Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate liberals appear to view spirituality and faith as a potential weakness they can leverage to achieve their green policy objectives.
Can Spirituality and Religion Help Halt Climate Change?
BY TEMO DIAS
MARCH 13, 2019Elevating the outlook of the common good and criticizing the destructive moral foundations of society can be part of creating the structural change required to combat climate change.
In times global turmoil full of social divisiveness and mounting controversy, it can seem odd to emphasize the importance of spiritual institutions in our drive to halt climate change. However, faith-based delegations flocked to this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP24, in Katowice, Poland, from all corners of our planet. Indigenous leaders, scientists and UN officials rang the bell for attention to the foundational role spirituality plays in halting the growing existential catastrophe of climate change.
In the words of Dr. Debra Roberts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) co-chair of Working Group II during an event dedicated to solidarity, “Faith communities play a powerful role even science is acknowledging.”
This is not simply due to the capacity of religious institutions to shake up the 6 billion of those who identify with a faith worldwide into action. Our Anthropocene era of humans “playing God” is marked by an emphasis on materialism, mounting egocentrism and the loss of the sacredness when it comes to life forms. As a result, many are searching for foundational moral critiques of these societal norms that have become part of the catalysts driving environmental disaster. “When you stop and think about it, religion should be helping,” emphasized His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, the Buddhist spiritual leader, at the COP’s Action Hub.
PHILOSOPHICAL PATH TO ENVIRONMENTALISM
Although very diverse from one another in their philosophical pathways, including the various indigenous beliefs, spiritual institutions envelop environmental issues in a two-tiered structure. First, they ingrain a heightened existential awareness, a connection to the world, a sacred importance of created life forms and emphasis on the reproductive continuity of humanity, where climate change and environmental destruction is an all-encompassing threat. Then, with provided moral practices and behaviors to maintain such existence and life forms, these ecologically conscious actions are grounded as sacred and foundational duties of individuals and community for the continuing family and society — our future generations.
From the perspective of the diverse spiritual bodies backing climate warnings and targets, this is an existential and moral question of our current social behavior requiring holistic change. With this approach in mind, religious leaders and adherents filled seats at the COP24 conferences aware of the crisis humans have wreaked upon creation. To change the status quo, they emphasize embedding scientific, indigenous and local climate mitigations and adaptation strategies into each respective region’s moral practices as has been spiritually done for millennia.
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Read more: https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/religion-spirituality-climate-change-cop24-environment-news-18812/
In my opinion, the idea of perverting faith into an instrument of state control is an utter betrayal of the religious liberty upheld by those who founded the United States. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists;
Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson
A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in the State of Connecticut.Washington, January 1, 1802
Gentlemen, – The affectionate sentiment of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.
Th Jefferson Jan. 1. 1802[6]
Does anyone think Thomas Jefferson would have embraced the idea of seeking to exploit people’s faith to achieve green policy objectives?
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Bargain basement virtue is signalled by the churchmen in the Synod of the Church of England who have decided to disinvest in fossil fuel companies unless they ‘conform to the Paris Agreement’. Ludicrous. Do they expect a reduction in product and consequent impoverishment? It is us who produce the CO2. They also believe in the IPCC’s SR1.5. Oh dear oh dear
I suspect the greenies are working from an over-estimation of the power that religions have over their followers. If all the followers of any religion were keeping to even the basic principles of their religion the world would be a very different place. For example ‘you shall not steal’ is common to Jews and to all denominations of Christian – check out the prison population.
Even mainstream Catholics do not all do what the Pope says: it doesn’t work like that.
“I suspect the greenies are working from an over-estimation of the power that religions have over their followers”
I think that’s true. My first skeptical experience took place in church when I was about 10-years-old. I had never thought to question authority before that day.
My church was protestant but had a unique belief: That it was a sin to use musical instruments to praise God. My church believed that only the human voice was acceptable to God.
So one day the preacher was talking about this issue and he said that anyone who used a musical instrument to praise God was going to Hell! And I thought to myself, “That can’t be right! Why would a merciful God send someone to Hell for praising Him?”
At that moment I realized that I had to take the things I hear with a grain of salt. And I do. I rely mainly on common sense and logic to get me through the day. 🙂
“…That it was a sin to use musical instruments to praise God.”
Ahhh, Church of Christ (New Testament only theology) I take it? They can fall into the category of the extremes of Protestantism (and others) like those that handle snakes & such. They build an entire denomination around a specific scripture verse or, as in Church of Christ, the ‘lack’ of a verse (no music instruments mentioned in the New Testament, only Old Testament).
This is where discernment, wisdom and understanding should step in to avoid the extremes & the fakers but pursue the Truth. Remember, the problem is not with the Bible but with the people who twist and abuse what it says…usually to control you and to profit from it. In Genesis, man was given dominion over the Earth (free to partake of it’s riches and bounty) but to also be responsible and good stewards of it (don’t be selfish & clean up after yourself).
JMHO
Yes, it was the Church of Christ. The thing about musical instruments was about their only out-of-mainstream belief. No snake handlers there.
As you say, it’s not the Bible that is the problem, it is the individual interpretations that sometimes lead us astray a little bit. As it is with anything, including CAGW. Human interpretations are fallible. We should keep that in mind, especially in church.
Why is Thomas Jefferson the only person from the earlier centuries whose portrait looks like a real human?
When I tried to explain to a millennial that the whole AGW argument is demonstrably a load of codswallop, he reverted to: “Well, even so, it would be good to reduce industrial pollution, right?”
“it would be good to reduce industrial pollution, right?”
The answer should be: No, not if reducing industrial pollution causes the destruction of our entire civilization. That would not be good.
I don’t think it was a case of the risk of the State taking over the Church,
but judging from hundreds of years of history, it was to prevent the Church,
which ever one, from taking over the State. .Today with the rise of Islam that
potential danger is still there.
When Jefferson established a university, he was criticised for not incorporating
a Church within it. I would suspect that he was either a lapsed Anglican,
or that he reasoned that belief in a faith and reasoning from facts an figures
could not co-exist together.
MJE VK5ELL
Bingo!
It was to prevent Denominational control of Government AND Government controlling a Denomination.
Both had happened in history that was not “ancient” to them.
Today, the intent would include incorporating “Sharia Law”, tearing down war monuments in the shape of a cross, forbidding coaches from having a voluntary prayer with their players, fining bakeries, removing the 10 Commandments from The Supreme Building etc. etc.
Climate change advocates are Agents of Satan.
Praise the Lord!
There ya go.
“make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
Truly one of the greatest achievements of western civilization.
True but unfortunately most people do not know or forget the second half of that statement.
“true but unfortunately most people do not know or forget the second half of that statement.”
That’s right. Our Courts do a lot of that “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” like making people take down crosses marking the graves of war veterans. This is suppression of the free exercise of religion. Allowing the cross to stand is not the same as the State advocating for that religion but that’s the way some interpret it.
All religions are man made constructs that reinforce and then usurp an individual’s spirituality for the enrichment and power of the leaders. There is little different between Al Gore and Joel Osteen.
This has a long history. Take Dubya’s ‘Spiritual’ JourneyBush for example.
How about the “innocuous” first verse of “Amazing Grace”:
Amazing grace!
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost,
But now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
FUNDAMENTALISM IN AMERICA `All Praises Due to Satan, The Ruler of the World'”
There a clear precedent for the current lurch to climate fundamentalism, a direct line of continuity. No American can feign surprise! Ever hear of Jonathan Edwards?
After seeing Bush’s “religion” it should be clear why Separation of Church and State is critical.
Yikes, did I just hear someone chanting :
Amazing GHG’s!
How sweet the CO2
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost,
But now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
The shortest distance on earth is the one between an Evangelist and an old woman’s social security check.
In religion or elsewhere unethical people do not care about the ethics of exploitation. It is part of the sociopathic “me first” culture of our times.
Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975)
He saw Humanism as a replacement ‘religion’, and as such represented an important strand in post-war humanist thought. In a speech given to a conference in 1965 he spoke of the need for “a religiously and socially effective system of humanism.” And in his book Religion Without Revelation, he wrote:
“What the sciences discover about the natural world and about the origins, nature and destiny of man is the truth for religion. There is no other kind of valid knowledge. This natural knowledge, organized and applied to human fulfilment, is the basis of the new and permanent religion.” The book ends with the concept of “transhumanism”– “man remaining man, but transcending himself by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature”.
In 1961 Julian Huxley brought together 25 distinguished people to present their view of existence in a book called The Humanist Frame. He wrote: “…the increase of knowledge is driving us towards the radically new type of idea-system which I have called Evolutionary Humanism…Humanism is seminal. We must learn what it means, then disseminate Humanist ideas, and finally inject them where possible into practical affairs as a guiding framework for policy and action.”
http://www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/20century/sir-julian-huxley
Julian Huxley was first Director General of UNESCO. He advocated a new and Permanent Worldwide “Religion without Revelation”. His younger cousin Crispin Tickell was one of the Godfathers of the CAGW agenda.
Crispin Tickell and Cousin Julian Huxley
Nigel Lawson: Global warming has turned into religion
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/11/was-climate-change-alarmism-always-about-fears-of-overpopulation/#comment-2623744
“He saw Humanism as a replacement ‘religion’, and as such represented an important strand in post-war humanist thought.”
Indeed, Atheism/Agnosticism is the rejection of God and the worship of Self. Secular Humanism is the worship of Self or State and since they reject the Judeo-Christian morality, they replace it with the Moral Relativism (there is no absolute right/wrong, it is what I say it is…and if you disagree, I’m correct & you are wrong). Karl Marx Socialism/Communism fits right in there with the rejection of the ‘Church’ (God) and replacing it with the State & it’s leaders morality.
A few hundred million dead later, meh – ‘you have to break some eggs to make an omelette’.
“Huxley emerges as a crucial bridging figure from what has been referred to as “old eugenics” to a new eugenics based on molecular biology, providing an influential analysis of human evolution and a set of persuasively appealing concepts for both the wider public and scientific elite”
His problem was the other Huxley’s hard core eugenics.
“Reforming” eugenics with scientific lipstick is still a pig. I need not mention Lord Maynard Keynes, the Director of the British Eugenics Society (1937-1944).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4366572/
We need to change the narrative. This is how to get religious people on side. We need to convince them of a progressive creationist view. Preach that when God/Great Spirit/whatever made the world and it was good. The good that he made it was the challenges he placed there. God made a world that is dangerous and harsh yes but with all the resources necessary for us to overcome. He made forests and fossil fuels and fissionable and fusion-able materials as resources for us so we can change our world and take away its harshness.
Environmentalists have a static creationist view. God or ‘millions of years of evolution’ made the world and it was good. The idea that something that humans do could make the world better is heresy. Man is evil and Nature/God/’millions of years of evolution is good. That is why environmentalists hate everything that man does. They hate putting CO2 back into the air that was in the air millions of years ago because that would imply that (God,nature etc.) made a mistake for tying it up in the form of fossil fuels in the first place. They hate dams because if(Nature, God etc.) had wanted a lake there he/she would have put a lake there. They hate genetically modified plants because if (Millions of years of evolution’,God etc.) didn’t do it then it’s not good. And so on!
We need to tell religious people that God/Great Spirit/whatever loves us and wants us to progress and to make our lives better. Those nasty things about nature: the diseases , the deserts, the deformations, these are problems to be solved to keep us from getting bored.
Climate Change is the religion of environmentalism. Using their religious dogma to create laws and regulations violates the separation of church and state.
Hey, I’m all for using religion to spread the truth (i.e., “the good word”, if you will) about climate change. But the climate-alarmist approach to using religion and spirituality is utterly contradictory to the facts, where carbon and carbon dioxide are concerned.
A truly enlightened person must take into account the fact that carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the known universe, at about 5,000 parts per million, or 0.5% of the known universe.
Now look at what astrophysicists know about this MAJOR building block of the universe:
Th. Henning, F. Salama (1998). Carbon in the Universe, SCIENCE, Vol. 282, Issue 5397, pp. 2204-2210.
I totally screwed up my closing tag for the block quote, which messes up the flow, damn it.
I’m re-posting again, and hope the mods will forgive me and delete the first dumb-@ur momisugly$$ attempt:
Hey, I’m all for using religion to spread the truth (i.e., “the good word”, if you will) about climate change. But the climate-alarmist approach to using religion and spirituality is utterly contradictory to the facts, where carbon and carbon dioxide are concerned.
A truly enlightened person must take into account the fact that carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the known universe, at about 5,000 parts per million, or 0.5% of the known universe.
Now look at what astrophysicists know about this MAJOR building block of the universe:
Th. Henning, F. Salama (1998). Carbon in the Universe, SCIENCE, Vol. 282, Issue 5397, pp. 2204-2210.
I give up — I just realized that I screwed up my second block-quote tag, and so my second attempt is also ………. up.
Type much, Kernodle? (he should be banned)
Hopefully, some folks can understand what I was getting at, even with my formatting foe pas.
(Amplified Bible) Galations1: 6 I am surprised and astonished that you are so quickly turning renegade and deserting Him Who invited and called you by the grace (unmerited favor) of Christ (the Messiah) [and that you are transferring your allegiance] to a different [even an opposition] gospel.
7 Not that there is [or could be] any other [genuine Gospel], but there are [obviously] some who are troubling and disturbing and bewildering you [with a different kind of teaching which they offer as a gospel] and want to pervert and distort the Gospel of Christ (the Messiah) [into something which it absolutely is not].
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to and different from that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment)!
9 As we said before, so I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel different from or contrary to that which you received [from us], let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment)!
The Gospel of Christ is presenting to people what Christ did on the cross and resurrection and what that means. They can say “Yes or No” to it.
If they say “No”, shake the dust off your feet and move on.
In the context of this post, it’s about saving people, not the “environment”.
Galatians 3:1 O YOU poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians! Who has fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you, unto whom–right before your very eyes–Jesus Christ (the Messiah) was openly and graphically set forth and portrayed as crucified?
Back in 1953 I was being trained as a Policeman. The Instructor placed
a loaf of bread on the floor and he then bowed to it and said Hail Bread.
He then told us that in Law, that was a religion.
But consider this , some 2000 years ago in what was then Roman Palestine
a boy was born of the union of Joseph and Mary. As he grew up he took
a interest in the Jewish faith.
He became a Preacher man as many did back then. He upset the Priests of the Jewish Temple and they framed him for a crime, the carrying of weapons and he was crucified.
Later one Saul of Tarsus, a odd character who was persecuting followers
of the Jesus Cult. Whilst on the road to Damascus he possibly suffered a stroke
and as does occur in such cases it apparently changed his thinking, and now he wanted to spread the word about Jesus.
Fast Forward many years to the time of Emperor Constantine. . He was
having problems in running his vast empire so needed a Unifying Force.
He choose this small sect of Christians, promised that if they accepted his
version of the Jesus story, “That he would make them Princes of the Church,
with Palaces and churches provided.” It was a offer too good to refuse, so
bar a few who went into exile, they accepted. But as we now say” The rest is history.
MJE VK5ELL
There is a creeping of “worshipping the creation” vs. “worshiping The Creator”.
The whole CAGW movement takes me to this passage , Matthew 7:15:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”
The false prophets promote ” worshipping the creation.” Clearly false prophets have plagued us since the beginning of time – an inherent human flaw, it would appear to me.
In answer to Patrick regarding my mention of Cardinal Pell now in jail.
As a now retired Police Officer I am of the opinion that going on Palls days
in Ballarat plus who he was sharing accommodation with, that he was probably
a pedafule from back then.
Never the less I am of the opinion that he should not have been convicted
of the so called “Abby “incident.
First the time element, back in the 1950 tees three days was considered to be
the maximum before a report to the Police had to be made. Today its years,
not a good idea, peoples memories are not all that good a few days later let
alone years .
Second and this is important, it appears to be a case of one now mans word
only, no other evidence . . That used to be considered OK in a civil case, but
never in a criminal case.
Its the same with rape cases, he said, she said. Not good enough without
additional evidence. The appeal may well bring up these points and Pell
will be found “Not Guilty”.
MJE VK5ELL
“Then, with provided moral practices and behaviors”
___________________________________________________
After the battle, the Roman general ordered “give their swords to the savages and let them murder each other according to the customs
and mores
of their elders.”
I’m currently reading “The Great Deception”, about the EU, by Booker/North, the contents of which explain why Brexit is so imporrtant. In this context, there’s a passage likening the EU dogma to religious fundamentalism and the parallels with climate change are startling.