David Ray Griffin

Griffin died on November 26, 2022 at the age of 83 following a long bout with prostate cancer.

Following the September 11 attacks, David Ray Griffin shifted his focus from questions of philosophy and religion to ones of politics and history, specifically American expansionism and imperialism. He intended to write a book on the subject, presenting 9/11 in terms of "blowback" for aggressive United States foreign policies of the 20th century:

David Aaronovitch, in the London Times in 2008, wrote: "Griffin believes that no plane hit the Pentagon (despite hundreds of people seeing it) and that the World Trade Centre was brought down by a controlled demolition. There isn't a single point of alleged fact upon which Griffin's barking theory hasn't itself been demolished".

In his next book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (2006), he summarizes some of what he believes is evidence for government complicity and reflects on its implications for Christians. The Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, publishers of the book, described Griffin as being a distinguished theologian and praised the book's religious content, but said, "The board believes the conspiracy theory is spurious and based on questionable research."

In 2006, Griffin, along with Peter Dale Scott, edited 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, a collection of essays including Steven Jones' paper Why Indeed Did The World Trade Center Towers Collapse?. Debunking 9/11 Debunking (2007) disputes at the rhetorical level the debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories in such venues such as Popular Mechanics. In 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (2008), he presents chapters on 25 alleged contradictions involving elements of the "accepted story" of 9/11 and calls for Congress and the press to investigate and resolve them.

Griffin's second book on the subject was a critique of the 9/11 Commission Report, called The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions (2005). Griffin's article "The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-page Lie" summarizes this book, presenting 115 allegations of what Griffin claims are either omissions or distortions of evidence, stating that "the entire Report is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true."

Griffin delivered several lectures and was interviewed by Alex Jones on his radio show featuring 9/11 conspiracy theories. A lecture entitled 9/11 and American Empire: How should religious people respond?, delivered on April 18, 2005, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was aired by C-SPAN. At the end of one of his lectures entitled 9/11: The Myth and the Reality Griffin was asked why a theologian would take such an interest in 9/11, to which he replied: "If 9/11 is not a religious issue, then I don't know what is."

After reading the work of Paul Thompson and Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, he became convinced that there was a prima facie case for the contention that there must have been complicity from individuals within the United States government. He has called for an extensive investigation from the United States media, Congress and the 9/11 Commission. It was then that he set about writing his first book on the topic, which he entitled The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004). The book has been described by Peter Barber of the Financial Times as "a touchstone in the 9/11 Truth movement". Griffin is a founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

In his 1998 book, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem, Griffin addresses what he says "has arguably been the central problem in modern philosophy since its inception in the seventeenth century," namely, the mind–body problem. According to Joseph Grange, a strength of Unsnarling the World-Knot is that Griffin:

In the Introduction to his 1993 book Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy, as part of his effort to clarify the meaning of "constructive postmodernism" and its position with respect to truth, Griffin articulated a sophisticated understanding of a class of "privileged" common sense beliefs, "partly with Charles Pierce's 'critical common-sensism' in view".

Gary Dorrien note that by the late 1990s, the notion of a privileged class of beliefs, now called "hard-core commonsense" beliefs, had become central to Griffin's philosophy.

While on research leave in 1980–81 at Cambridge University and Berkeley, the contrast between modernity and postmodernity became central to Griffin's work. He has attempted to develop postmodern proposals for overcoming the conflicts between religion and modern science. Griffin came to believe that much of the tension between religion and science was not only the result of reactionary supernaturalism but also the mechanistic worldview associated with the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. In 1983, Griffin established the Center for a Postmodern World in Santa Barbara and became editor of the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Philosophy between 1987 and 2004.

After teaching theology and Eastern religions at the University of Dayton, Griffin came to appreciate the distinctively postmodern aspects of Whitehead's thought. In particular, Griffin found Whitehead's nonsensationist epistemology and panexperientialist ontology immensely helpful in addressing the major problems of modern philosophy, including the problems of mind-body interaction, the interaction between free and determined things, the emergence of experience from nonexperiencing matter, and the emergence of time in the evolutionary process. In 1973, Griffin returned to Claremont to establish, with Cobb, the Center for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology.

Griffin was a full-time academic from 1973 until April 2004 and was a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. He was a longtime resident of Santa Barbara, California.

David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr., he founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973, a research center of Claremont School of Theology that promotes process thought. Griffin published numerous books about the September 11 attacks, claiming that elements of the Bush administration were involved. An advocate of the controlled demolition conspiracy theory, he was a founder member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Griffin was born on August 8, 1939. He was raised in a small town in Oregon, where he was an active participant in his Disciples of Christ church. After deciding to become a minister, Griffin entered Northwest Christian College but became disenchanted with the conservative-fundamentalist theology taught there. While pursuing his master's degree in counseling from the University of Oregon, Griffin attended a lecture series delivered by Paul Tillich at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. At that time, Griffin decided to focus on philosophical theology. He eventually attended the Claremont Graduate University, from which Griffin received his PhD in 1970.