The Buddha placed tremendous emphasis on seeing things as they really are. The first component of the Buddha's Eightfold Path (八正道) is Right View (正見). When I read or hear about 9/11 conspiracy theories, I am simply amazed at the convoluted theories that people will come up with to explain things for which there are much simpler and better explanations.
I saw a comic strip from Filibuster Cartoons recently that perfectly captures the absurdity that results from this kind of convoluted thinking:
I think that one of the main reasons that these conspiracy theories are so popular is because people feel frustrated and angry over their lack of control over the chaotic events in the world around them. Believing in conspiracy theories gives a person a sense of control. In the view of the believer in a conspiracy, those he perceives to be ignorant of the conspiracy are under the control of the masterminds behind the conspiracy, while he himself is (at least partially) immune from their influence. A worldview based on conspiracy theories is a way to impose a sense of order onto a chaotic world.
From a Buddhist perspective, beliefs which are not supported by evidence, and especially beliefs which are actually contradicted by evidence, are forms of delusion. It is extremely important for the Buddhist practitioner to distinguish right views from wrong ones. I think that many of the believers in 9/11 conspiracy theories have actually been misled by a lifetime of exposure to bad physics in television and movies. For example, much is made of the fact that witnesses reported hearing multiple explosions inside the lower floors of the WTC towers. This is taken as evidence that the towers were brought down by explosives inside the building. But there's a simple explanation for why people heard what appeared to be multiple explosions on the lower floors, namely, sound travels at different speeds through different media, and there are multiple paths from the top floors down to the bottom ones. Also, the typical office building is full of materials that are flammable and which can explode under certain circumstances. All of this is much better explained at the numerous 9/11 conspiracy debunking web sites, some of which I will link below.
The belief that the American government somehow planned the 9/11 attacks reminds me of a saying known as Hanlon's razor:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.And now, the web sites. On the one side, the conspiracy believers:
And on the other, the conspiracy debunkers:
南無阿彌陀佛
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