Open letter on behalf of the worldwide Catholic and Orthodox lay faithful in response to Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on climate change
by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
A FALSE BALANCE is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight (Prov. XI:1).
Your Holinesses’ recent admonition to your flocks about climate and the environment, though it was at one level a practical attempt at rapprochement between two faiths whose religious beliefs are in essence identical, demonstrated a naïve, unbalanced, scientifically ill-informed, disfiguringly totalitarian and, therefore, environmentally destructive political partisanship that it was and remains Your Holinesses’ bounden duty to eschew.
Unrighteous write-off: signing away the rights of the poor
“Hear the cry of the Earth!”, you say. But the Earth is inanimate. Hear instead the cry of the poor, who were once denied the wealth-giving, health-giving benefits of electrical power because it was costly. Then, at the very point when advances in exploration and in technology were making electricity affordable to all, the nasty, totalitarian faction that your recent statement on the climate shows you espouse malevolently intervened so that, though the raw-material cost of coal, oil and gas has halved in 30 years, the cost of the electricity they generate has tripled in a generation. Whom does that unreasonable increase in the cost of power harm, first and foremost, but the poor? Do they not spend a greater fraction of what little they have on energy than the rest?
That savage cost increase is near-exclusively attributable to your fellow environmental socialists’ multiplicity of incompetent interferences in the energy markets, arising from their delusion (to put it charitably) that slightly warmer weather and fertilization of crops by our returning to the atmosphere some small fraction of the CO2 that once resided there would be harmful rather than of overwhelming net benefit, particularly to the poor.
Food, glorious food: As CO2 and temperature have risen, so have crop yields.
There are many real environmental problems, but “global warming” is not among them. Hear the cry of the poor of Africa, who must heat their homes by burning timber or cattle-dung. Millions die every year of particulate pollution in their homes because you would deny them electrical power to heat their homes by night and cool them by day. Why will you not speak up for them and against those who, on the fictitious ground of Saving The Planet from the imagined (and imaginary) harms they pretend will arise from “global warming”, would deny them affordable, reliable, continuous, base-load electricity generated by coal, oil and gas?
Unholy smoke: millions die annually from particulate pollution in smoke-filled huts
Shamefully, you sneer at the private enterprises whose willingness to take risks has given to most of us the overwhelming net benefits of electrical power, condemning what you reprehensibly describe as their “insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet’s limited resources” and their “greed for limitless profit in markets”.
Hear the cry of the quarter of a billion people who have died in the past 100 years at the hands of those cruel, totalitarian tyrants who, in interfering with free markets, inflicted not only near-universal poverty but also total war and extreme environmental degradation on their suffering populations. In condemning free markets, you condemn the very system that has made environmental protection affordable, and has put it into successful practice.
By Their fruits ye shall know Them: the Katyn massacre
Hear the cry of those who suffered, and still suffer, under the Communism with which you explicitly and culpably align yourselves when you smear your political opponents by saying they regard nature “as a private possession”.
Hear the cry of those who know full well that replacing a multitude of private owners with a handful of totalitarian central planners acting for the private benefit of your narrow faction has done and will ever do far more harm than good.
Hear the cry of the 7000 people who, in a single cold December some years ago when the entire British land-mass was snow-covered for the first time since records began, died before their time not so much because the weather was cold as because their homes were cold. They could no longer afford to heat them, because the governing elite had artificially tripled the cost of electrical power to subsidize so-called “renewable” energy, which, owing to its exceptionally low energy densities, causes more environmental harm per Megawatt-hour generated than any other form of power generation.
Global what? The entire British land-mass under snow for the first time in the satellite era.
Hear the cry of the birds and bats batted from the sky by monstrous windmills (14th-century technology to solve a 21st-century non-problem) or fried by solar collectors.
Getting the bird: in Scotland, windmills now threaten many rate species with extinction
Hear the cry of the lithium miners, slaving in inhuman conditions in Tibet and the Congo to provide environmental socialists with feel-good batteries for their costly and wasteful electric automobiles.
You say global warming affects the poor first and foremost. Yet it is not global warming that harms the poor: it is misguided policies piously intended to prevent it that harm and even kill the poor.
Hear the cry of the billions of victims of needless and harmful climate mitigation policies. You explicitly make the totalitarian approach your own when you demand “solidarity” and “sustainable and integral development” and a “concerted and collective, shared and accountable” response to climate change, even as that response kills people.
In short, like so many callous and coldly indifferent totalitarians before you, you demand the Nanny-knows-best disposition of the world’s resources by a pietistic, profiteering few central planners in the governing elite with which you seek to align yourselves rather than by the energies and industries of the many through the cheerful chaos of the free market.
Climate Communism: flags of tyranny at the Copenhagen climate conference, 2009
Hear the cry of the victims of the totalitarianism you disgracefully advocate, a system of governance that was and is and ever shall be, first and foremost, harmful to the poor, as the gruesome and murderous history of Fascist, Communist and, now, environmentalist Socialism amply, repeatedly and terribly demonstrates.
Finally, you demand that the global governing elite should “support the consensus of the world” to prevent global warming. There was once a consensus that the world was flat. Yet, as Galileo Galilei reminded one of your predecessors, science is not done by consensus, which is merely a canting euphemism for some grim, totalitarian Party Line or another.
The Earth is flat … and “global warming is real, manmade and dangerous”
As you will shortly discover to your profound embarrassment, your ill-judged attempt to extend your remit from the realm of faith into that of science and politics is about to be proven as hilariously misconceived as the decision of the commission of Cardinals who condemned Galileo for his assertion – correct, as it turned out – that the Earth, far from being flat, is, like your untutored belief in rapid and dangerous global warming, pear-shaped.
Eppur si muove: Galileo faces the flat-earth Cardinals’ judgment
We, the people of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, call upon Your Holinesses to set aside your personal political prejudices, to reconsider and then to recall your joint statement on climate change, and to confine your public pronouncements in future to matters of faith and of morals, which fall within your competence and your commission from the Lord of Life, and not to matters of science, which, with respect, do not.
When Warmunists obligingly hand Christopher a weapon, he whacks them with it. Again and again.
while there is much sense in CoB writes here, he is just a biased and disingenuous as those he would attack.
His pic of Alberta tar sands extraction is joke. If the sites were that clean there would be nothing there to extract. In fact that looks more like the head of facking well than a tar sands exploitation.
Here, for the record is how tar sands extraction works. ( Not making a point for or against but this is how it is done. Looks more like the lithium mine.
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsands/
No, there are NOT anything “mills” they are not grinding or milling anything. Neither are they 14th c. since no one even understood what electricity was back then, little more how to generate it.
Like I always ask of warmists: if your case is so sure and clear, why do you have to deceive to make it?
image:
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/Global/canada/image/2010/4/teaser/tar%20sands/Jiri%20Rezac.jpg
One thing I would say about Alberta is that once they have removed that layer of filthy tar the site actually ends up much cleaner than it’s “natural” state. Tar sands extraction is a massive oil spill clean up operation.
There are likely a lot of pollution aspects which enviros could be raising there but arguing to leave this filth lying around or wailing is about “carbon” as usual takes preference over any REAL pollution issues.
Greg, there are two ways to extract bitumen, one is surface mining, as you pictured, the other one is in situ heating; but you are right, the picture is of a well being drilled, certainly not the exploitation/production of anything.
The windmill allegory stands, as it was built and operated in those days to harness the wind power and use its energy; it is immaterial wether it is first converted to electricity or not.
More obvious should be that Galileo did not argue against flat earthers, but wether the sun rotated around the earth or vice versa. In his days the Earth Centrists ruled the church.
The earth turning on its axis was also at issue. Precession wobble, not so much.
I`m just a novice,
but you did just say “His pic of Alberta tar sands extraction is joke” I note carefully he wrote “oilsands”,
could it be that oil sands are more liquid than tar sands and could it be that that image is clearly taken from a quick websearch for images of “SAGD alberta oil sands” (steam augemented…..) ?
of course the image could be incorrectly attributed and I do agree that out of the plethora of negative images this is a very positive image
Greg,
The picture you see is what happens when a mine is closed and the site restored. Not sure if the picture is from a previous mine or other extraction methods. After mining one area they restore it by putting the clean sand back in the hole, then they move to another location and the process starts again. I worked on the Syncrude Oil Sands site at start up which was based on mining, and the the plan was always the restore the site as shown in the picture as agreed to with the Canadian Government, which was originally a financial partner. As indicated by others, not all the extraction is by mining, some is done by steam injection as I recall, so there is nothing looking like a mine.
The other important point, the material is not tar as the crazy enviros would like you to believe; although, the material when it is separated from the sand is typically very heavy. The TAR term is used by the enviros to paint an ugly picture.
At Syncrude, they processed the heavy oil in a Fluid Coker which converts the oil to lighter more useful product. Also at Syncrude there was additional processing and removal of the sulfur so the product shipped south in the pipeline was very high and clean quality.
If you check the definition of Tar you will find that it is a material that has been boiled and all the lighter materials such as gasoline is gone. Tar is what is left of crude when the gasoline, diesel, and other products are extracted by fractionation and other processes. Tar can also be made from wood and other substances. .
Greg, check out the website below, of course it has some propaganda like statements:
http://syncrudesustainability.com/2014/environment/land-reclamation/
Unfortunately the upper picture seems to be of Chile’s Escondida, copper-producing mine, not a lithium mine.
http://www.snopes.com/lithium-mine-oil-sands/
Pope and Patriarch are just pontificating, they are not the decisions makers.
People who make our lives misery are 3 Ms:
Merkel , Macron & May
all signs are that Mr. T. will be the ultimate winner in this global wrestling match.
Looks like Radio Frequency heating (as opposed to steam based heating) of Oil Sands by Harris.
Makaron sounds more and more reasonable recently.
Maybe all it would take is Merkel loosing the election, but who knows…
Good sermon. Pope Francis is very definitely intro “liberation theology”, which Pope John Paul II very much opposed.
Recall where and from whom “liberation theology” emerged. Pope Francis is a South American Jesuit.
Render unto Caeser what is Caesers, and unto God what is Gods. Pope Francis needs to get out of the Caeser business and back into the God business.
The pope is being poorly advised. But not astute enough to realise it. Which begs the question why the Lord sanctioned his appointment.
Taking the vow of poverty, and loving the poor, is no excuse for thinking poorly.
Well, Jesus sanctioned the appointment of Peter and remember what he did? He denied Jesus three times! Nobody claims that the Pope is infallible on anything and everything. Before criticising please get your theology in order.
When did Jesus “appoint” Peter? And, yes the Pope is fallible as he is human. But AS the pope, he and the church claims he is The Christ. That he replaces Christ on earth. And the church has as its laws, the Pope can NOT be fallible as he is GOD’s voice. How can the Pope be infallible if he also can forgive sins? Seems to me, that that particular belief system has some fallibility.
Captain,
Catholic doctrine is that Jesus said he would found his Church on “Peter” in Matthew 16:18. But it’s complicated.
The disciple Peter’s real name was Simon, but Jesus called him by the Aramaic nickname of “Cepha”, which means rock. Gospel writers translated this as “Petros”, a neologism masculinizing “petra”, the feminine Greek word for rock. Latin translators rendered this as “Petrus”, whence English “Peter”.
So when Jesus said that he would “found his church on this rock”, Catholics interpreted the rock as the Disciple Peter. There is some doubt however that this passage was inserted into Matthew long after it was written, since there was no Catholic Church until later. Early Christianity was very different from the hierarchical organization which emerged after Christianity was legalized and took over the Roman Imperial structure.
@Gloateus:
(Emphasis mine).
Well I for one and very doubtful of the claim that this passage was “inserted into Matthew long after it was written…”
In fact, I’m not aware of any reliable textual critic that makes such a claim about this particular passage of Matthew. Could you help me out?
Sy,
The conjecture is part and parcel with the non-Greek original composition hypothesis, reinforced with the obvious forgeries of fake letters of Paul by proto-Catholics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Gospel_hypothesis
@Gloateus:
From the opening paragraph of your source article:
“Papias appeared to say that this Hebrew or Aramaic gospel was subsequently translated into the canonical gospel of Matthew, but modern studies have shown this to be untenable.[1] Modern variants of the hypothesis survive, but have not found favour with scholars as a whole.”
“why the Lord sanctioned his appointment.” The Lord moves in mysterious ways. Someone famous said that and I remember it from Sunday School.
Or astute enough but does not have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Just one of many antichrists. The Roman Church since Luther has had the opportunity to get their theological house in order but they have refused.
“But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” Revelation 2:4
What do you expect, when Schellnhuber and Rahmstorf from PIK (Potsdam Institute of Climate Consequences Research in Germany are the advisors of the Pope on climate change matters. The same warmistas that advise Angela Merkel in her “leading the world” on the “Energiewende” to combat climate change…
Please don’t forget Oreskes, Klein and Waddams.
the nice thing about being pope is that you are infallible. So even if you are wrong, you are still right: by definition.
So if he picked these bunch of turkeys to advise him on climate it must be for a good reason. He obviously needed to avail himself of the best misinformation that was available about climate, in order to justify the position he wanted to put forward to his “flock” of sheeple.
He is CEO of a church for which the number of investors has been in a nose dive for quite some time. They need an issue to catch the younger generation. A little look at polling tells him what this will be.
The public image of his business has been tarred for decades by child-abuse and systematic official cover-ups of child-abuse. He needs a high moral issue to deflect public attention from this festering moral turpitude.
A little look at polling tells him what this will be.
His holiness makes an infallible choice and goes for the “save the planet” line. Then infallibly chooses a bunch of climate turkeys who will provide the right backdrop for this course of action.
The Pope never claimed that he was always infallible.
That only applies in limited circumstances.
Greg said, “So if he picked these bunch of turkeys to advise him on climate it must be for a good reason.” One likely reason that their advisory role has been publicized is so that they will take the fall if things go south (turn colder).
One big motivator for his getting one the warmist bandwagon is that third-world countries, where the church’s growth market is, and where most of the current cardinals resaide, stand to benefit from transfer payments under the Paris Accord.
@Greg
The Pope only claims infallibility in matters of Catholic dogma. That has been the case for a lot of Popes in the modern era.
You can see why that would be the case I’m sure.
Under what conditions is the Pope infallible?
“To begin with, the pope must be speaking “ex cathedra,” which means he has to be acting in his role as head of the church, “shepherd and teacher of all Christians.”
Also, the topic has to involve “faith or morals” — not whether Tom Brady deflated footballs — and must be binding for the church as a whole.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2015/09/24/when-pope-considered-infallible/L9Qfm87wbXU6yQUTjoYGFJ/story.html
It seem to me that with the criticism of others the Pope is acting like his opinions on migration and global warming are infallible. He clearly does not portray having an open mind to look at and weighing all the all the facts on these matters since he would otherwise not be so dogmatic as I see it.
Does he somehow conflate these issues with faith or morals in his mind or is he so into his political beliefs supporting socialism and teaching global warming/climate change from the pulpit as a requirement from his flock.
Finally it is surprising that he is cavorting with many who have no use for religion, which will not work out well when the UN world power he is supporting if it takes over.
Religion thrives on the poor.
What religion are you talking about, Mr. Haigh?? I can’t think of one that fits your assertion. Is Hinduism a hate-the-poor religion? I’m not familiar enough with it to know. I’m not very familiar with Buddhism, but, I’m pretty sure it advocates helping the poor. As for Judaism and Christianity, the Bible is full of commands to care for and take care of the poor. Here are just two of numerous cites I could give you:
Give generously to [your needy brother or sister] and do so without a grudging heart; then, because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.
There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and sisters and toward the poor and needy in your land. Deuteronomy 15:10,11.
If any of you has material possessions and sees her or his sister or brother in need but has no pity on her or him, how can the love of God be in him or her? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. I. John 3:17, 18.
Janice, he probably meant CHURCHES thrive on the poor.
Many fail to realise that religion is not the same a a church and erroneously use the two terms interchangeably.
You will note that when the bible says give to others, the church says give to me and I’ll take care of handing it to those who are in need ( after taking out the overhead costs of running a global hierarchy of church bureaucracy , of course ).
Maybe it’s best to just leave it as “I’m not very familiar with Buddhism”.
We don’t concern ourselves with “the poor”, “the handicapped”, “the disenfranchised”, “the disadvantaged”, “the rich”, “the privileged”, “the flatulent”, or those with other forms of gastrointestinal distress.
We’re all pretty much about being the best person you can and doing the right thing as often as you can. It’s not a religion.
Bart,
And yet there is Buddhist “practice”, to include prayer wheels, beads and flags. To whom or what do you pray?
In the 1930s, when my dad and granddad were flying around the Canadian Arctic in a Ford Trimotor, Catholic priests “helped” its Indians and Eskimos by praying for them all winter in southern comfort, then in spring collected fox furs from them in recompense for this service.
There are various sects of Buddhism Greg. I’m a Zen Buddist myself and we don’t have western accouterments such as payer beads.
I don’t pray to anyone in particular.
Sorry, Gloateus and of course Buddhist. 🙂 No spelling corrections here!
BTW, “payer beads” was intentional 🙂
No Mahabrahma in Zen?
Buddhism lacks a creator god, but does have gods and spirits. Maybe Zen doesn’t.
“Payer” is good.
An ex-GF of mine who should have known better, as a DA in OR, was ripped off by Tibetan Buddhist monks.
Does a Buddist drink Bud or smoke bud?
Gloateus, I don’t drink Bud anymore 🙂 Gave it up a long time ago…
What about bud?
No, Zen doesn’t have spirits or gods, only questions 🙂
As to “bud”? We;;, I’d have to say in my experience it’s a matter of personal preference?
Of course you already know the “;” key is right next to the “l” key. That should explain everything 🙂
Well, you really need to be careful around those Tibetans. They’ve been engaged in a very quiet, non-violent, civil “war” for about fifty years. They may have strayed a bit from the way.
So far, I haven’t heard they’ve shot anyone?
Bart,
This Zen master says that, while Buddhism lacks a creator god, dharma, being outside this world, has some elements in common with the concept of God in the Abrahamic religions. He makes it sound more like the Christian concept of the Logos, the Word, than of the triune God, however.
Gloateus: If you at all curious, I suggest reading the Mumonkan and Hekigan Roku to begin.
It appears to me that the Dalai Lama has surrendered to the Communist Chinese.
“Dharma, being outside this world”.
This is hardly the place to discuss Zen, but I’d encourage you to explore the concept of “outside” in more detail. Consider what is outside, what is inside? Is there a difference? How so? In what ways? is that difference quantifiable in any way? To what extent is the “observer” independent of the “observed”?
And of course, the first question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
That’s as far into evangelism as I’m willing to go. There’s plenty of literature on the subject, you’ve already discovered YouTube. It’s very accessible, much more so than even 50 years ago.
Believe it or not, there was a time not so long ago I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that question!
Now, I can’t remember it.
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Finger snapping, Daddy-O!
Janice,
IMO you miss his point.
It’s precisely because religions pretend to help the poor that they need them.
“The poor ye will have with ye alway”, and many religions want to keep it that way, rather then helping the poor become rich.
Another who confuses religion and church. It is the church which pretends to help the poor, religion advises US to help our kin and the poor.
No confusion.
What is a church but an organized religion?
Every church that I am familiar with helps the poor. It’s government that pretends to help the poor but instead traps them in poverty.
It seems to me that religions can’t want things, Gloateus, and that a (sincere) religious leader/pastor has no rational motivation to keep their followers/flock poor. What fakers and con artists might do in the name of religion is another matter, as it is with fakers and con artists in any realm . . like science for instance ; )
John,
Every organized religion relies upon donations. Few if any equal the best non-religious charities in share of donations put to good use.
Tax-exempt churches mostly help themselves:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/houston-flood-photos-show-joel-183700031.html
I quit donating to my church because of its membership in the commie Council of Churches. It sends missionaries to Africa and Latin America, but they do more converting than helping. At least my young cousins get the chance to improve their Spanish in Guatemala.
I sort of hope you all understand I’m not “evangelical” or anything. We don’t pray to anyone and we don’t help “the poor”, unless you consider the idea we have some sort of obligation to descend from a state of nirvana to assist those who haven’t yet done that. Makes no sense to me, never had it happen, think it’s probably bullshit.
“Many religions want to keep it that way”
When it comes to intent I do not see that in dominance at all. As to effect, well that is a mixed bag, but in general true charity, true giving of work, time and finances, is mainly beneficial.
This Pope unfortunately supports government statism to ” demand” charity, which requires making people subjects to other fallible people, engendering the ” evil bastard” gene to come into power.
But then, I’m just a Buddhist. I make no claim at all to being a “good” Buddhist.
Gloteous . .
“Every organized religion relies upon donations.”
Again, religions are not conscious entities, such that they can want or rely on anything at all, I truly believe. You can believe they are, and so might be motivated by things humans are not, but a human leader/pastor would naturally want their followers/flock to be able to donate more, it seem blatantly obvious to me.
I realize many people speak (and apparently some think) in anthropomorphic terms about organizations and such, as you did, but they are just silly/immature people to me, if they actually believe it and “reason” based on what comes into their minds along those lines . .
David A September 3, 2017 at 2:17 pm
Catholic saint Mother Teresa surely wanted to keep the poor poor and the sick in pain.
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2013/03/01/mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint/
Instead of liberating women from constant reproduction, she wanted them to keep making more suffering and dying babies. If she cared about curing poverty, she’d have advocated for birth control and jobs for women.
At least the Vatican heard from anti-theist Hitchens, author of “Missionary Position”, which blew the lid of Teresa, and an Indian critic as “devil’s advocates” in her sanctification hearings. But sainthood was a foregone conclusion, given her celebrity statue.
John.
Churches are religious institutions, which most certainly can and do want things.
And thus the response of a self-proclaimed Devil’s Advocate ………….
In actuality, most all group Religions (capital R) thrived, or are thriving, simply because of the “fear and/or ignorance” of the people who truly believe what their nurtured or chosen Religious doctrine stipulates. And that is not inclusive of/with the Leaders or Leadership of said group Religion.
So what, those per se Biblical “commands” are not enforceable by the Leaders or Leadership. At least not since the Church of Rome lost its dictatorial control over the people of western Europe.
And if the truth be known, those per se Biblical “commands” concerning the “poor” were included in the Bible’s contents/context solely for the purpose of instilling in the minds of the poor, ….. “hopes n’ dreams” of better things to come.
“HA” 😊, to be precisely, …. Religions don ‘t pretend anything.
But the Religious doctrine, its Leaders and/or Leadership are guilty of a lot of “pretending”.
Gloateous,
“Churches are religious institutions, which most certainly can and do want things.”
I say that’s silly, and truly nonscientific thinking, sir. People can want things (and God can want things, I believe), but institutions are not people or Gods, obviously. (This is a form of (primitive) occultism you are preaching, in my eyes, and your propensity for speaking in absolutes like that, as though we readers are to take your every conception and idea to be the utterances of some sort of man-god, is kid stuff to me . . kid ; )
Samuel,
Seriously, how come statements like this . .
“In actuality, most all group Religions (capital R) thrived, or are thriving, simply because of the “fear and/or ignorance” of the people who truly believe what their nurtured or chosen Religious doctrine stipulates.”
. . are framed as though you yourself were an infallible God or something? Why no *it seems to me*, or *I am convinced*, or the like? I caution against . . megalomania ; )
John,
Institutions most certainly do want things. The goal of political parties, for instance. is to win elections.
JohnKnight -September 3, 2017 at 3:33 pm
John K, now “facts are facts” …….. and “indisputable facts are indisputable facts”, regardless of whether or not you or anyone else chooses to believe them or accept them to be scientifically viable entities.
And John K, just because I “jerked your chain” about the fantasy of your nurtured Religious beliefs does not make me a “megalomaniac”. If your nurtured belief in/of an “infallible God” or the ”God of the Bible” …….. is what turns-your-crank …… or appeases and satisfies your emotional needs, then so be it
I am a learned scientist who employs common sense thinking, logical reasoning and intelligent deductions for determining factuality, and once factuality has been determined it would be asinine and dishonest for me to be constantly saying/stating ….. “*it seems to me*, or *I am convinced*”.
John K, the literal fact is, …… in association or conjunction with your inherited “survival traits” that are included in your DNA, ……. “You are what your environment nurtured you to be”.
John, anything and/or everything that you “learn today” (new info/data) is highly dependent upon what you learned yesterday, and every yesterday in succession back to the day that you were born.
And it was sometime during all those past “yesterdays” that you were nurtured with your Religious beliefs. The same as you were nurtured to speak, read and write the language of your parent(s) or guardian(s).
Samuel Cogar, anything and/or everything that you “learn today” (new info/data) is highly dependent upon what you learned yesterday, and every yesterday in succession back to the day that you were born.
And it was sometime during all those past “yesterdays” that you were nurtured with your Religious beliefs. The same as you were nurtured to speak, read and write the language of your parent(s) or guardian(s).
Your words, not mine. According to you, your own religious beliefs are a product of YOUR upbringing.
Your determination of “factuality” is coloured by your own religious beliefs, whether that means that you dismiss God as non-existent or that you worship Him as Lord. Wherever you fall on the scale, your world view determines what you find to be “factual”.
Gloateus, did you actually link to a Yahoo news story that’s based on Twitter storm? Joel Osteen posted a bunch of pics showing the church was flooded – that’s good enough for me. Truth be told, I looked up the history of the building, and found out it had four feet of water in it during Allison. Then his pics were good enough for me.
Mark,
Osteen tweeted his own lame excuse, which was that streets were flooded around his church. But people on the spot tweeted photos showing that it wasn’t flooded itself:
http://www.tmz.com/2017/08/28/joel-osteen-lakewood-church-houston-floods/
Gloateus, now TMZ?! You’re just messing with me, aren’t you? I was talking about some pics in one of the links in that Yahoo article that look like they’re inside the church. A church spokesman claimed the water was at the top of some 10′ floodgates they installed because of the building’s history of flooding. But you’re right, he also gave several other excuses (gotta cover all the bases, man.) I was just giving you trouble about your source, and making a joke that Osteen’s word is good enough for me … if it’s his word against the MSM’s, and history backs him up.
Did I see on another thread that you were at Fort Sill? I was a 34Y (tacfire tech) there in the 80s.
Monna M – September 4, 2017 at 6:00 pm
Monna M, please educate (self nurture) yourself to the fact that …… Religious (capital ‘R’) beliefs and religious (small ‘r’) beliefs refers specifically to two (2) different entities.
Likewise, when one refers to “the State of New York” …….. verses …… “a state of confusion”.
So, Monna M, ……. “GETTA CLUE”, …… my own brain/mind is not cluttered up, confused, bedazzled or bewildered by a host of NURTURED Religious (capital ‘R’) beliefs pertaining to the existence of invisible sky “pixies”, Gods and/or Goddesses …… that are nothing more than “illusions” or “hallucinations” created by the “imagination” potential of the human brain/mind.
And “YES”, my own brain/mind is “chock full” of, per se, religious (small ‘r’) beliefs pertaining to thousands of different “nurtured” entities.
But, ….. Monna M, ……. when one is discussing the functioning of the brain-mind, the word “belief” is not applicable, ……. simply because it is nothing more than an imaginary “thingy” created by the conscious mind to explain the functioning of the subconscious mind, …… which one’s conscious mind is not aware of the existence of.
The literal fact is, ……. “the conscious mind is subservient to the subconscious mind”.
For a more detailed explanation of the above, you should read this published commentary which I am the author of.
Jimmy H., evil religions thrive on the ignorant [often poor]; but especially, such thrive on those with a broken moral compass.
Educate all humankind is a fashion truly in the sense classically liberal, where the respect for the inalienable rights of all is the central focus [regardless of from where those rights eminate], and religion, guided by such a moral compass, can be realized to be a very powerful vehicle for good … over all of this world.
Religions which respect this basic notion of rights, for one and all, are truly good; whereas, those, regardless of how they advertise themselves, which do not respect such rights, are truly evil.
IMO, somewhere and somehow in the future, it will serve us all best when collectively we are all able to find the strength and wisdom to recognize one from the other.
Chris that’s verging on insensible; the Earth is far from inanimate. I honestly found that simple assertion a dagger in the heart of your argument. I stopped reading right there.
There’s my critique. You blew it on the second sentence.
Chris, you have a whole lot of good things to say, good points to make, incisive scientific observations and a few keen mathematical insights and a podium from which to speak with some authority. Please don’t waste it on trivialities like this?
You honestly need a bit more work on simple rhetoric?
Dear Mr. Bartelby,
The Latin term “anima” or “animus” is the translation of the Greek word “psyche.” Both are used in Christian theology to mean “the soul.” (Source: http://biblehub.com/greek/5590.htm )
Re: animals, per Ecclesiastes 3:21, the “spirit” of an animal may, or may not, be eternal and go on to paradise. We simply do not know. Mainstream theology teaches that animals do not have “souls” which can believe in Jesus and, thus, become “new creatures in Christ.” This doesn’t mean we know that animals are not, in a glorified form, in heaven. It means that what is part of accepted doctrine about who can be saved is only the positive and definite, not the speculative. I, for one, choose to believe that animals, or, at least (smile), dogs, elephants, and dolphins, go to heaven (needless to say, this is not orthodox theology) 🙂 .
Thus, dear Bartleby, your mistake was in forgetting to whom Lord Monckton was addressing his above letter: to one who will understand exactly what is meant by the terms Monckton used.
Good to see you posting away as faithfully as always! 🙂
Your ally across the sea for science truth,
Janice
Please forgive my misspelling of your name, Mr. Bartleby.</b.
No Janice I hadn’t forgotten the derivations of the word “inanimate”, which is also the root of “animation” and several other words involving motion.
The simple fact is the Earth is, by any definition other than mystical, far from inanimate. It moves, and it moves with a purpose in my opinion and observation.
It isn’t my real name Janice so I take no offense when you misspell it 🙂
And, BTW? I misspell it at least half the time 🙂
Allow me to correct that misunderstanding?
I don’t write anything “faithfully”. Nothing at all.
“Spiritus” is a better Latin translation of “ψυχή”, since both literally mean “breath”. But used in the figurative sense of “soul”, “anima” works.
However, in Genesis 1, the Septuagint translates the Hebrew “wə·rū·aḥ” (וְר֣וּחַ, wind) as “πνεῦμα”, Latinized as “spiritus”. It also has to do with breathing, air and the lungs. We have adopted the same Greek word in pneumonia and pneumatic, but Greek “pneuma” is best translated as “wind”.
Ms. M., my family’s dog was a wonderful little creature who went by the name of REGINA MARIA. (she’s in heaven)…
Nah, I disagree. Rhetoric is one thing the Viscount is quite good at. It makes a good contrast to the following sentence. “Hear the cry of the poor”. After all, who can actually hear the cry of a rock? It is the living things that cry out. A nice rejection of the high-thinking animism while concreting the discussion on something real.
However, Lord Monkton, please recall that the Gallileo trial was not about whether the Earth is Flat, but was instead about whether the Earth moved. In addition, he was also accused of believing in atoms (which was considered contrary to the eucharist) and disobeying a direct command from the pope. It’s the last one, annoying those in power and essentially contempt of court, that really got him in trouble.
If you want an example of church hypocrisy on science, I would suggest instead referring to Copernicus, whose book was banned while the church simultaneously used the calculations therein for forming the Gregorian calendar.
Quite Right! This flat earth rubbish is too often raised when writing of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Patriarch Bartholomew isn’t the head of the Orthodox Church. There are other Patriarchs and other Orthodox Churches. Orthodoxy is world wide. the followers are second in number only to the Roman Catholic Church.
see orthodoxwiki.org/Main_Page. he is head of the Church of Constantinople. The claim that this church is first among equals is often heard,though.
orthodoxwiki.org/Bartholomew_I_(Archontonis)_of_Constantinople
The attitude to science can easily be found on line. Some, indeed, of the clergy were scientists before becoming presbyters.
Yes, Lord Monckton should know better that the Church had long before adopted the Ptolemaic system of spheres nested around a central, immobile but spherical earth. The biblical flat earth had been generally rejected by the Church for a thousand years in AD 1600, although Early Church Fathers had insisted on it, based upon Scripture. Augustine, c. AD 400, advocated rejecting biblical literalism and adopting pagan science in order to help propagate the Faith.
I don’t think Mr. Monckton is confused about the flat earth/Galileo aspect, but rather just used that label as a sort of catchall for bygone “consensus of the world” views . .
“Finally, you demand that the global governing elite should “support the consensus of the world” to prevent global warming. There was once a consensus that the world was flat. Yet, as Galileo Galilei reminded one of your predecessors, science is not done by consensus, which is merely a canting euphemism for some grim, totalitarian Party Line or another.”
I suspect he meant to trigger some hasty assumptions, but can’t be sure of course . .
John,
Hope you’re right. He should know better that the issue in the Galileo case was not the general shape of the earth, but whether it moves or not, and its relationship to the sun and planets.
The Catholic Church abandoned the biblical flat earth by around AD 600.
Gloateous,
Please realize; When you write something like this;
“The Catholic Church abandoned the biblical flat earth by around AD 600.”
I just think YOU think that’s true. I know of no serious reason to think the Catholic Church didn’t adopt the then centuries old Greek intellectual’s view that the earth is ball shaped. If you have actual evidence that the Catholic Church doctrines included a flat earth model, you need to present it . .
John,
I have frequently presented evidence that doctors of the Catholic Church, the teachers of its doctrine were indeed flat-earthers. Anyone who has ever studied church history knows this. Had you done so, you would have read Augustine’s “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis”, in which he argues for abandoning biblical cosmology for the pagan scientific model.
Biblical cosmology is a flat earth covered by a solid dome, or in one version, a covering like a tent. However, the pagan Ptolemaic system shared with the biblical view an immobile earth, so was acceptable to the Church, despite being spherical rather than flat.
Yet again, here are some of the Early Church Fathers who advocated a flat earth, based upon biblical scripture. All Catholic doctrine before the 19th century was of course geocentric.
Lactantius (c. AD 250 to c. 325), Christian writer and adviser to the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, ridiculed the notion of the Antipodes, inhabited by people “whose footsteps are higher than their heads”. In his “Divine Institutes”, after presenting some arguments he attributes to advocates for a spherical heaven and Earth, he writes:
“But if you inquire from those who defend these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne to the middle, and that they are all joined together towards the middle, as we see spokes in a wheel; but that the bodies that are light, as mist, smoke, and fire, are borne away from the middle, so as to seek the heaven. I am at a loss what to say respecting those who, when they have once erred, consistently persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another.”
Diodorus of Tarsus (d. c. 390), a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus’ opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism. Chrysostom (c. 349 to 407), one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church and Archbishop of Constantinople, in “Homilies Concerning the Statues”, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath the firmament. Athanasius the Great, Church Father and Patriarch of Alexandria, expressed a similar view in “Against the Heathen”.
Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but “travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall”. Basil of Caesarea (329–79), anticipating Augustine, argued that the matter was theologically irrelevant.
The influential theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine (354 to 430), one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Western Church, in his seminal “City of God”, also objected to the “fable” of an inhabited Antipodes:
“But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.”
But, as noted, he argued that cosmology was less important than propagating the faith, so Christians shouldn’t insist on a flat, tent-covered earth.
But many didn’t take his advice. “Christian Topography” (547) by the Alexandrian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who had traveled as far as Sri Lanka and the source of the Blue Nile, is now widely considered the most valuable geographical document of the early medieval age, although it received relatively little attention from contemporaries. In it, the author repeatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, the Earth below the firmament and heaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments from scripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, 400 day’s journey long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament. He contemptuously dismisses as “pagan” the spherical Earth theory.
From its very first chapter, the Bible makes clear that earth is flat, surrounded by waters, supported by pillars and covered by a solid dome, from which hang the stars, while the sun and moon pass over it through openings in the dome. Also, God walks on the dome, personally operating the levers of the storehouses of snow and rain.
This is the standard pre-scientific Near Eastern cosmology, which Greek science challenged from about 600 BC on. Even in the New Testament the earth is flat, as shown by the Temptation of Christ and Revelation, which is remarkable given ancient Greek demonstrations of its sphericity.
John,
This Wiki entry is good as far as it goes, but it leaves out a lot of important material on early and late Hebrew cosmology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology
For instance, while it mentions the “agon” model, it fails to note that the struggle with the sea monster comes straight from the Sumerian original.
And it doesn’t discuss the Book of Enoch in sufficient detail, in which Enoch visits the heavens and its anthropomorphic denizens. Enoch was the second most popular book in Jesus’ Essene community. Most of it didn’t make it into the Masoretic text because Enoch, like Christ, went straight to heaven.
It is only certain Slavic sects which rely on the book of Enoch! There is no Enoch in the Orthodox Bible. AND Remember it was put together by the Council of Churches,
Don’t trust wikipedia for information on Christianity especially the Early Church.. It has no authority at all, just a list of personal opinions of the contributors.
Esssenes? Jesus was not an Essene.
Here BTW is a lecture to which I referred before, by Fr Gregory Hallam of Manchester. He writes the Antioch Abouna blog . Here is a lecture about Christianity and Science.http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/frgregory-853054-orthodoxy-and-science/
from the Orthodox Church point of view. But hat is not what the blog entry is about.
The blog entry here is about Viscount Monckton’s views in a letter to Christian leaders . But he got the leadership of the Orthodox Churches wrong. The Patriarch is only the patriarch of Constantinople and has not the same authority as the Pope. therefore the rest of his observations will be ignored. Falsus in unum…..
ME,
You are mistaken. Before being discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, where it was so popular, the Book of Enoch was known only from the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, which includes it.
Jesus was in fact an Essene. His doctrine was theirs. Their settlements were in the Galilee, although the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in Judean caves.
I agree of course that the Patriarch of Constantinople doesn’t have the same degree of authority in Orthodoxy as does the Pople in Roman Catholicism.
But that any high official of any Christian denomination should embrace the anti-human dogma of CACA is an abomination.
Neo-Babylonians (Chaldeans) had a more advanced cosmology, with a different firmament, ie “heaven”, for the sun, moon and each of the planets (hence “seventh heaven”). It’s possible that after released from the Babylonian Captivity by the Persians, Judeans might have altered their cosmology along those lines. But this is the simpler Hebrew cosmology from before the Captivity, in line with earlier Mesopotamian and Egyptian concepts:
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/files/2012/11/Ancient-Hebrew-view-of-universe.png
A Babylonian unbaked clay tablet with a map of the world and cosmos as then understood, plus text:
http://cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/103_Babylonian_World.html
As in the Bible, land is surrounded by waters. The “Heavenly Ocean”, ie “the waters above” the firmament, as in Genesis 1, contain the animals of the constellations.
But then “Lord Christopher of Monkton”, might also be considered a “nom de plume” by others as well, so I feel morally ensconced.
Well it might be if he used it ! He is not a lord and does not claim to be one. She what he uses as “nom de plume” at the top of the post:
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I believe he does have the right to use the title Viscount.
It’s not a nom de plume. It’s a legal title.
He is Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
You don’t use your legal name as a nom de plume. In that case, it wouldn’t be one.
Bartleby, are you familiar with the term “pathetic fallacy”?
Not formally, no. In the past the title has been used. I’m sorry but I’ve missed the point you were trying to make? I thought mine was very clear and had nothing at all to do with title.
The Papacy has always been in the Caesar business and probably unavoidably so. What worries me is that I think it unlikely the Pope will ever read the letter. And that is the problem like so much else in communicating to often well-intentioned people worldwide that the science has never been settled and that AGW is an increasingly dubious speculation, the costs of which in misspent resources and unnecessary human suffering is staggering. Perhaps we should all send the Pope a piece of coal with a copy of the letter sent by 400 scientists to the UN listing the 10 items of evidence required to prove AGW that haven’t turned up yet.
Not for the first 3 centuries after Julius he hasn’t.
Popes after Julius II were also war leaders.
Indeed, the only period from at least the 8th to 21st centuries in which the pope wasn’t a secular ruler was 1870 to 1929. From 1861, the Papal States lost most of their land to the new Italian state, until in 1870 they also lost their last vestige of territory in Rome, the Vatican. Mussolini made Vatican City a mini-state in 1929.
I say “at least”, since before the Papal States was the Duchy of Rome, which from c. AD 533 the pope held as a nominal vassal of the Byzantine Emperor, in his struggle with the Lombards in northern Italy. The Papal States date from c. AD 751.
So, indeed, for most of the history of the papacy, the pope has been a secular ruler as well as a religious pontiff, putative Vicar of Christ on Earth.
For its first three centuries, the Catholic Church was persecuted, so couldn’t own property in its own name. Then Emperpr Constantine legalized it and possibly himself donated the Lateran Palace to the church, which then acquired other properties, but was still without its own state. That changed when the Byzantine emperor needed help fighting the Lombards.
The Duchy of Rome covered roughly the same area as the modern Italian administrative region of Latium. The later Papal States cut clear across the peninsula, from Ravenna, seat of the emperor’s exarch, in the NE, on the Adriatic, to near Naples in the SW.
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
Chris Monkton, like many other campaigners on both sides of the debate, is a grandstander. Personally, I couldn’t stand the pompous ass when he was in politics, and whilst he does stick his neck out (and regularly has his head chopped off by the MSM) for a cause I wholeheartedly support, he’s still a pompous ass. If one day the AGW light switch was flicked and the subject turned off, Chris would run for president of the world claiming to have single handedly fought the good fight and won.
However, asides from that, I think the point we all regularly overlook is that the world is missing a golden opportunity, whilst wringing it’s hands over climate change.
The Medieval Warm Period was notable for its Cathedral building because food was so easy to come by that people had time on their hands to actually gain employment for a living to build them.
Our current 20th/21st Century is offering the world the same opportunity; bountiful harvest’s, before the winter, and ‘intelligent’ man is ignoring it because science is getting in the way.
The planet has greened over the last 30 years and in our pursuit for scientific perfection, we are all ignoring the plight of the poverty stricken and hungry by not ensuring their health and prosperity. Instead, we play with science on a global scale, endlessly debating the AGW issue, whilst ignoring the opportunity medieval man flourished on.
This really is our collective crime against humanity. We kid ourselves that we know what the weather is going to do tomorrow, or the climate next year; we actually waste money on educating people to predict the future, but fail to deal with the present.
Will the earth warm or cool in our living future? No one knows, and pronouncements on the subject are no better than those made about a flat earth or the existence of a deity,
What do we know about tomorrow? People will die because they are denied basic food whilst the planet is offering us more than we can eat.
We might have a cataclysmic global warming event next week, or a cataclysmic cooling event next year, who knows? Frankly, who cares? I’m happily, spiritually at peace with my future fate, nor do I believe there’s an afterlife. When it’s over, it’s over, and I find the climate change debate is united in one thing only, our Western culture is irrationally afraid of death.
What’s certain is though, that whilst Nero fiddles, Rome burns. Global greening is telling us all something, and the West sits around on it’s fat arse and debates an event we have no control over, whilst nature is offering us control over starvation.
As far as religion goes, when I asked a Geography teacher what he thought of God, he said “I’m a religious man and I believe he exists, but unlike my contemporaries, I think he put us on this planet to get on with it without his interference. He gave us a chance, now it’s up to us.”
That’s about as close to religion as I get.
Many Protestant denominations have also drunk the CACA Kool-Aid.
Even the Southern Baptist Convention is or was divided on the non-issue.
“14th century solution to 21st century non-problem” What a great line (-:
Yeah, sounds great but totally inaccurate. Just like the climate “science” he wishes denounce.
Wind turbines are not mills and in the 14ht c. no one even knew what electricity was let alone how to create it from the wind.
Yeah, 19th century would have been more accurate.
Greg, …… the majority of all the Dutch “windmills” were not actually “mills”.
DUH!!!, …… they were actually “water pumps”.
“Wind turbines are not mills and in the 14ht c. no one even knew what electricity was …”
Well, Monckton’s point is less open to criticism if reworded as “relying on wind power is a 14th century, pre-industrial solution …”
When did they start calling them Wind “Turbines” instead of Windmills? My guess is pretty close to the time they dumped “Global Warming” in favor of “Climate Change” In any case, the absolute accuracy of Brenchley’s wisecrack isn’t the point. The point is that trying to produce useful power from a technology that long ago was abandoned in favor of more reliable means is stupid.
A mill is a grinder, a turbine is an electricity generator.
Pope might be a supreme leader, but on this side we take very little notice of Patriarch’s extremely rare pronouncements. Majority of us have to google his title to get the correct name.
Poopus Goofus the First entertains a climatology that is as flawed as his theology. The man is a bald faced hairy tick. As a cradle Catholic one may say it seems our poor Church is in chastisement. Without God anything is possible.
May I assume you didn’t, by typo, mean to write “bald faced hairy stick”? Or perhaps “bald faced hairy dick”?
It’s really difficult to parse since I’ve never even heard of a “hairy tick”?
heretic==> hairy tick
Should have just smacked me on the forehead.
Thanks, I’ll never forget “hairy tick” again.
I did sort of like the “hairy dick” interpretation…
Your Lordship, please stop saying lithium miners. Lithium is produced in Chile, Argentina, Australia and a few others, not in Africa. The first st three countries produce 95% or more of lithium which is used in batteries for electronics, electric cars, and general use. It will soon be produced on a large scale in Quebec, Canada. You must be thinking of “Coltan” – tantalum-niobium, which like blood diamonds are not the problem they once were more than a decade or more ago. Or rare earth metals (Lanthanides: mainly neodymium and dysprosium used in windmill power gen) mined in China by, in most cases illegal miners, using sulphuric acid poured into dug pits to extract the rare earth metals (RE – there are 15 of these unusual metals that, in addition to use in field magnets for generators and motors, give us phosphors for color television, crystals for lasers, etc.
I noted the lithium error in a recent article and forgot to correct this for you in a comment I made. Cheers GP
Which is why I urged His Lordship to mention environmental abuses in China.
In support of windmill and PV panel production.
Current Chinese communist leadership professes allegiance to AGW by selling billions worth of components to the green industry, while at the same time sabotages green policies at the full throttle.
The other major commy, the comrade Vladimir wouldn’t even know what a solar panel is; his latest proclamation :
“Climate change brings in more favourable conditions and improves the economic potential of this (Arctic) region,”
Putin also defended the appointment of a global warming sceptic to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. He said that people like Scott Pruitt, the agency’s new head, “may not be at all silly” because, ultimately, “global warming will continue anyway, anyhow”,
“It isn’t about preventing global warming. I agree with those people who believe it is impossible. It may be related to some global cycles or some greater outer space cycles. It’s about how to adjust ourselves to it. The local communities will get adjusted”
Obviously Vlad isn’t a warmunist but a ‘cyclomaniac’ .
In the beginning (of the business of religion) Man created God, but business was poor, nobody was going to pay for protection from God. The priesthood thought long and hard and created a Consensus (heretics were swiftly dealt with): The Devil. Business boomed, cathedrals built, coarse priestly garb replaced with the finest silks, annual pilgrimages started to all the Holy Sites. Governments rejoiced, here was hidden taxation, most people actually wanted to pay, and anyway you had to pay because the priesthood made the fundamentals of life part of the religion: birth, marriage, death.
Yes, but the Church of CACA has done them one better by figuring out how to tax breathing.
So saidith: climanrecon
And so writeith did Sam C, to wit:
(the following was excerpted from a commentary that I authored)
“A need for religious beliefs arises.
As the individuals within these groups became more intelligent and knowledgeable of their environment they began to question those things they were subjected to that they didn’t understand, including thunder, lightning, the seasons and their own origins. And when such questions arise in social groups of humans their leader(s) were queried for an answer to them. But their leaders no longer had any memories of, or the access to any of the alien explorers that originally created humans, to nurture them on their origins, or any historical records that would explain things to them. Therefore, the leaders and/or oldest members of these isolated groups were forced to use their imagination to create acceptable “reasons” for said origins in order to appease the curiosity of the individuals in said group.
Thus, Gods and Goddesses were thought up to “explain the unexplainable”. And the isolation of the different groups of humans resulted in differences in their imagined “reasons”, otherwise known as “religious beliefs”. Our knowledge of said religious beliefs are recorded in both the archeological and historical records of past cultural groups, of which some are the root source of most all present-day Religions.
A per say, ….. Religious belief decent with modifications, ….. from the polytheism worshipping of the past to the monotheism worshipping of the present.”
Cheers
.johnsanidopoulos.com/2014/02/a-gifted-scientist-who-became-orthodox.html
For the attention of his Lordship. If he ever reads this blog!
example.
Metropolitan Nicholas (Hatzinikolaou) of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki
He studied Physics at the University of Thessaloniki where he received his Bachelors in 1976, and after serving in the army he continued his studies at Harvard and M.I.T. where he received his Masters of Arts and Masters in Science, and then in a combined program of Harvard and M.I.T. (HST = Health-Sciences-Technology) he received his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering in 1986.
Many presbyterss have served in the armies of various regions of the earth. There are even Orthodox in Britain for his Lordship to consult.
The Antiochian Orthodox in Manchester come to mind
http://antiochabouna.blogspot.co.nz/2017/05/rolling-back-darkness.html
On number of occasions I went to the one of the most popular, the Saint Sophia Cathedral (Greek but welcomes all Orthodox) in Bayswater, London.
Let me sign my name to Lord Monckton’s open letter. It speaks for me.
The title notwithstanding, the “lithium mine” picture is one of a BHP Billiton’s Escondida copper mine in Chile.
George,
I made a mistake of typing in “Escondida LITHIUM mine in Chile”, . . . .found the image
in fact just type in “LITHIUM MINE” on its own . . . . . !
and find all the images including lots of this one on the front page staring straight back at you, so even I or you would have got it wrong .
dont trust that naughty old web `images` thing . . .
I also note that the web suggests that Escondida is a multi-output copper/gold/silver mine (NASA also said so)
Here’s a typical Chilean Atacama Desert salar (salt flat) lithium mine, showing the brine pools and processing areas:
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/lithium-mining-chile-2.jpg
Bolivia and Argentina are also blessed with lithium-rich salars.
Loathe as I am to cite the Guardian, this article is actually pretty good. One of its reporters is named Rod Nickel!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/23/battery-lithium-south-america-chile-argentina-bolivia
hear the cry of the poor, because: intrinsic value, charity
no prophecies, secular or otherwise, required.
Oooh a Scribe and a Pharisee:
Brilliant.
Silly , you mean. See the reference to Antioch Abouna for lecture on Science and Religion.Unless you prefer to remain ignorant of the subject. Ignorance is bliss,after all. So I hear.
ME,
Any cleric who advocates CACA is at best a Pharisee. But more accurately and enemy of humanity and of God.
Although many are familiar with the sounds of Catholic or Anglican songs, the Orthodox sound may be unfamiliar to some, here is an example of a well known hymn: Praise the Lord by Sergey Rahmaninov
If God ever has his son return, those guys will be sacked on the spot.
Did you mean the singers? 😉 Russian Orthodox choirs singing Rachmaninoff are a bit hard to take but are not the only kind of Orthodox music. Russia has a large Orthodox Church even after the persecutions of the last century . However this is not the place to debate such things.
We are debating the odd ideas that Christopher Monckton has about Christianity, Western and Eastern and Science. Why does he have them ? He has not looked into the subject and so is not qualified to speak.
we can advise his lordship to look it up next time there is plenty on the internet so long as he doesn’t consult sites like wikipedia which are not academically sound.
pontiff can eat my a*s
Benedict XVI was forced out because he wouldn’t carry the Communist flag and worship at the AGW alter. Francis is the cabal’s handpicked replacement.
markl, okay, I will bite: give us your link — or links — which provide evidence/logic which “best” support this hypothesis of yours regarding Ben XVI. TIA.
http://bwcentral.org/2015/10/was-there-a-coup-in-the-vatican-to-depose-pope-benedict-xvi/
Some cardinals have proudly admitted to being part of the “mafia” which successfully pulled off a palace coup against Benedict. Danneels had by the time of the Marxist Francis resigned however. The “mafia” was the Sankt Gallen group of liberation theology Marxists opposed to the conservative doctrines of the previous two popes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfried_Danneels#Danneels_and_Liberation_Theology
“Food, glorious food: As CO2 and temperature have risen, so have crop yields”.
Er … correlation does not imply causation? Might there perhaps be other reasons for increased plant yields? Like plant breeding?
Lab tests have proven it. Papers have been written on it. A search of CO2 improved growth will give you many reports.
Excellent! Then why weren’t these excellent sources quoted under the illustration? As written, the reader is entitled to assume that this is just pure supposition.
Bob,
More CO2 isn’t the only reason why crop yields have increased in recent decades, but it’s a big reason. There have been innumerable experiments demonstrating what is simply intuitive on its face, ie that more plant nutrient in the air will make for more plant mass.
Having four CO2 molecules per 10,000 dry air molecules now instead of three, as a century ago, is sure to make for more plant food (carbohydrate, ie sugar). Land plants use CO2 from the air and water from the ground to make their food, sugar. With more of the essential gas in the air, they need leave their leaf stomata open for less time to get the CO2 they need, which saves on water, since less transpires to the air. Plants can then grow in drier areas and make more sugar for the same amount or even less water.
CAM and C4 plants benefit less from more CO2 than C3 plants, obviously.
Your “Lordship”
your photo of a lithium mine is of a large modern, open-pit (open-cast) mine, and it’s been widely circulated on the net as an example of “something bad” connected with lithium mining. One blogger opined that it’s the Escondida copper mine in Chile. Here is a photo of the Greenbushes lithium mine in WA. Greenbushes has colossal reserves that could quite possibly supply world demand. Being in Oz, you can be sure that workers are well paid and operate in a safe environment. You can also be sure that there no hazmat leaks into the environment. And when mining is finished, the pit will probably fill up with water and become an attraction – note the absence of rust – no sulphides to mess up the water.. Perhaps it will be WA’s only freshwater lake?
I agree that lithium brine extraction in Chile looks a bit messy but is nothing like that awful cobalt-tantalum-niobium mine in the DRC that we saw on WUWT a couple of weeks ago.
We need mines whatever sources of power we have.
In the future they will no doubt have to go deeper and create worse scars to get what we need for our technological society.
And without technology, the Earth has no hope of feeding the vast multitudes which now inhabit our planet.
Simply put, there is stuff in the ground we need, and getting it out is an often messy business.
But any hole dug can be filled back in when it has served it’s purpose…or left to become a lake.
I bet this place looked just awful when this hole was fist excavated:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6ZE0CSqD2a0/UV05EQWG92I/AAAAAAAAENM/cT-Yps2zNqA/s1600/Crater+Lake+Waterfalls+Oregon.jpg
Except that it was excavated explosively all at once, so that the material taken out was spread over a vast area as volcanic ash and pyroclastic flow.
Typo here:
“Getting the bird: in Scotland, windmills now threaten many rate species with extinction”
Should be ” ..rare species…”, no?
Religion == Science
Theology == Paradigm
Churches == Research Institutes
Priest == Scientist
etcetera.
You can find good and bad in any of the above. And in both it’s better to inquire than to criticize!
Please forgive me for seeming to change the subject:
Please can/will someone define for me ‘free trade’?
I thought Willis’ recent writing on the subject (e.g. https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/work-americans-wont-do/ ) was fairly convincing that ‘free trade’ isn’t always a good thing.
Free trade needs also to be fair trade, but seldom if ever is.
The discussion about “windmills as 14th-century technology” is quite interesting from the following point of view: this solution to energy needs (like others such as water-race operated mills) were directly mechanically coupled to the work they were designed to perform. I occurs to me that in the last 100 years may have a blind spot in regard to the possibilities of this kind of power production, since we always (particularly with respect to wind) think in terms of generation via an electric turbine, followed by transport of the electricity to where it will be used. Part of this blindness is that we have come to equate efficiency with rapidity. The electric motor has possibly taught us to overlook the occasions in which slow, continuous mechanical work can get the job done just as efficiently as a short period of high-powered work. The quintessential Dutch ‘windmills’ did not in fact ‘mill’ anything but usually pumped water (by direct mechanical transmission from the rotating vanes to the pumps) from the landward to the seaward side of dykes that were protecting land near or even below sea level. One advantage of the system is that the wettest periods of the year (at least in western Europe) are also the windiest periods, so that the “windmills” were doing the work both where, and when, they were needed. I know a farmer who availed of grant money to install a 18-meter wind turbine in the farmyard, in order to sell electricity into the national grid, in exchange for an allowance from the same grid (around a third, I believe, of the electricity he puts in) for his own needs. Whenever I see the turbine I ask myself the same question: is there anything on the farm using energy (either electrical or fuel powered) for which that same wind could with a bit of ingenuity be used instead ?
As a post-script I’d add that I’ve never heard of (nor can I really imagine) that the slow old Dutch “windmills” killed any of the seabirds which abound in that part of the world. Maybe there are some things we could re-learn from the “14th century”.
Lord Monckton, there’s no flat earth consensus outside the Church since 500 BC. The Pythagoreans believed the world is round
Pope, stop the misinformation. You have bigger problems with immoral priests than global warming
That earth is flat remained the consensus in the ancient Near East for long after 500 BC, but covered with a half sphere (dome) or surrounded by a complete sphere. Among Bible-believing Christians, it continued to dominant until c. AD 600, when the Church adopted the pagan Ptolemaic system as its preferred cosmological model. Still partially biblical, being geocentric, with an immobile earth, but a spherical earth surrounded by nested concentric spheres.
Lord Monckton wrote:
“Hear instead the cry of the poor, who were once denied the wealth-giving, health-giving benefits of electrical power because it was costly. Then, at the very point when advances in exploration and in technology were making electricity affordable to all, the nasty, totalitarian faction that your recent statement on the climate shows you espouse malevolently intervened so that, though the raw-material cost of coal, oil and gas has halved in 30 years, the cost of the electricity they generate has tripled in a generation. Whom does that unreasonable increase in the cost of power harm, first and foremost, but the poor? Do they not spend a greater fraction of what little they have on energy than the rest?”
Bravo Lord Monckton – well said!
I have repeatedly stated as follows:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/27/is-the-european-commission-waking-up-to-electricity-consumer-pain/comment-page-1/#comment-2593478
Cheap, reliable, abundant, DISPATCHABLE energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
Any grid-connected intermittent system like wind or solar power that requires almost 100% conventional backup is grossly uneconomic, and also tends to destabilize the grid.
When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
We have known these facts for decades.
Allan M.R. MacRae, P.Eng.
Reference:
PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals , The Globe and Mail and La Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae 2002.
http://www.apega.ca/members/publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
I completely endorse Lord Moncton’s letter. I understand the comments of the many “analists” who like to pick nits, I am one myself. However, please don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. To point out that windmills are not mills says more about the commenter than it does the letter. Mills is a reference to “dark satanic mIlls”. The Club of Rome, anti fossil fuel, anti-growth movement of the 70’s adopted AGW because it is anti fossil fuels and economic growth. Lord Monckton is beating them with their own stick. The same goes for the flat earth reference, an echo of Obama’s slur. When congress holds hearings on AGW, the democrats say, you can have anyone but Monckton. Every comment in this thread, IMHO, should begin with thanking Lord Moncton for his tireless and effective campaigning against AGW.
“Hear the cry of the earth”
vs.
“The phrase “pathetic fallacy” is a literary term for the attributing of human emotion and conduct to all aspects within nature.” (Wikipedia)
I hear the cry of the poor. The poor who bear more children than they can support because they are forbidden contraception. The poor who are cajoled to hand a significant part of their meagre income over to the church by their local priest for fear of damnation. The whole doctrine of the Roman Catholic church is designed to keep the people poor so that they remain subservient to the power of the church.
The original protection racket. The mafia learned it all from the Church.
And the suffering of the poor and afflicted brings them closer to Christ, who died for their sins.
“Hear the cry of the 7000 people who, in a single cold December some years ago when the entire British land-mass was snow-covered for the first time since records began, died before their time not so much because the weather was cold as because their homes were cold.”
Is there a source for this claim?
According to ONS the number of excess deaths for winter 2010/11 was 26,080, which was at the lower end for winter deaths. Overall the trend seems to be very much downwards.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/chartimage?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2015to2016provisionaland2014to2015final/62192b74
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2015to2016provisionaland2014to2015final
Gloateus & others
I am sure the good lord (Viscount) is right about there being a number of natural cycles in the solar records that can explain the weather on earth as we see it today :
11 year Schwabe cycle
22 year full solar Hale cycle
Gleissberg solar/weather cycle (currently exactly 87 years acc. to my own results, sometimes skipping to more than 100 years when there is a double Min. or double Max. anywhere in between….)
DeVries cycle, reportedly being ca. 210 years
Eddy cycle, ca. 1000 years
De Bray cycle, ca. 2450 years,
which positively explains everything we are seeing in the right sequence, both historically and scientifically !
As far as God is concerned. I am sure we have been over this before/
either 1) God does not exist or 2) He does exist.\ If He does exist there must be a plan?
\
\1) It does not make sense to believe that there is no God because it is not logical. In fact, if you believe there is no God, you are actually saying that you believe that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody, an incredible intelligent and intellectual person (like yourself) with a material body came into being. Now, for you to believe that such a miracle could have happened, you must actually have a much bigger faith than that of a person simply believing and admitting that there is a Higher Power, a God who created him for a specific plan and purpose!
2) God exists. There is a plan. Mathew 25 tells you what would make you qualify to come into His heaven after life on earth. It is showing Him the works of your life from your having faith in Him……The church is there for people to tell you the mistakes they made so that you won’t make the same mistakes…..
But now, you refuse to believe….,
hence you sit with therapists, psychologists and God knows who else (e.g. astrologists) to sort your relational and other problems…..
Better… go to church….(the Body of Christ)
(thanks, Janice, God bless you for standing up when you feel the need to do so)
Henryp
One issue I see is that of choice of belief. One can no more choose one’s belief than one can choose one’s foot size. Yes one can be convinced to believe something different but one cannot actively decide what one believes. I cannot decide today to believe my lawn is purple. I cannot choose to believe the Earth is flat and rests on a giant turtle. I cannot just choose to believe in a god.
Mike
I assume you mean being a Christian as opposed to being Moslim, Jewish, Hindoe or whatever opposite.
You seem to think that it depends on your family’s origin?
I have thought about this a long time and find that it does not matter to God, whether you believe His image is reflected by the sun [Egyptians], stars/planets [Romans] or moon [various countries] or whatever [various].
He/She will speak to you when you seek Him, no matter what age [remember Moses was 80] or what time frame, to tell you what He/She wants you to do.
in our days it made sense to me to believe in Christ as our one God and Savior
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2017/02/20/if-god-exists-why-cannot-we-see-him/
you too, can hear Him.
Henryp
I have no idea what in my comment led you to your assumption, but it is not what I meant.
Let be be more clear. A Christian cannot suddenly decide to be an atheist nor can an atheist choose to believe in a god.
Mike, Gloateus
I can accept anyone being agnostic, because he has not yet heard God’ specific voice calling. There is a lot of evidence of people only hearing God’s voice [clearly] later in their own life. Even Darwin came to belief in God at the end of his life. I find it difficult to accept anyone believing or confessing to be an atheist, because as, as I said, it is not logical. You cannot argue that out of absolutely nothing something physical was created. That makes no sense.
henryp September 5, 2017 at 7:54 am
Belief in a Creator God is not at all logical, and that’s the point. Saying “God made everything and has a plan” explains nothing, hence is not only anti-scientific but totally illogical. You might as well say that mass and energy are properties of space-time. Positing a God doesn’t explain why anything at all should exist. Why should God exist?
The point is that God must remain hidden, as observed by Luther, for faith to be meaningful. If God’s existence could be “proven” logically (which it can’t, thank God), then there would be no scope for faith in His existence.
Hindus have many gods, and other cultures have none at all, as we understand the term. So it is cultural to a large extent.
As for the existence of humans, there is no necessary role in our evolution for God, although you’re always free to inject Him into it at whatever point you want. The mutations and selection processes which led to humans don’t require the intervention of God, however.