Guest essay by Eric Worrall
US MSM and academia frequently attack the faith of US religious groups, by asserting their climate skepticism has something to do with their Christian faith.
To be fair this Conversation author at least admits that there are Christians who embrace climate alarmism. But the author still suggests Christian communities are failing to “exercise some self-awareness and concern for well-being rather than blindly denying the overwhelming consensus”.
Faith and politics mix to drive evangelical Christians’ climate change denial
September 9, 2020 10.17pm AEST
Adrian Bardon
Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest UniversityU.S. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants do – including just 24% of white evangelical Protestants.
Politically powerful Christian interest groups publicly dispute the climate science consensus. A coalition of major evangelical groups, including Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, launched a movement opposing what they describe as “the false worldview” of environmentalism, which supposedly is “striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control.”
Studies show that belief in miracles and an afterlife is associated with lower estimates of the risks posed by climate change. This raises the question: Does religion itself predispose people against climate science?
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Climate science denial may stem more from politics than religion
Social scientist Dan Kahan rejects the idea of an automatic link between religiosity and any anti-science bias. He argues that religiosity only incidentally tracks science denial because some scientific findings have become “culturally antagonistic” to some identity groups.
According to Kahan’s data, identification as a political conservative, and as white, is much more predictive of rejecting the climate consensus than overall religiosity. He argues that anti-science bias has to do with threats to values that define one’s cultural identity. There are all kinds of topic areas wherein people judge expert qualifications based on whether the “expert” confirms or contradicts the subject’s cherished view.
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White American evangelicals trend very strongly toward political conservatism. They also exhibit the strongest correlation, among any faith group, between religiosity and either climate science denial or a general anti-science bias.
Meanwhile, African-American Protestants, who are theologically aligned with evangelical Protestants but politically aligned with progressives, show some of the highest levels of climate concern.
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All this would suggest that climate science resistance has more to do with cultural identity politics than religiosity.
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Even if politics and culture rather than religion itself may be driving climate science denial, religious communities – as some religious leaders, including the Roman Catholic Pope, have recognized – bear a responsibility to exercise some self-awareness and concern for well-being rather than blindly denying the overwhelming consensus on a civilization-ending threat like human-caused global warming.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/faith-and-politics-mix-to-drive-evangelical-christians-climate-change-denial-143145
The author does not appear to have considered another possibility.
Groupthink cuts both ways. The author, a professor of philosophy, appears to have failed to consider the possibility that he is one who is ensnared in a large scale climate alarmist groupthink movement. The climate skepticism of faith groups may be because their degree of separation from the author’s social group gives them a level of distance and perspective which he currently does not share.
Group size is no protection against groupthink. You don’t have to look very deeply into the history of the 20th century to find plenty of frequently horrific examples of entire societies which embraced the irrational.
The only defence against groupthink is tolerance for people with different views, even if you think they are wrong. A society which tolerates non-conformity is a society in which someone can speak up and tell the emperor he is not wearing any clothes, without fear of retribution or punishment.
There is substantial evidence of group enforced conformity and intolerance for divergent views on climate change in modern academia.
There is no proof the climate consensus is “overwhelming” in an objective sense. Deviation from the groupthink position on climate change is frequently punished by public humiliation and ostracism. In such an environment of fear, it seems entirely possible that many academics who harbour doubts about extreme climate claims keep those doubts to themselves.
Christians already believe in something. We don’t need to worship a false God in order to make our lives complete.
Their God is their religion’s philosopher, who advises them to recognize a separation of logical domains. Other religions and quasi-religions (e.g. Pro-Choice), ostensibly “secular”. have their “gods”, mortal gods and goddesses. Judge a religion by its principles, internally, externally, and mutually consistent.
Peak Climate Fraud could be modeled with each accretion of hangers on like Philosophy ‘experts’ pontificating. You can’t even call it the straw that broke the consensus since in this case the science consensus is derived from fraudulent methods to support a political pitchman like Al Gore and his anti-science “debate has ended” claim. We are going to need Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Court approach when the Climate Crusade fraud is exposed.
Ironically, Christians recognize a separation of logical domains, while ostensibly “secular” faiths (e.g. Twilight), and quasi-religions Pro-Choice, will, on principle, conflate logical domains for personal and social progress and profit. As for [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global cooling, warming, climate change, this is not supported by observation or evidence, over 30 years and longer, but rather inferred (i.e. creative knowledge) and forced from unskilled models backed by em-pathetic appeals (e.g. social justice).
“identification as a political conservative, and as white, is much more predictive of rejecting the climate consensus”
Maybe becasue such people are more likely to be thinking for themselves rather than accepting whatever they are told by others. “White’ factors in because the left has forced all too many blacks into poverty ghettos with poor schools.
The environmental left believes that all “deniers” are religious fanatics. I was accosted by a guy soliciting for an environmental group and decided to engage him. When it was clear to him that he was outgunned on climate alarmism itself. He suddenly said, “So you don’t believe in what Charles Darwin said?”
My response: “What the hell does Charles Darwin and his observations in the small Galapagos Islands have to do with GLOBAL climate? I’m not aware that anything he said has anything to do with global climate.”
The guy hemmed and hawed. I’m sure he was told that all those opposed to the narrative were religious “bible thumpers” whose unscientific outlook would be easily exposed by any reference to evolution. I took advantage to demonstrate that he was the one who didn’t understand science. He actually went away saying, “Yeah a person who knows science could reject the warming.”
There is a connection between beliefs, and science, but not what the authors claim. It’s not groupthink nor culture. This connection goes back to the Reformation, which is one reason why educated evangelical Christians tend to be more skeptical of CAGW than others.
Before the Reformation, the scientific consensus was to start with a model, then look for confirming data. The scientist par excellence that scientists harkened back to for his models was Aristotle. Even today there are teachings held by a consensus of scientists that start with a model, then look for confirmation for that model. Woe betide the individual who bucks the consensus.
The Reformation turned that on its head. Instead of starting with the model, it starts with observation. Then models are made to try to explain observations. If the models don’t adequately explain the observations, they are to be adjusted or discarded. Those evangelical Christians who still strongly identify with the tenets of the Reformation, favor this view of science even to the point of skepticism of other “scientific” teachings which are a consensus in the scientific community. The stronger is his connection to the original Reformation, the more likely is the Evangelical Christian to buck the consensus.
CAGW started with a model, then looks for confirmation. Can you think of other teachings that likewise started with models, then look for confirmation?
Interesting comment R. O.
Do you happen to have a bibliography on the subject you could pass along?
Many thanks!
The connection between the Reformation and the rise of natural science is recorded in a book by Peter Harrison, “The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science”. It started with Luther’s theological views that if one wants to study theology, he needs to “go to the source” namely the Bible itself. The early scientists took the same idea, applied it to a study of nature—if one wants to study nature, go to the source, study nature through direct observation instead of studying Aristotle.
Read the book in the library.
https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Protestant-Rise-Nat-Science/dp/0521000963/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=protestantism+and+the+scientific&qid=1599863631&s=books&sr=1-3
Many thanks, I’ll add that to my library.
With all due respect R.O., this sounds like a chauvinistic abstract argument that Protestants are better than Catholics. What are these “observations” that Luther or Calvin or Zwingli made? They disagreed with some conclusions reached by Catholic theologians and came up with their own faith-based models to replace the old model. They didn’t start a process of continuous change of doctrine based on an experimental method, they pretended to rediscover the true unchanging doctrine that just happened to agree with their model. After which they were every bit as rigid and dogmatic as the Catholic clergy they supplanted. (Thinking here of my Puritan ancestors).
More importantly they didn’t like practices that had developed and especially where those practices implied their position in the hierarchy of power. Happily, the rediscovered Truth placed them back at the top of the hierarchy where they were predestined to be. Or at least moved them up the hierarchy by getting their local warlord out from under the jurisdiction of the pope.
I recognize that your comment is on topic because of the article’s reference to evangelicals, but I don’t think it hits the mark.
When I was in University back in the Dark Ages, some really smart profs instilled one point on me regarding experimentation that has stuck. The objective of any experiment is to prove that your hypothesis is WRONG! What you believe does not matter. What you assume to be true is worthless. What can you prove? Very little. If you work hard, you eventually arrive at the stage where you have exhausted all avenues of disproving your hypothesis and have been unable to do so. Then, you can assume that your hypothesis is most likely correct and can build on that assumption. However, you have to be ready to toss that assumption aside should someone come up with a repeatable experiment that proves you wrong.
Unfortunately, this ‘group think’ prevents most people from critically examining the foundational hypotheses on which their worldview rests and are trapped in error, unable to see the truth that can set them free. Such groups as ‘global warming is true’, ‘anthropogenic climate change is true’, ‘Antifa’ (who are the REAL fascists), BLM (who are the REAL racists and communists to boot), …
With groups like this permitted to be in charge, there is no hope for the future of civilized society. It will devolve into top-down ruthless dictatorships and one-world governments run by the most ruthless dictator.
ian
Hi Ian.
The equivalent experience I had to your professor’s guidance was being prepped by a top-tier barrister as I was to take the stand in court to give evidence in a high-stakes commercial property dispute.
He played the part of what the lawyers from the other side would likely hit me with to refute our case.
Although we were only role-playing, he had me stammering, confused, sweating and rendered speechless.
My initial cock-sure belief in the robustness of our position was in tatters.
So then, he led us back to the fundamentals that we could unequivocally prove, and worked out response tactics for dealing with the other side’s distraction attempts.
We won, but only because we had ourselves torn down our own ‘belief pyramid’ and relied only on what we could prove before we made our claims.
Matk W
I’ve been an atheist for about 60 years.
I don’t denigrate anyone.
Although it is very tempting to denigrate you.
Othets should fell free to believe in anything they want to believe … but not to the point of forcing the government to believe as they do.
You appear to feel the need to criticize atheists — just what religion teaches you to do that?
These Christians are such a pain. The old Roman authorities just wanted them to worship the emperor a liitle bit so that honour was satisfied; but no, they refused. Still, they made good lion fodder and they did prove useful scapegoats for a fire.
Christians were persecuted in the old Soviet Union, and still are in Xi Jinpin’s China and Kim Jong Un’s Korea, primarily because of a stubborn refusal to give unreserved and wholehearted allegiance to anything or anyone other than Christ: not emperors, not despots, not dictators, not presidents, not kings – and not Gaia. Especially not Gaia.
And being an often-villified minority they are generally seriously unimpressed by “consensus” as a reason to believe anything
CAGW alarmism was never science-based. It is and always has been a plot, a scam, and a global hoax planned and operated by rent-seeking Globalists. It’s about more power and money for the Ruling Elite.
Astute observers have noted that CAGW alarmism only one arrow in the Elite quiver. The Elites seek to revolutionize Academia, Government, all of Science and Medicine, and various Social Structures (like families) to achieve their dark ends.
One of those foundational structures is religion, specifically Christianity. Christianity has been under attack for decades by the exact same cabal that promotes CAGW. It is not surprising then that the targets of the Ruling Elite dismiss and reject all of their insidious arrows.
Christianity is the glue that holds our civilization together, that underpins our laws, ethics, morals, and social interactions. Rejection of the glue is what the Elite desire. Those who refuse to abandon the foundation stones, who push back against the cabal, are heroes, not superstitious fools.
“Climate science denial may stem more from politics than religion” In my case it stems from science more than anything else. Howevver, I do admit the idea that mankind thinks they are so powerful that they can affect what God has created is a part of my thinking. Short of a nuclear holocaust, man’s involvement on the planet is insignificant compare to God’s creation. Climate change is nothing more than a modern day Tower of Babel. Don’t get me wrong; I think we need to be smart in how we treat the planet.
We are instructed to carefully check claims from people:
And when you do check the claims of the climate activists, and look carefully at the data, it’s immediately apparent that most of the temperature rise last century was due to natural changes, especially in solar activity and the thermohaline cycle.
Fortunately, I had an excellent grounding in the “scientific method” in my physics and geology classes. Modelling, while a useful tool in learning is no substitute for observation and field work. An office bound geologist is an oxymoron as is a “climatologist” who wouldn’t know a “Stevenson Box” if they fell over one. As a Christian, truth is paramount and I’m afraid the activists and alarmists are dismal failures in sorting out the facts of climate change.
Eric
“Even green Germany has been backsliding. Hardly anyone is on target with their Paris commitments.”
No one said this was going to be easy. In fact it is incredibly hard to get everyone to do their bit when it is so easy to do what the US has done lately, and that is free load on others.
LOL, Your ignorance is shining like a dim beacon
USA is the ONLY country that is anywhere near meeting any farcical targets..
(except China, which already had 20% renewables)
USA has STOPPED the freeloaders, and they don’t like it.
Totally pointless for the USA to send money to green scammers and third world dictators in the UN.
To do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about a NON-PROBLEM.
Trump realised that it was all just a SCAM
Other should wake up to that fact.
USA is the ONLY country that is anywhere near meeting any farcical targets..
(except China, which already had 20% renewables)
You mean China, whose target was “emit as much as they want until they peak in 2030”. That China? You’d have to work really hard to miss that particular target.
From the article: “According to Kahan’s data, identification as a political conservative, and as white, is much more predictive of rejecting the climate consensus than overall religiosity.”
I guess that means conservatives are pretty smart people. They know a scam when they see one.