Global Warming as modern pantheism
I’ve noticed a lot of the attacks against Sarah Palin focus on her Christianity and religious zeal. While I don’t consider her the fanatic that the left-wingers in the media and comments section of my last post make her out to be, she is far less dangerous or threatening than today’s Global Warming zealots who threaten to impose socialistic, enslaving policies on mankind.
The Progressive Movement that is marching across our Nation at this time is driven by Marxist and socialist ideology mixed in with the religion of Global Warming. GW is leveraged by the progressives to reach their goal. These “progressive” and “forward” thinkers like to whip on Christians and other religious Americans claiming that they are not as intellectually sound or enlightened. The progressives employ softer words than Karl Marx to bash religion as “the opiate of the masses” but generally share that view. This is sweet irony, for no religious fad I have ever seen or heard of has caught on like Global Warming. Not even Oprah’s religion is getting that kind of hysterical following.
Indeed Global Warming is a natural pantheistic movement that has as much hold on its followers as any Christian Church I know. Perhaps even more-so. Just for fun, let’s look at a few of the parallels between Christianity and GW:
Noah and the Flood- Most Christians believe that because of the wickedness of the people, their lack of obedience to the will of God, Noah was given advanced awareness of impending doom. He was warned by God that there would be a flood that would swallow the Earth was wash it clean of the wickedness. Similarly, Global Warming followers preach, much like Noah did, that if we fail to live the way the Earth (or the nebulous god “nature”) desires, we will see a dramatic rise of the Oceans. Coastal areas will be flooded and destroyed.
Natural Disaster befalling the wicked- many Christians (I happen to not ascribe to this concept) believe that natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes come along and show God’s dissatisfaction with the way some are living. There were some who said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for the sinful lifestyle many in New Orleans live. Yet on the other hand, Global Warming followers believe that the more out of step we are with their god, the more we will see devastation and suffering via disasters.
Tithing and aid to the poor- Christians believe in paying a portion of their wealth or income to the Church to fund the operations of the organization and preaching of the gospel of Christ. This takes a lot of forms among the various Churches and denominations, but what is the difference between this and donating money to Global Warming education and “green initiatives?” Moreover, many Christians believe their religion is a vehicle they can use to aid the poor throughout the world. That by giving and sacrifice, we can make life better for ourselves, our neighbors, and people throughout the world. The same belief is held by the G-dubs. If we sacrifice air conditioning, cars, and other luxuries, we improve the planet and the lives of the world’s inhabitants.
Indulgences- Some Christians in history, even some today, believe that they can buy forgiveness. They can indulge in sin and pay some money to get a pass from God. This was at one time a very popular concept among Catholics. The G-dub version of indulgences? Carbon credits. Burn up all the gas you want, all the electricity you can suck up and pay a little in carbon credits to ease the conscience.
Literature that can not be supported by fact- Most Christians have Bibles, magazines, movies, and other literature they use to spread their teachings and ministry. They can’t specifically prove with irrefutable facts and evidence to their claims, but they propagate it all the same. They accept the premises on faith- a belief in things hoped for, but not seen. “An Inconvenient Truth” is a prime example of this same faith-promoting, yet unsupported material for the GW movement.
Burden of proof requires faith- Significant portions of Christianity can be proven with historical documents, writings, records, and some physical proof. Of course, much of the ‘proof’ still requires a great amount of acceptance. Same for the GW movement. While there are a lot of scientists demonstrating greenhouse gas effect and gathering data, their conclusion that temperature increases are caused by man are no more proven than that the combined prayer and fasting of a congregation allowed a sick person to recover. In both cases, cause and effect could be coincidental and you can’t go back and test the opposite- we can’t turn back time and prove without doubt that had we never discovered and used fossil fuels and had the congregation never prayed we would have the exact opposite result.
Bottomline, the point I am making is this: if you Progressives and Global Warming fanatics somehow think you are more enlightened, more intelligent, and more independent-minded than religous fanatics of any given denomination, I’m sorry to say, you’re just as bad off. That’s the irony- you’re the same as the rest of us…figuring out your way in the world and enjoying what gives your life meaning. The same can be said for die-hard atheists. You think that without God and religion in your life guiding your behavior, thoughts, and goals you’re somehow better than the rest of us, you’re not either.
September 9, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Applause, accolades, kudos! You didn’t just knock this one over the fence. You hit it out of the stadium.
Would you mind if I linked to this post in my next blog entry? I think you’ve explained the Religion of Global Warming better than anyone else has to this point.
Well done, my friend.
September 10, 2008 at 8:34 am
You appear to be writing from a point of view that is ill-founded on two counts. Firstly, that acceptance of climate change as a reality somehow requires ‘belief,’ which is not the case, and secondly that acceptance of climate change is somehow neccessarily incompatible with Christianity. This latter especially is so absurd as to defy analysis, more obviously in this case than in the case of evolution, against which similar arguments are made.
The fact is that global warming is happening, and the current model shows that it’s being driven by human activity. This latter is an especially important nuance that is typically lost by denial arguments; it does not mean that “the current model is the truth” in an absolute way, it means that it’s the best model we currently have, accepted in broad form by the overwhelming majority of people who are qualified to judge the merits of the arguments for and against. This is not “proof” – nothing in science is ever “proven” in the usual sense of that word.
It’s also important to understand that the arguments against man-caused climate change are chiefly political rather than scientific, and that certain leaders of the American Christian Right have somehow latched onto this political element (because it is the position of their political allies) and made it a tenet of faith. ‘Global warming’ as it’s invariably called by those seeking to frame the argument to their advantage, does not require belief, only judgement of the facts, and those are very clear. Arguments against it can and have been advanced by various parties invariably connected to those with a political or economic stake in maintaining the status quo of dependence on fossil fuels, but oddly enough, the number of published and peer-reviewed scientific papers denying climate change is very, very small.
This is not because the scientific community is resistant to change in some fundamental way; indeed, science as a process thrives on out-of-the-box thinking and proving that the current thinking is in fact not correct is the best way to make yourself a Big Name in science – as Einstein did when he demonstrated that Newton’s model was not the most accurate model of motion. There is no resistance in the scientific community to ideas competing with the conventional wisdom, only resistance to shaky studies, questionable evidence and experiments with clear holes in them.
A lot of this applies to evolution vs. anti-evolution arguments, and for that matter, abortion; the two sides are largely talking past each other and trying to defeat the other side with rhetorical tricks; trying hard to win the argument, frequently by trying to undermine their opponents as you’re trying to do here, rather than have a rational debate.
Man, I really ought to start a political blog.
September 10, 2008 at 8:42 am
Vulture- thank you and yes, you are more than welcome to use this. Thanks for your support.
September 10, 2008 at 8:52 am
Andwulf, I am sorry if you thought I was saying that Christianity and Global Warming are incompatible. That would be like saying creationism and evolution are incompatible, which is opposite of my point.
I am simply demonstrating that Global Warming is a religious movement by drawing parallels to a movement already established as religious.
I am so sick of hearing so-called scientists support the rhetoric that the “debate is over” and that the “facts are in.” You said, “There is no resistance in the scientific community to ideas competing with the conventional wisdom, only resistance to shaky studies, questionable evidence and experiments with clear holes in them.” The latter part of this describes global warming studies spot-on.
I’m not going to convince you that Global Warming isn’t man-made or that it isn’t happening. I don’t believe the facts are in evidence to prove it. Likewise, you or anyone else will never convince me that there is no God or that He does not govern in the affairs of men. I can’t provide the proof you would need for me to convince you of that any more than you can provide me proof that global warming is what you purport. Hence, the point of my post.
September 10, 2008 at 9:58 am
“Andwulf, I am sorry if you thought I was saying that Christianity and Global Warming are incompatible. That would be like saying creationism and evolution are incompatible, which is opposite of my point.”
I’m aware of the larger point of your post, but you (and others making the case that accepting the fact of climate change is somehow anti-Christian,) use rhetoric which clearly implies that it is. One example is your comment:
“Likewise, you or anyone else will never convince me that there is no God or that He does not govern in the affairs of men.”
If you’re not saying that climate change is incompatible with Christianity, how is it you assume that I am not myself a Christian? How do you assume that the majority of people who acknowledge global warming aren’t Christians? How do you assume that responsible stewardship of the environment is somehow un-Christian? It may be that you don’t believe that to be the case, but it’s what you’re actually saying.
You invoke the persecution argument in saying that people who believe in GW “whip on Christians,” ignoring the fact that most Americans who acknowledge climate change are themselves Christian. They’re not berating Christians or Christianity, they’re berating a fringe obviously disconnected from reality, and demagogues who claim GW isn’t happening because their political allies want them to say that.
Responsible stewardship of the environment is something that I happen to think there is a clear biblical mandate for (and many Christian Groups, the National Council of Churches included, agrres,) in addition to it being just good common sense.
You’re as entitled to your opinion as anybody else, but that doesn’t make what you say true – evidence for manmade climate change is very clear. To be frank about it, much of the “evidence” to the contrary comes out of energy industry thinktanks and political groups (not neccessarily Republican groups, either,) who are in the pocket of an energy industry which has a financial interest in making people think that burning dirty fossil fuels does not have an adverse effect on the environment. Not to mention people like oil industry puppet Senator James Inhofe, who is so ignorant on the subject that one is tempted to claim that if he denies that Global Warming is happening, then it must be true.
An impartial, rational review of the facts will reveal that climate change is happening and that human activity has a substantial impact on it. Politically-motivated anti-GW efforts to cloud the issue by producing scientists who disagree with the consensus include claiming that papers that support the GW hypothesis are flawed despite their being published and peer-reviewed and despite the lack of credible, published, peer-reviewed studies which demonstrate that it’s not happening.
Let me put it this way: I “believe” that the Earth is round because it’s a fact, not out of supernatural guidance or revelation. That’s not an article of faith, and not a religion.
September 10, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Ardwulf…take a breath. Then do a little research. Researchers falsify evidence when it doesn’t allow them to reach the right conclusions. The loudest “prophets” of GW are availability entrepreneurs looking to make a buck. 28,000 scientists are on record as opposing the “consensus”, versus 3,200 on records as supporting it. Then there’s the infamous “hockey stick”, a computer simulation that reaches the same conclusion whether you enter weather data or the menu from Wendy’s. It’s a fraud. It’s a mechanism for facilitating globalism, nothing more.
With real temperatures DROPPING, not rising, and the Farmer’s Almanac calling for decreasing temperatures for the next 2 to 3 decades (I’d put THEIR record against “science”’s record any day!), I’d say your “faith” is a bum steer.
September 11, 2008 at 11:20 am
Hey, one thing I have never claimed not to be is windy.
I can’t help but notice that you’re doing your ‘research’ at a climate change denial blog, which in turn has gotten its data (in both of the articles you linked,) from WorldNetDaily, a right-wing propaganda outfit with very shady financing, ties to white supremacist organizations and which has promoted, among other things, belief in the silly North American Union conspiracy theory.
If this is one’s definition of ‘research’… well, then I can understand how one might be unable to distinguish facts from lies. Even Wikipedia is a better resource .
Here’s a good resource discussing the myths circulated by climate change deniers. Here is an article outlining how the pro/anti climate change breaks down among published, peer-reviewed scienfic papers. If you’re going to claim that these are all lies and propaganda, but the screeching blowhard you linked to is telling the truth… well, that seems like a rather delusional conclusion to me.
These are not attempts to cloud the issue by calling those who fail to acknowledge climate change religious fanatics or troglodytes (although there are indeed idiots on the internet who do just that) – these are the facts. You will find ’studies’ and ‘evidence’ on the climate change denial side, of course, but they are at best not credible enough to actually get published, and much of it is outright phony. Most often, though, you find the same kind of stuff you’ve linked to: juvenile rhetoric which tries to label the facts as ‘elitist’ or ‘liberal’, or uses straw men like Sting to deny the facts: “Sting has a huge carbon footprint and is a hypocrite! Therefore, Global Warming is a fraud!” is an argument that’s not just faulty, it’s absurd.
September 14, 2008 at 6:45 pm
To quote from one of the one-sided screeds you pointed me to: “The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known.”
The fact is: THEY DON’T KNOW!. But they’re willing to wreck our lives “just in case”.
More here.
November 10, 2008 at 6:54 pm
where the hell do i find group cater for its followers.
wher eyou guys originate from, how does you religion differ from other.
why arent you answering these questions on your websight
November 10, 2008 at 6:54 pm
this wesbight it s**t
Keep it clean…
November 10, 2008 at 6:54 pm
global warming is a hoax
November 10, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Dudek,
I am not really promoting a particular religion on this site. I am also not trying to say that global warming is not a hoax. I guess your reading comprehension is as pathetic as your grammar and spelling.
For future posts, please understand that this is not a “websight,” rather it is a “web site” or “website” depending on which style guide you reference.
It really just seems your visit today was little more than a waste of bandwidth.