The belief that government conspiracy was behind the 911 attacks may seem a mania among otherwise intelligent people, but it also rejects material reality. In this, it bears resemblance to another reaction to the physical world. Religious fundamentalism, supposedly Islamic but posing a far greater menace from nuclear armed Judeo-Christians, questions reality with as much passion, and as little need for verifiable evidence, as does the conspiracy faith.
Religious fundamentalism doesn't pretend to be scientific, often denying material evidence to prove anything. In many ways it parallels a 911 movement which is based on acceptance of events as fabulist and supernatural as any believer in divinity can imagine.

If faith can move mountains, it can also apparently destroy buildings with pre-wired explosives, secretly placed while thousands of people went about their business and saw nothing unusual. Faith also claims that millions more were duped into believing they saw planes crash into buildings, rather than buildings destroyed by these planted explosives or missiles. Whether about the parting of the Red Sea , a savior born to a virgin, or a conspiracy beyond all conspiracies, faith can withstand any need for proof. Faith is proof of faith.

Legitimate doubts about what our government does and what it tells us have created contemporary biblical prophets who reveal almost divinely inspired knowledge about architectural principles, secreted explosives, the behavior of steel under stress, and construction and demolition principles which defy physics, as well as sanity. And this while the world seems to be falling apart , under the control of identifiable political and economic forces which are often despised, but hardly understood by zealous seekers of physical conspiracy, or blissful anticipators of metaphysical rapture .

The view of a corrupt authority which murders indiscriminately to achieve its ends, is shared by people both fervently religious and devoutly secular, even as they consider each other ignorant and immoral. But believers in fabulist myth, and believers in scientific analysis which often amounts to fabulist myth, have more in common than they might willingly admit.

The frustrations that find inner peace through belief in an invisible universal force, or material powers that need only be identified as bad people who do bad things, are based on very real injustice and inhumanity. A dangerous material world under the control of unearthly forces, for some, or simply hidden behind earthly conspiracies, for others, warrants criticism and opposition. In fact, such opposition may be healthy in that it exists at all, in any form. That is, until skepticism and suspicion drives critics to flail at the air and insist that they are striking matter, or to pray for divine intervention while doing nothing to change the realm of the physical, instead seeking contentment in the realm of the metaphysical.

Neither are Eastern contempt for Western secularism and Western displeasure with reality so far apart. While the physical suffering endured by the East is much greater, mental stress in the West is so bad that many attempt escape from reality to find peace of mind, if not body. In a consumer crazed world that worships the material, seeking spiritual peace may be the expression of a healthy desire to get off the highway on which humanity seems to be speeding to disaster.

That spiritual movements often have reactionary and intolerant aspects is a mark of their development in reactionary and intolerant societies. Western dualism creates secular and religious movements as conjoined twins. Their struggle should not be with each other, but with the system which makes them two sides of the same coin .

When the religious structure is the only one offering shelter from the storm, it will be crowded with people finding explanations for reality which strike secularists as illogical, unless they seriously consider the intellectual foundation for what they often believe. It is easy for some materialists to dismiss the mythological explanation for the creation of the universe, but when science offers the big bang theory - there was nothing, and then it exploded-both groups need to accept their mutual ignorance of cosmic origins beyond their capacity to fathom, and concentrate on far more threatening earthly problems whose solutions might well be within their grasp.

The Islamic fundamentalists depicted as a menace, to the West, may be confronting material reality more clearly than it is understood, by the West. Fundamentalist Christians and Jews are obsessed with the Antichrist and the Anti-Semite, unable to see themselves as the Great Satan, which they clearly appear to be for the eastern world. The 911 believers in Bush as a more local antichrist need to broaden their analysis and move from evil personalities with fiendish plots to failing systems with deadly outcomes.

The general perception of an ugly and cruel reality is shared by people of widely divergent belief systems. The reasons they find for things breaking down are as diverse as their cultural shaping allows, but all share a vision which is generally correct: There needs to be substantial change in reality, or the future may be totally tragic, for all.

When people begin to seek material solutions at the roots of material problems, spiritual and mental peace may be attainable, and the search for conspiracies less necessary. This calls for much greater understanding and respect among those divergent cultures and belief systems, which can hardly happen under present conditions. The bloody domination and control of reality by those adhering to doctrines of racial supremacy who think themselves more divine than other humans make it necessary for critics of reality to find common ground, before humanity finds a common grave. Faith that can move mountains needs to start moving people, toward mutual respect, democracy and peace.