A group of esteemed public intellectuals in America from Gore Vidal to Howard Zinn have risen boldly to challenge the official explanations of the alleged terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The latest prominent critic of the official account that Muslim terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers with fuel-laden passenger airliners is Professor David Ray Griffin, a senior theologian from southern California’s Claremont School of Theology who is traveling around the country attempting to stir up the far left of the Democratic base during the election season about this very important issue.

In his recent book and his public lectures on college campuses, theologian Griffin sounds as if he went back for dual degrees in engineering and investigative reporting as he uncovers the “real” evidence in the case. His conclusion: beyond a shadow of a doubt, the WTC towers collapsed due to controlled demolition at the hands of Bush-related conspirators attempting to expand American imperialism at home and abroad.

I shall not recount the strange case for the conspiracy presented by Griffin and others—there are over 628,000 web sites that do that. But please do understand that the Griffin-like theories have been eviscerated by thoughtful people with no axe to grind. Indeed, even the editors of Popular Mechanics—a magazine I used to buy as a kid to see cool amphibious cars and garage-built airplanes—took a crack at a response and in a few short pages annihilated the case presented by the conspiracy advocates (see www.popularmechanics.com).

Deep curiosity kicks in at this point with the question why would anybody put their reputation at stake by going public with such craziness? I don’t know about all of the conspiracy mongers, but in the case of David Ray Griffin, there is something to learn by attempting an answer. First, he is no ordinary theologian. He is one of the most liberal scholars on the theological spectrum. He has spent his career developing a postmodern picture of God in which he “redefines the divine.” It seems to me that a finite fellow with enough hubris to think he has the cosmic standing to reinvent an almighty, eternal being according to his own predilections will find it rather unchallenging to reinvent something like the 9/11 attacks. Second, and probably more important, is hatred. Those of us who do not understand the conspiracy mindset are severely underestimating the depth of odium and revulsion that the left feels toward George W. Bush. It is a hatred that warps reason, distorts any contact with reality, and commits an individual to live in their soul’s darkest and most irrational regions.

Even J.R.R. Tolkien’s pathetic character Gollum seems dressed and in his right mind compared to Griffin ranting about Bush’s murderous exploits. Like other very liberal Christian theologians, Griffin doesn’t find the Bible particularly useful in his work. If he valued it more, he might have paid attention to the words of the prophet Zechariah, “Let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate, declares the Lord.”