By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
To those of us who have dared to question on scientific and economic grounds the official story on global warming, it is a continuing surprise that there is so little concern about whether or not that story is objectively true among the many who have swallowed it hook, Party Line and sinker.
For the true-believers, the Party Line is socially convenient, politically expedient, and financially profitable. Above all, it is the Party Line. For those who think as herds or hives, it is safe. It is a grimy security blanket. It is the dismal safety in numbers that is the hallmark of the unreasoning mob.
But is it true? The herd and the hive do not care. Or, rather, they do care. They care very much if anyone dares to ask the question “But is it true?” They are offended, shocked, outraged. They vent their venom and their spleen and their fury on those of us who ask, however politely, “But is it true?”
Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.
The question arises: can science function properly or at all in the absence of true religion and of its insistence upon morality? For science, in searching for the truth, is pursuing what is – or very much ought to be – a profoundly moral quest.
Yet what if a handful of bad scientists wilfully tamper with data, fabricate results, and demand assent to assertions for which there is no real scientific justification? And what if the vast majority of their colleagues cravenly look the other way and do nothing about their bent colleagues? What you get is the global warming scare.
As every theologian knows, the simplest and usually the clearest of all tests for the presence of a moral sense is whether or not the truth is being told. The true-believers in the New Superstition are not telling the truth. On any objective test, they are lying, and are profiteering by lying, and are doing so at your expense and mine, and are bidding fair to bring down the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, flinging us back into the dumb, inspissate cheerlessness of a new Dark Age.
Nothing is done about the many lies, of course, because the many lies are the Party Line, and no one ever went to jail who safely parroted the Party Line.
“The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus! A 97.1% Consensus! Doubters Are As Bad As Holocaust Deniers! Global Temperature Is Rising Dangerously! It Is Warmer Now Than For 1400 Years! Well, 400 Years, Anyway! Tree-Rings Reliably Tell Us So! The Rate Of Global Warming Is Getting Ever Faster! Global Warming Caused Superstorm Sandy! And Typhoon Haiyan! And 1000 Other Disasters! Arctic Sea Ice Will All Be Gone By 2013! OK, By 2015! Or Maybe 2030! Santa Claus Will Have Nowhere To Live! Cuddly Polar Bears Are Facing Extinction! Starving Polar Bears Will Start Eating Penguins! Himalayan Glaciers Will All Melt By 2035! Er, Make That 2350! Millions Of Species Will Become Extinct! Well, Dozens, Anyway! Sea Level Is Rising Dangerously! It Will Rise 3 Feet! No, 20 Feet! No, 246 Feet! There Will Be 50 Million Climate Refugees From Rising Seas By 2010! OK, Make That 2020! The Oceans Will Acidify! Corals Will Die! Global Warming Kills! There Is A One In Ten Chance Global Warming Will End The World By 2100! We Know What We’re Talking About! We Know Best! We Are The Experts! You Can Trust Us! Our Computer Models Are Correct! The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus!”
And so, round and round, ad nauseam, ad ignorantiam, ad infinitum.
Every one of those exclamatory, declamatory statements about the climate is in substance untrue. Most were first uttered by scientists working for once-respected universities and government bodies. For instance, the notion that there is a 1 in 10 chance the world will end by 2100 is the fundamentally fatuous assumption in Lord Stern’s 2006 report on climate economics, written by a team at the U.K. Treasury for the then Socialist Government, which got the answer it wanted but did not get the truth, for it did not want the truth.
Previously, you could count on getting nothing but the truth from the men in white coats with leaky Biros in the front pocket. Now, particularly if the subject is global warming, you can count on getting little but profitable nonsense from your friendly local university science lab. They make the profits: you get the nonsense.
The central reason why what Professor Niklas Mörner has called “the greatest lie ever told” is damaging to civilization arises not from the staggering cost, soon to be $1 billion a day worldwide. Not from the direct threat to the West posed by the avowedly anti-democratic, anti-libertarian policies of the UN, the IPCC, and the costly alphabet-soup of unelected busybody agencies of predatory government that live off the taxpayer’s involuntary generosity. Not from the dire environmental damage caused by windmills and other equally medieval measures intended to make non-existent global warming go away.
The damage caused by the Great Lie arises from the fact that just about the entire global governing class has found it expedient or convenient or profitable to adopt the Great Lie, to peddle it, to parade it, to parrot it, to pass it on, regardless of whether anything that it says on the subject of the climate has any truth in it whatsoever.
The fundamental principle upon which Aristotle built the art and science of Logic is that every individual truth is consistent with every other individual truth. The truth is a seamless robe. Religion – or at any rate the Catholic presentation to which I inadequately subscribe (practising but not perfect) – is also built upon that fundamental principle of the oneness of all truth.
Science, too – or at any rate the classical scientific method adumbrated by Thales of Miletus and Al-Haytham and brought to fruition by Newton, Huxley, Einstein, and Popper – was also rooted in the understanding that there is only one truth, only one physical law, and that, therefore, every truth unearthed by the diligence of the curious and hard-working empiricist or theoretician must, if it be truly true, be consistent at every point and in every particular with every truth that had ever been discovered before, and with every truth yet to be discovered.
It is in the understanding of that central principle of the remarkable oneness and self-consistency of all truth that men of true religion and of true science ought to have become united. For there is an awesome beauty in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all.”
The beauty of the truth is sullied, the seamless robe rent in sunder, if not merely a few individual scientists but the entire classe politique not merely of a single nation but of the planet advantages itself, enriches the already rich and impoverishes the already poor by lying and lying and lying again in the name of Saving The Planet by offering costly and environmentally destructive non-solutions to what is proving to be a non-problem.
The very fabric of the Universe is distorted by so monstrous and so sullenly persistent a lie. Those scientists who have been caught out trampling the truth, and those universities in which it has become near-universally agreed that the best thing to keep the cash flowing is to say nothing about the Great Lie, are by their actions or inactions repudiating the very justification and raison-d’être of science: to seek the truth, to find it, to expound it, to expand it, and so to bring us all closer to answering the greatest of all questions: how came we and all around us to be here?
We who are not only men of science but also men of religion believe that the Answer to that question lay 2000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem. The very human face of the very Divine was “perfectly God and perfectly Man”, as the Council of Chalcedon beautifully put it.
We cannot prove that a Nazarene made the Universe, or that any Divine agency takes the slightest interest in whether we tell the truth. But, for as long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe it. And it is in our freedom to believe that which has not been proven false that the value of true religion to true science may yet come to be discerned. For our religion teaches us that truthfulness is right and wilful falsehood wrong. We cannot prove that that is so, but we believe it nonetheless.
Science, though, is not a matter of belief (unless you belong to Greenpeace or some other Marxist front organization masquerading as an environmental group). It is a matter of disciplined observation, careful theoretical deduction, and cautious expression of results. The true scientist does not say, “I believe”: but he ought, if there is any curiosity and awe in his soul, to say “I wonder …”. Those two words are the foundation of all genuine scientific enquiry.
Yet the global warming scare has shown how very dangerous is science without morality. The scientist, who takes no one’s word for anything (nullius in verba), does not accept a priori that there is any objectively valuable moral code. He does not necessarily consider himself under any moral obligation either to seek the truth or, once he has found it, to speak it.
Science, therefore, in too carelessly or callously rejecting any value in religion and in the great code of morality in which men of religion believe and which at least they try however stumblingly to follow, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Yea, truth faileth (Isaiah, 59:15). The Great Lie persists precisely because too many of the scientists who utter it no longer live in accordance with the moral yardstick that Christianity once provided, or any moral yardstick, so that they do not consider they have any moral obligation to tell the truth.
That being so, we should no longer consider ourselves as laboring under any obligation, moral or other, to pay any particular heed to scientists seeking to meddle in politics unless and until they have shown themselves once more willing to be what al-Haytham said they should be: seekers after truth.
Two hundred and forty-six feet of sea-level rise, Dr. Hansen? Oh, come off it!
A merry Christmas an’ a roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.
Andy West says (initially)
because I see not the slightest evidence for a God
Andy West says (later)
I’m happy to admit that the ultimate origin is currently unknown.
Henry says
Do you see that already you have shifted your position?
You only need one more thing now: faith.
Here is the key that Jesus gives. When earth ends, will there still be faith? (Luke 18:8)
(whether “God” was seen personified as the sun, moon , planets, etc is immaterial as such. The question is about faith)
Db
Copacetic to comprehend the profundity of your bemusement and the strata of your tedium. Yeah, I too can use odd words if you wish me to make my prosody less obfuscated. By the way, there is still an important place for description in science eg in taxonomy so please don’t think your lecture to me stings more than thistle down.
Db
I changed your cherry picked graph for my own http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
Look what I found that you wanted me not to know. I think we both know the difference between seeking the truth and being blinded by a quasi-religious superstition (sic).
Db
I notice you quoted the OISM petition, the one signed by Geri Halliwell amongst others, so you are telling us that science proceeds by petition but not by consensus. I know I couldn’t make it up.
HenryP says: December 29, 2013 at 10:13 pm
This is not the slightest shift in position. ‘initially’ and ‘later’ are perfectly consistent. Naming the unknown a deity is an ancient pastime and comfort but not one I need. Henry we are off-topic here and should not clutter WUWT, nor is this going anywhere now, so I’ll not respond further on this though I appreciated the exchange 🙂
John@ur momisuglyEF says: @ur momisugly December 29, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Ever heard of Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations, Bond events or Heinrich events? Of Course not…. but NOAA has. There is even this paper on the NOAA website – A Pervasive 1470-Year Climate Cycle in North Atlantic Glacials and Interglacials: A Product of Internal or External Forcing? – Gerald Bond, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
If you do not like the Bond event explanations for the Little Ice Age there is this other:
Richard B. Alley of the U.Penn. was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change. for well over a decade and in 1999 was invited to testify about climate change by Vice President Al Gore. In 2002, the NAS with Alley as chair, published a book “Abrupt Climate Change”:
. From the opening paragraph in the executive summary:
Then there is a more recent paper from last fall, Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?
The bipolar seesaw is the Arctic losing ice and the Antarctic gaining ice, sound familiar?
And another paper:
So the choices are the present warming out of the Little Ice Age is just part of a Bond Cycle or it is part of the warmings expected during the descent into the next ice age which according to the last two papers has probably already started.
Take your pick from these peer-reviewed papers.
Margaret Hardman says
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
Henry says
You made a point, which is good. Obviously, some of us, like DB and myself, are playing around a bit, trying to show linear trends from what we know is a totally chaotic, non linear system. The trick is to find out what the strongest governing non linear trend behind the chaos is. As stated before, if you look at the drop in global maximum temperatures (maxima) and you plot the speed of warming against time, you get a sine wave looking like this:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
(47 weather stations)
That the wave is true can also be seen from the second graph below where I had good data from one weather station going back to 1942.
Further confirmation that the wave must be true was found by me here:
Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ˜12,000 years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes
Peristykh, Alexei N.; Damon, Paul E.
Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), Volume 108, Issue A1, pp. SSH 1-1, CiteID 1003, DOI 10.1029/2002JA009390
Among other longer-than-22-year periods in Fourier spectra of various solar-terrestrial records, the 88-year cycle is unique, because it can be directly linked to the cyclic activity of sunspot formation…..
and here:
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/17/585/2010/npg-17-585-2010.html
Note with me, that a zero global warming rate was reached some 17 years ago. From than onward we are cooling, on average.
Almost all data sets seem to agree that in 1998 earth reached its maximum output (means), as can be seen here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
Hence, we know that from now onward, it will only be downhill. I am actually beginning to doubt some data sets as the down trend that I see in my own data set is a bit steeper.
Once you can agree what the governing non linear trend is, you can begin to make predictions.
From 2016-2046 the global climate will be similar to 1927-1957. That means we have only 7 years until 1932, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml
(I don’t trust data going from 1950 backwards, because in those days there was no proper re-calibration of thermometers and we relied on people to make measurements, not recorders )
To think or propose that (more) CO2 will keep us warm(er) is a big mistake.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
I trust you will understand my reasoning.
HenryP says: December 30, 2013 at 6:25 am “I trust you will understand my reasoning.”
You must be joking.
Margaret does not wish to understand any other viewpoint than her own. Apart from the one Cherry Picked Chart, changing a downward trend to an upward trend, which we have all seen and explored for ourselves dozens of times, she has presented no data and refuses to answer questions DIRECTLY about the actual data she says she does believe in.
It does not matter how wrong the Climate Scientist’s predictions have been nothing will shake her faith.
She has also not said whether she believes in just AGW or CAGW as the majority on here appear to firmly believe in “Climate Change”, Global Warming and Global Cooling.
A C
Glad you got a laugh. You missed my point by the looks of things about cherry picking but never mind, I call using 1997-8 as a starting point Christopher’s trick to hide the incline. Not sure where this idea of belief has come in. I have come to a conclusion based on exactly the same data that you have available to you. It isn’t difficult but it does rely on clearing the tunnel vision and seeing a wide screen image.
Andy West says
This is not the slightest shift in position. ‘initially’ and ‘later’ are perfectly consistent. Naming the unknown a deity is an ancient pastime and comfort but not one I need. Henry we are off-topic here and should not clutter WUWT,
Henry says
I think we are on topic, we are discussing how scientists find a moral compass
So, if you say there is no God, then how do know for sure what is right and what is wrong, if you do not consult or ask Him??
You have no inner voice (of conscience)?
Are you happy to go along with what the majority says is true?
Or do you simply believe the minority, e.g. like us here, believe in non-AGW, at WUWT?
The answer lies in my Xmas story as I have quoted to you before: i.e. what started to move you, in the first place?
Once you get that, you will know that in about 7 years from now, AGW is a thing of the past.
Margarret Hardman says:
“Copacetic to comprehend the profundity of your bemusement and the strata of your tedium.”
Well then Margaret, don’t read it. But you really can’t help it, can you? You are obviously fixated on my posts [3 replies in a row, responding to one comment of mine]. Heh
So, may I reply to you now, Margaret? Thank you: It’s coprophagic of you to bird-dog my comments like that. [Yeah, “I too can use odd words”… ☺]
Now, Margaret, regarding your own comprehension problem with the 1997 start date: that particular year was specifically chosen by the climate alarmist clique itself as being the minimum time necessary to prove whether the cessation in global warming was an artefact, or a statistical probability. Per their own definition, no global warming since 1997 indicates that global warming has now stopped. [Not ‘paused’. It will only be a ‘pause’ if global warming resumes. As of now, global warming has stopped.]
So please, Margaret, do not try to cherry pick a different year, since skeptics are just using the alarmists’ own start year: 1997. Hoisted by your own petard, as they say… ☺
Finally, regarding the OISM Petition, which totally debunks the alarmists’ claim of having a “consensus”: there has never been anything close to 31,000 alarmist scientists who agree that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. That is just a fabricated claim. Thus, any “consensus” is entirely on the side of scientific skeptics. See?
The OISM co-signers have stated, in a very straightforward comment that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. That is completely at odds with the relatively small clique of warmists who try to lay the blame for the recent [natural] global warming on “carbon”. Sorry, but that trumped-up scientific canard has been thoroughly debunked.
And @John@EF:
Read what Gail Combs writes to you above. It is a scientific fact that the planet is recovering from the LIA — as even über-warmist scientist Richard Alley has stated. If you disagree, go and complain to Dr Alley.
Gail Combs invites you to “Take your pick from these peer-reviewed papers.” Gail has posted a lot of them, in an effort to help educate you on the facts. So take some time to learn, instead of making up baseless assertions, such as “…non-science-based when compared with arguments like ‘we’re just recovering from the Little Ice Age’.” You might get some credibility here if you actually know what you’re talking about. So far, it seems you don’t, because the planet was until recently still in the process of recovering from the LIA.
Good luck with your studies, John. Take your time, because Gail has given you a lot to learn. Check back with us after you’ve read your assignment.
Db
At least my posh word, was not abusive, but, hey. Anyway, I won’t ask you to tell me the difference between stopped and paused and how you know that global warming has stopped. And I’m not fixated on your comments but if it massages your ego, let me say that I made three comments because I couldn’t see a button that allows me to go “oh, and another thing” in my original reply to you.
Finally, the OISM petition – do you not see the irony that you use an open, available to all online petition as support while decrying the use of published literature to establish a consensus? Science is not done by petition. We all laugh at the Indiana Pi Bill because scientific or mathematical truth is not established by fiat. The OISM petition is easily disregarded. Can you remember who Geri Halliwell is? If you have to claim that PR exercise in your support then threadbare describes you case. Piteous.
Margaret Hardman continues to evade the issue.I had listed several dozen lies told by “scientists” about global warming: there was my evidence that we are dealing not with science but with superstition. She has not yet provided any evidence that any of the lies I had listed is in fact the truth.
She repeats the canard that I had made claims about the medical research we are conducting, and cites a tendentious BBC documentary as evidence. However, as I have explained before, the BBC interviewer told me my original answer to his question about the research was too complicated: I had made it plain that we could not make any claims until clinical trials had been completed. He asked me to put the point more simply. So I said that the clinical trials would establish whether we can cure (list of diseases). What he broadcast was “we can cure (list of diseases).”.
Like other trolls, she does her best to trash my reputation by introducing extraneous matters such as this. And she malevolently adds, with characteristic ignorance, that I ought not to withhold details of my cure given the many people who need a cure for HIV. If she had any more knowledge of medical research than she has of climate science, she would know that it is irresponsible and in most countries unlawful to release details of a supposed cure unless and until properly-approved clinical trials have been conducted.
The eminent professor with whom I am conducting the research will soon be in a position to conduct the required clinical trials, which cannot be done in the UK because European directives have made virtually all pharmaceutical research impossible. So, after Ministers proved powerless to help us, we are moving the research overseas to a well-regulated jurisdiction that not only allows but welcomes pharmaceutical research.
One hopes Ms. Hardman is paid well for her attempted disruptions here, which have nicely illustrated why it is that the true-believers in the New Superstition have lost the argument. if she is not paid, she should raise her game by discussing climate science – if she knows any.
Monckton wishes me to confront his Gish gallop. Well, if he wants me to take that seriously then he might wish to point me in the direction of the source for his starving polar bears eating penguins claim. He might also wish to explain how European directives, such as the one that will make pharmaceutical research more transparent and less expensive, is driving him to seek to do his trials elsewhere. He might also like to stop hiding behind editorial decision (sic) and accept that he stated his discovery had cured (list of diseases). I went and checked (that’s what sceptics do) and he clearly stated it in the BBC programme. If he didn’t want to say it, he didn’t have to say it.
The only malevolence I can see in withholding a claimed cure for HIV is to claim it then withhold it, if indeed there are some promising results on HIV then they should be published. It isn’t difficult. Perhaps Monckton supports the All Trials initiative. If not then he should. Having made claims about curing various diseases, no one is going to be convinced until they see some published results. In the meantime, excuse my cynicism but I don’t believe a word. And, yes, I do know about clinical trials too, and I do know that the pharmaceutical industry is not perfect, far from it, so please do not accuse me of being a Pharma shill either.
One question on the pharmaceutical side would be which of the list of diseases the remedy apparently “cures” (I put that in quotation marks to respect Monckton’s claim that making such claims brings penalties – well, in the UK there is a Cancer Act to prevent charlatans fleecing patients) is approval to be sought for first?
Just to make it interesting, and throw in some interesting statistics on who holds the moral high ground.
I got this from wikipedia:
“According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and states. As of December 31, 2009 the female prison population of federal and state prisons in the United States was 113,462.”
I know this ratio men-women in prison holds well over the whole world, as I have calculated same % of women here in South African prisons, roughly about 5% of the total.
This means that generally speaking women are more trustworthy than men.
Obviously we do not know for sure if Ms Hardman is a woman, but if she is, than her lack of truthfullness is the exception rather than the rule.
@Monkcton of Brenchley
btw
the last time I saw you on televis@ion was on RT
I think initially you did well in the interview, it was clear the woman doing the questioning knew nothing about climate change. However, she then cleverly changed the subject to Iracq, and basiccally there you lost the debate. Everybody knew that that war was for profit (oil), and not so much wamd. She really made you look as though we could not trust you, and in the end it seemed that was exactly her very purpose of giving you the interview.
My question here: why did you allow her to sidetrack to Iracq? If you had stuck to the subject of climate change only she would not have beaten you.
Anyway, because of a few misquotes by “Silver Ralph” on some sayings by Jesus, on war, I give an explanation why I am a pacifist:
War and Peace
52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Matt 26:52 (NIV)
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
Matt 10:34-36 (NIV)
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Matt 5:9-11 (NIV)
21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’
22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Matt 5:21-22 (NIV)
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matt 5:44-45 (NIV)
Many a war or armed response has been justified by quoting the Bible from Matthew 10:34 and at a first glance it does look like Jesus contradicts himself here when we compare it to the first verse (vs. 52).
I have found contradictions in the writings of many people, and that includes such great people as Luther, Calvin, Moses, the apostle Paul, and other writers. I have always accepted that as normal. We are all fallible human beings – we can make mistakes and the Scriptures clearly teach that none of us mortals are without sin or ignorance. (e.g. Romans 3:23, Hosea 4:6 etc.). I also believe that one must always understand the laws and teachings of the Bible in the time where it was written, except of course those of Jesus Himself. John testifies that Jesus is the Word (John 1:1) and he also says ” For the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)
For quite some time now I have taken the view that any law or teaching that cannot be brought back to Jesus and His commandment: “Love comes first” must be looked at with suspicion. Jesus Himself also indicates this in Matt 15:9: “Uselessly they worship Me with their teachings of human commands…”. If you look at it carefully, and if you do not have the Spirit of Jesus in you then you can use the Bible to justify any injustice! In the 1830’s slavery was justified by Mr. Morse (yes, it was indeed the man who invented the Morse Code) by quoting from the Bible! I am sure that everybody now agrees that slavery is darkness. Similarly, during the apartheid era certain rightwing groups used text and verse from the Bible to justify apartheid. It is therefore important to remember that we test every teaching that we hear on the word of Jesus. Usually the Holy Spirit will lead you in the right direction.
But there is no contradiction in anything that Jesus says here. Jesus simply predicts that our obedience to Him will cause some people to hate us and this may well disrupt our otherwise peaceful existence (vs. 11). Very clearly he chooses to quote from Micah 7:6 (vs. 35-36), indicating that this is something that has already been known for a long time. “A sword” (vs. 34) simply means war in the spiritual sense (see also Chapter 10). Note the following passage of Scripture:
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
20 Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.
22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. John 15:18-22 (NIV)
So, although Jesus brings a message of peace – indeed some of the prophets have most appropriately entitled Him the ‘Prince of Peace’ – the reaction of some people to this peace message could sometimes appear to be quite hostile. Jesus then teaches that we must confront this hostility by showing love for our enemies. I know, this may sound quite naïve but this is a fundamental Christian truth that cannot be ignored. The fight is over. Jesus has crushed death and He has stated quite categorically that he has entered the eternity to prepare a place for us (John 14:2). Therefore death holds no fear for him or her that has faith in Him (1 Cor. 15:54; Isaiah 25:8). And that totally changes our perspective: Why would you take up the sword? (vs. 52). It strikes me now that Jesus made this statement just before he died on the cross. I think that too underlines its importance.
If we really want to be like Him, we must disarm ourselves; even if it means having to face death (vs. 52). Not only must we never kill, we may not even hate another person! (vs. 21-22). He is the Samaritan who cares for his enemy. He is the good Shepherd who is really interested in that one person who has gone astray. He, the God of all creation, is prepared to kneel down in front of us and do the job that nobody wanted to do: wash our feet. On the cross, He forgave the criminal whom we had condemned to death. He is the one who prayed for those that killed Him: “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” This is my God! I want to be like Him. More and more. If this is the truth then I must accept that there will be times when I get hurt and that I will stand alone. But it will be worth it.
Jesus commands us to make peace. (vs. 9) ‘Making’ peace specifies some sort of action!
I suppose then we have to identify and oppose the greed and/or ambition that is the root cause for that war. Or eliminate and resist whatever else it is that is causing the strife. It is said that if you can get the fighting parties to agree to listen to one another, the battle against war is halfway won. The point is: we cannot sit back and relax while people are killing each other. The fight for peace is a never-ending spiritual war.
Happy New Year!
Dear Margaret:
Thank you for your enlightening contribution to this topic. You write with such feeling! All the best in 2014!
Babsy
Babsy,
I am in full agreement with your sentiment. Margaret writes with “feeling”. But not with much truth, and never with any testable, empirical science.
I note that Margaret also avoids Lord Monckton’s explicit examples of the lies being told. But she continues on with her incessant ad hominem attacks. I wonder if it is a persecution complex due to her orientation that makes her such a hater?
Margaret says, ” The OISM petition is easily disregarded.” Then she expounds on it. That is hardly disregarding a valid petition to the government, wherein more than 31,000 scientists and engineers — more than 9,000 with PhD’s [and far more than all the alarmist pseudo-scientists put together] — have co-signed a statement noting that human CO2 emissions are harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. That goes directly against the repeatedly debunked CAGW nonsense that Margaret believes in.
I can discuss OISM all day, as Margaret can. That falsifies Margaret’s forlorn hope that the OISM Kyoto petition will be ‘disregarded’. But then, Margaret is full of hope. But empirical science? Not so much. None, really. With Margaret, it’s all ‘feelings’. There is no real science anywhere in any of her comments.
That is why Margaret Hardman is on the losing side of the debate. No wonder she is bitter.
If they had data they would scream it from the rooftops. An equation is a written description of something which may, or may not, be real. It is not reality itself. What they have is an equation that implies if CO2 is added to air, the air gets warmer, yet this seemingly simple concept cannot be reproduced in a laboratory. As I’ve said to many others in my lifetime “You can write anything on paper!” We can measure the speed of light. The Lorentz transformation can be experimentally verified. Why can we not measure man’s alleged contribution to the warming of earth’s atmosphere?
All the best in 2014!
Babsy asks
Why can we not measure man’s alleged contribution to the warming of earth’s atmosphere?
Henry says
it’s because they thought (a la Tyndall and Arrhenius) that they could put the whole earth in a box.
Earth shines 24 hours a day, but they forgot that the sun shines 12 hours per day….
That was dumb, so dumb, so unbelievably dumb, and they (Margaret et al) still do no get why it is so dumb.
If it was not so tragic, I would just laugh and laugh….
but it points to very poor training and preparation at the universtities and educational institutes
…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
HenryP, nobody ‘knows’ what is right and wrong in an absolute sense, and it can be dangerous to assume such absolutes in any complex situation. However, natural selection has given us altruistic leanings overall, armed with which we must all try our best. More recently science has given us a powerful tool to uncover reality, as long as we stick to its rules. Deities have been a useful social mechanism throughout history, net beneficial despite downsides, but the end is in sight for such obvious memeplexes, in part why secular memeplexes like CAGW are on the rise. Science alone is currently pointing to no catastrophe, and my altruistic instincts say to me that the Consensus has left the path of wisdom. I don’t believe in deities that are merely social constructs, and they aren’t required to see the moral compass anyhow.
DB
You didn’t respond to my question – do,you think science is done by petition then? I don’t but since you quote a petition, can I assume you do. Do you see no irony? You decry any idea of a scientific consensus – let’s hope that, for example, increasingly poor eyesight that comes when you get to our age is not treated by someone who feels the consensus of glass lenses doesn’t exist and would rather go for wooden ones.
Andy West says
but the end is in sight for such obvious memeplexes,
Henry says
Like I said before, perhaps the time is near for the end of the world to come, when Jesus wondered or asked (Himself) : will I still find faith? (Luke 18:8)
There is no God and there is nothing to look forward to. There is no plan. Everything is just a coincidence. What a horrible thought to wake up with. That’s enough to give me a complex, a depression, never mind a memeplex.
Just imagine the probability of one ejaculation with 50 million sperm cells, and you making it first to the female egg…
Then multply this “chance” with the “luck” of your parents meeting and loving, and then the off chance of their parents meeting and loving, and so on, until you come at the first living cell, which btw, nobody has been able to “produce” from the dead atoms and molecules they consist of…
That means an infinitely small probablility for you to be alive today. In fact, statistical probability theory says, you cannot be alive today. The chance of you being alive today is less than 1 versus the amount of all the stars in the known universe.
The problem I have with atheists and agnostics is that if they were truthfull to themselves they would have to admit that they still do have a belief. Their belief is that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody an incredible intellectual and intelligent person came into being.
So, I am saying, actually your belief (in Nothing) is bigger than my belief (in God).
A funny thing happens once you sign the ticket to heaven that Jesus freely gives to anyone who wants it…. You keep going with it and no matter what you do, it keeps on changing your life, if you give yourself a a chance to look back.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/12/10/my-own-true-christmas-story/
It seems God (*Jesus) wants us to be part of His plan to make a new, better World.
http://www.hourofpower.org/global/south_africa/news/JesusisGodbook.doc
In that world there is no place for the Napoleons and the Hitlers and other despots that came and went in history. From what we know from the Scriptures, there is still one more anti-christ to come, who’s mind will be set on persecuting the Christians, probably worse than the Jews were persecuted in WW2. During his reign, the world itself will come to an end.
Interestingly, the Scriptures seem to indicate that some star/planet/heavenly body could be involved causing the actual final end.
Most recently I was amazed to find that our current climate on earth is simply kept together by the planets….If it were not so, there could be runaway warming or runaway cooling.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
I wish everyone still here on this thread the best for 2014. God bless you.
Henry said
During his reign, the world itself will come to an end.
Henry says
During his/her reign, the world itself will come to an end.
Margaret Hardman says:
“…do,you think science is done by petition then?”
No. Your side thinks that. It is the alarmist crowd that keeps harping on the bogus “97%” number, and on “consensus”. Why don’t you do the right thing, and tell them to stop it?
FYI, the OISM Petition was a one-time event before the Kyoto conference, appealing to the government to disregard the “carbon” nonsense. You do understand that the “carbon” scare is complete nonsense, don’t you?
Finally, I don’t understand your comment about ‘wooden’ lenses. And you seem to think I’m a young’un. Strange on both counts.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Babsy says:
“If they had data they would scream it from the rooftops.”
You have the Scientific Method exactly backward, Babsy. It is the climate alarmist crowd that has the onus on them to support their CO2=CAGW conjecture. They are the ones who must produce data to support their beliefs. But of course, they have no data. All they have is people running interference, by turing the Scientific Method on it’s head and trying to put scientific skeptics in the position of having to prove a negative.
The fact is that there is no testable, measurable data supporting the belief that CO2 causes runaway global warming. None at all. There is only True Belief. But that is hardly science. Is it?
HenryP – One more time… … further out
Charles Matthew Hallelujah!
Listen carefully and you can almost hear the words:
“Charles Matthew has been born today, Hallelujah!”
Dave Brubeck said that no music was written for this piece – he just started with the theme and the guys followed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Further_Out