism which is prevalent in the USA too, there is an effort being made by most countries in the middle east to develop home grown science.

Wars and sanctions haven’t even served to hinder Iran in doing significant work in nanotechnology and biotechnology and many other areas. In fact, Iranians and their leaders regard science as their natural heritage and take pride in it.
Consider the relative freedom that Iranian scientists have to work with embryonic stem cells compared to the US. (I, myself, am ambivalent about the ethics of it). Also, Seventy percent of its science and engineering students are women. Headgear isn’t the only thing to look at.

Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, are pouring billions of their oil wealth into science centers and development projects including technology cities. And these are by far the most religiously conservative Islamic countries.

scidev

Until the last few decades, these nations haven’t been the megawealth centers they are today. So, this is relatively quick development.

Iraq also engaged in science and women were well-educated, too before GW-1. Sanctions against the regime and the THREE gulf wars, with the last being the most devastating of course, have destroyed Iraq and pushed science and women to the background.

Is it all roses? Of course not, is it all good anywhere? Not everything is black and white about a society. We should educate ourselves about nations and cultures other than believing what our government and B-movies starring Chuck Norris tell us about them.

The Arab nations were the centre of science, education and culture during the European “dark ages”. It wasn’t Islam that killed it, it was Genghis Khan.

There’s also the fact that still to this day scientific progress is seen as an affront to Islam in most of the middle-eastern Muslim countries.

America already hates and fears Muslims (and Arabs). This will just get interpreted along those lines, no matter the obviously broad applicability of the message.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that they took out a full-page ad and that they’re making some dramatic points. I just think the 9/11 context might take away from what we’re saying.

Not a big fan of exploiting the image of the Twin Towers either.