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> What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at somewhere that is such a treasured location as this?

https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v2i7-508...

1,300/year in the US, 25% of which are arson. Clearly it's not a unique occurrence.

Are you saying “clearly not a unique occurrence” in regard to accidental, or arson?

I’m surprised at the 25% arson rate, that is considerably higher than I would have guessed, and when combined with the strange response as OP was pointing out, and the fact that there’s not a large subset of “No cause determined,” it would seem to tip the scale pretty strongly to arson being the most probable cause in this case.

A lot of people are angry at churches. Mostly with good reason. So they tend to get the torch a lot more than your average business.

Hating God, is hating the world, is hating yourself. No good reason for that.

If another earthly mortal connected to a church has done something you take issue with, take it up with that person, don’t damage or destroy a community’s property, heritage, and connection to the transcendent.

people here srsly advocating/justifying criminal, potentially homicidal activity, smh

1. How is "hating god" hating the world and yourself (lol), and 2. who tf is advocating for criminal activity here? You clearly have an axe to grind, so perhaps take it somewhere else.

>axe to grind Surprised you would have that interpretation, didn’t mean that at all. Your tone here, and in other comments seems rather more hostile than mine.

>who tf Unauthorized setting of fire to a structure is illegal, if someone is in or around the structure, it could kill the person.

“”” _People angry at churches _with good reason _get the torch “””

That reads at the very least as justifying, if not advocating. It’s certainly not saying we should strive to handle our issues in healthy and productive ways.

>1. How is

The concept of God at the baseline level is equivalent and synonymous with existence. People over time in various cultures and traditions have agglomerated various flavours onto the concept of God , but at the baseline level, God = existence.

The essence of what God is, is that the concept comes from the desire or impulse to understand or make sense of “the world” / existence.

You are a part of existence. And maybe not just “a part,” as you’ll see if you try to find the demarcation points that definitively separate you from the other parts.

You are the way in which awareness is aware of awareness. “You” are the existence that gives rise to the feeling and observation of existence.

God = existence If you hate God, you hate existence. If you hate existence, you hate yourself.

Better to love than hate, or perhaps even better to understand dichotomies.

>Mostly with good reason.

Interesting, name three.

Anybody with 2 brain cells to connect the dots know who and why they did it.

The reason the media and government were imposing the accident narrative while the cathedral was still burning is because this could have triggered the civil war.

This is also why the report on Bataclan massacre was not released to the general public, or why MLP was prosecuted for advocating terrorism (ffs) when she published pictures of terrorism acts condemning them on Twitter. The sheeps must sleep.

The censorship is also strong here: if I recall correctly I got a HN account banned here by the censor-in-chief for voicing my opinion on the matter at the time (which as a French I think is more informed than the random poster here).

> if it could be shown to be a clear cut case of being accidental why wouldn’t people in a position to do so, show that?

How would that even look like? The conclusion that it is most likely an accidental fire was not reached by finding something in particular, but by not finding evidence indicating a criminal motive.

> It raises some questions doesn’t it?

You are are certainly raising a lot of questions. If you think something why don't you spell it out?

> Why aren’t they safe guarding and defending the nation’s culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and vulnerable to attack?

Why are you talking about an attack? Who attacked the church in your opinion and how?

What in particular would you like to be done by whom?

The rate of construction accidents is what you should look at, not church fires.

Ok but the fact of there being some construction going on is somewhat ancillary to the whole point being made of the various factors observed and at play here that come together and raise some questions. I could have easily left the “what is the rate” part out, and the points made would have been just as strong or stronger.

And yes there was some sort of maintenance/construction going on, and if that played a role in the fire one would think at some point in the intervening years between then and now someone would have shown how it played a role.

They did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_fire#Investigation

Workers were smoking in a space where it was explicitly not permitted, and renovation work meant there was electrical supply where "normally, no electrical is allowed in the roof space because of the extreme fire risk".

Pinpointing the exact source of ignition is a bit challenging given the fire and collapse, I suspect, but without any evidence pointing towards arson it seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion.

Were they smoking there in the moments immediately preceding the fire, and a dropped cigarette and maybe some sawdust or something somehow ignited a 35cm or whatever wide beam? And the smokers didn’t notice? But I think the answer is there weren’t any construction workers around in the time before the fire to be smoking anyway.

“Maybe it was an electrical thing or something” is far from conclusive evidence, and as OP was saying, completely incredible as a response to an event of this magnitude that attracted worldwide attention.

>pinpointing

I’m always surprised when I hear what fire forensics can figure out given the state of the evidence being worked with.

>any evidence pointing toward arson

The whole point of my original post was that all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson.

>and a dropped cigarette and maybe some sawdust or something somehow ignited a 35cm or whatever wide beam? And the smokers didn’t notice?

You clearly don't know how fire works and just how quickly it spreads. You also vastly underestimate how flammable the roof material was.

>all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson

Pray tell them, instead of slinging vague provocations. Better yet, if you have such clear evidence, I'm sure you're gonna go to the police or the papers with it, right?

> The whole point of my original post was that all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson.

What evidence are you talking about?

The evidence that he is Catholic and there is a war on the West and therefore some foreign migrant construction worker did it on purpose as an attack on christian cultural heritage.

Duh.

I don’t think it is cool to put words into other people’s mouth. I’m sure canoebuilder can speak for themselves.

I'm reminded how literally within an hour of the fire breaking out, the news was telling us all _very clearly_ that it was an accident - a fact that they clearly could not possibly have known at that time given the flames were still rising and no investigation could possibly have been done.

Can you point to a source that shows that news was reporting that it was an accident within hours, and not stating that there is no appearance of foul play/terrorism.

"This doesn't appear to be a terrorist attack" is a normal thing to say in a city and country where terrorist attacks are somewhat common.

Not every lazy reporting is hiding a large conspiracy. Sometimes it is just the lazy picking of the most likely cause to get cotent out.

So, your line thinking goes:

It can have been an accident, or not. If not, well there were a lot of arsons happening at the same , maybe, so it most likely was arson. Not calling it arson is clearly political. And that means it was arson, because people in power and the establishment cannot be trustesd. It also means the arson was caused by politians, and those people in power not protecting us. Because they fail to do their job

You are aware that the moment the fire actually was an accident, the other 90% of your comment are pretty close to a conspiracy theory?

Asking for an investigation that wasn't done isn't a conspiracy theory. Pointing out that the investigation should have been done, since arson in churches is very common, isn't a conspiracy theory.

The fire was investigated, the fire protection system, an unorganized mess build over decades, was analyzed. I have no idea what people are talking about when they claim it was arson, it was not.